Marvin > Marvin's Quotes

“Sometimes people with our trait are said to be less happy or less capable of happiness. Of course, we can seem unhappy and moody, at least to non-HSPs, because we spend so much time thinking about things like the meaning of life and death and how complicated everything is—not black-and-white thoughts at all. Since most non-HSPs do not seem to enjoy thinking about such things, they assume we must be unhappy doing all that pondering. And”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“The point is best made by Aristotle, who supposedly asked, “Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy human?” HSPs prefer the good feeling of being very conscious, very human, even if what we are conscious of is not always cause for rejoicing.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“So when one person’s attitude changes, the other person is often disappointed, and his own attitude changes as a result. That is a sign that love was motivated more from personal need than from an authentic concern for the loved one. Real compassion is not just an emotional response; it is a firm, thought-out commitment. Therefore, an authentic attitude of compassion does not change, even faced with another person’s negative behavior.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks

“If you take the negative as absolute and definitive, however, you increase your worries and anxiety, whereas by broadening the way you look at a problem, you understand what is bad about it, but you accept it. This attitude comes to me, I think, from my practice and from Buddhist philosophy, which help me enormously.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks

“Change, on the infinitesimal level, is accompanied in our mind by an appearance of continuity. Yet the continuity thus perceived is illusory. For nothing remains the same, and no two consecutive instants are alike.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks

“exists independent of its appearances. Our perception of time also rests on a mistaken apprehension of reality. What in fact is the past? The past is not a reality; it’s just a concept. The future corresponds to projections, anticipations that do not have any reality either. The past has already occurred; the future does not yet exist. These notions affect us as realities, although they have no substance. The present is the truth that we are experiencing here and now, but it is an elusive reality that does not last. We find ourselves in a paradoxical situation in which the present constitutes a border, a limit between a past and a future without any concrete reality. The present is that elusive moment between what no longer exists and what has not yet happened.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks