Obstacles
From 16Guidelines
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Pride
My name is Pride. I am a cheater.
I cheat you of your God-given destiny... because you demand your own way.
I cheat you of contentment... because you "deserve better than this."
I cheat you of knowledge... because you already know it all.
I cheat you of healing... because you’re too full of me to forgive.
I cheat you of holiness... because you refuse to admit when you’re wrong.
I cheat you of vision... because you’d rather look in a mirror than out of a window.
I cheat you of genuine friendship... because nobody’s going to know the real you.
I cheat you of love... because real romance demands sacrifice.
I cheat you of greatness in heaven... because you refuse to wash another’s feet on earth.
I cheat you of God’s glory... because I convince you to seek your own.
My name is Pride. I am a cheater.
You like me because you think I’m always looking out for you. Untrue.
I’m looking to make a fool of you.
God has so much for you, I admit, but don’t worry.
If you stick with me
You’ll never know.
Anger
"To forgive is indeed the best form of self-interest since anger, resentment, and revenge are corrosive of that summum bonum, the greatest good."
- Desmond Tutu
"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy."
- Aristotle
"If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away."
- John Steinbeck
"I was angry with my friend
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow."
- William Blake
"My mother used to say, 'He who angers you, conquers you!' But my mother was a saint."
- Elisabeth Kenny
Resentment
"Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten."
- John Dryden
"If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you."
- Peter Marshal
“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.”
- Peter McWilliams
“Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do.”
- Ann Landers
“Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly.”
- Friedrich Nietsche
Worry
"The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers."
- M.Scott Peck
"Worry gives a small thing a big shadow."
- Swedish Proverb
"The experience of separateness arouses anxiety; it is, indeed, the source of all anxiety."
- Erich Fromm
Arrogance
"A person unlearns arrogance when he knows he is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing but who would like to be very important."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow."
- Laura Teresa Marquez
"Arrogance and rudeness are training wheels on the bicycle of life -- for weak people who cannot keep their balance without them."
- Laura Teresa Marquez
Apathy
"That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation."
- Elisabeth Cady Stanton
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
- Henri Frederic Amiel
"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings."
- Helen Keller
Stupidity
"Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln (attributed)
"Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds."
- Albert Einstein
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
- Albert Einstein
"At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols."
- Aldous Huxley
Boredom
"Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination."
- Lin Yutang
"The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."
- Saul Steinberg
"Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore."
- Sir Cecil Beaton
"Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings."
- Soren Kierkegaard
"Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don't happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn't make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal,rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show.
- Fritz Redl
Hatred
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
- Elie Wiesel
"The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves."
- Eric Hoffer
"Passionate hatreds can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. These people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunies for battle."
- Eric Hoffer
"The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defense against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity."
- G Gaia
"The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no reason to hate them; you just forget."
- Hazrat Inayat Khan
"But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity."
- Herbert Butterfield
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."
- James Baldwin
"Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it."
- Joan Vinge
"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
- Martin Luther King, jr.
Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
