The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition Quotes

“If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and you cannot be a person worthy of love when your primary goal in life is to passively be loved.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

“…it is the separateness of the partners that enriches the union. Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage… Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other…Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

“The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

“The myth of romantic love tells us that when we meet the person for whom we are intended…we will be able to satisfy all of each other’s needs forever and ever, and therefore live happily forever after in perfect union and harmony…While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths…the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie…as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

“The essential ingredient of successful deep and meaningful psychotherapy is love. ... Intensive psychotherapy in many ways is a process of reparenting.”
― M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled