Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.

I am too old to think.

I remember when I was a little boy my father didn't love me; he couldn't. He loved my older brother but he couldn't love me somehow, at least not in a way I could understand it.

I wrote a book called The Taste of New Wine because I couldn't find a book that talked about the reality of the situation and how we were dishonest and afraid.

A lot of us have jobs where we need to give people structure but that is different from controlling.

I have learned to like myself for the first time and to have some serenity.

The whole Bible is the story of men and women trying to get back to God, to overcome that sin with sacrifices, good works, sermons, prophesy, witnessing, giving all kinds of things. It never worked.

The primary symptom of a controller is denial, that is I can't see its symptoms in myself.

Pain is the doorway to wisdom and to truth.

Beneath all of these addictions is this disease, this control disease which is the mark of our society.

No gentleman ever discusses any relationship with a lady.

I learned that the purpose of the Twelve Steps is to do the will of God.

Then one day I read about a book that said that the church is the only army that shoots its wounded.

I was taught that pain is bad.

Religious work is one of the best ways to keep from facing your reality if you are Christian, if you are using it to calm the pain, because that it what all addictions are, attempts to cover the pain of this spiritual disease.

We are a nation of people who are afraid we are not enough.

What happens is that people who are very religious but who are not in touch with reality, cannot be spiritual.

You are controlling because I want you to do it, not because of the situation or what needs to be done.

Feelings are like a color chart that God has given us.

There never was a social change in America without angry people at the heart.

Intimacy, as I am using it, is sharing my reality with you.

If God is in a life, it doesn't have to be big to be happy and to be important in His kingdom.

We live in a constant fear that our shortcomings will be exposed to family, to friends and to the world.

We religious controllers control in the name of Jesus and it is really painful to people.

We can't be intimate because we can't share feelings that we don't have.

I grew up and I became very successful at what I did as a young man. I became a work addict because this was the only way I could get any relief from this pain.

I am six feet tall. I am not supposed to be afraid.

A spiritual person is also in touch with his or her own reality, feelings and thoughts, and the reality of the people around him or her, not projecting on them.

My only hope to receive love is to let you see who I am, then I may believe you.

A forest is mystery but the desert is truth. Life pared to the bone.

Being ill like this combines shock - this time I will die - with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself.

One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.

I meditate a lot, but I am constantly in pain. I'm trying to live with this. You just have to accept it.

We may not commit a lesser Sin under pretence to avoid a greater, but we may, nay we ought to endure the greatest Pain and Grief rather than commit the least Sin.

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Imitation is the sincerest form of pain.

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.

I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.

Lives have been altered in fundamental ways, and later, after they acquire a more complete understanding of what goals are actually attainable, many are left facing a lot of pain and frustration. And yet, there's no culture of complaint.

When the Negro cries with pain from his deep hurt and lays his petition for elemental justice before the nation, he is calling upon the American people to kindle about that crucible of race relationships the fires of American faith.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.