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Most people ask of their friends that they understand them, but, on balance, I think I prefer a friend who understands himself.

Jo Coudert

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Jo Coudert
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More quotes by Jo Coudert

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The cruelest affront is treating the person as exactly the person he is. We all long to be understood, but not for what we are. We long to be understood for what we might have been had all been for the best in the best of all possible worlds and, at the same time, to be forgiven for what we are.
Jo Coudert
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Every life is a dilemma that must be solved by the person living it.
Jo Coudert
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If you defy the system long enough you'll be rewarded. At first life takes revenge and reduces you to a sniveling mess. But keep sniveling, have the madness, the audacity, to do what interests you, forget about your pension, and eventually life will say all right, we'll let you do it.
Jo Coudert
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One does not marry to become a judge of the spouse's behavior. If a marriage license is mistaken for a hunting license and disapproval, punishment, and threat of withdrawal of love are employed as weapons, all one bags is one's own unhappiness.
Jo Coudert
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We find what we expect to find. We do not see the world as it is but as we are.
Jo Coudert
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It is characteristic to believe that those in need are given to, that the squeaky hinge is the one that gets the oil, but in the realm of emotions this is not so. It is the person who does not solicit liking and love, admiration and respect, sympathy and empathy to whom they are freely given.
Jo Coudert
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The more deeply the path is etched, the more it is used, and the more it is used, the more deeply it etched.
Jo Coudert
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The divorced person is like a man with a black patch over one eye: he looks rather dashing but the fact is that he has been through a maiming experience.
Jo Coudert
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Men fear being used women fear being used up.
Jo Coudert
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It takes an enormous amount of energy, creative energy withdrawn from the total economy of the person, to hold a trait underground, and, unfortunately, needs and drives do not go underground alone they carry with them useful parts of the personality, depriving it of richness and the possibility of a variety of response.
Jo Coudert
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You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self.
Jo Coudert
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The unlived life is not worth examining. ... Self-awareness, self-examination, self-consciousness are for the quiet moments. In the arena they are paralyzing. The self must not be held out of the arena until living skills have been learned.
Jo Coudert
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While it is necessary to eat and therefore it is pleasantest to eat food that looks handsome and tastes good, on the other hand there are things I would far rather do than spend time in a kitchen.
Jo Coudert
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Almost anything can be stretched to serve more people by being added to a white sauce or canned gravy or undiluted or very slightly diluted canned soup and served over noodles or rice. With chops or chocolate eclairs, however, the only solution is to claim you don't like them.
Jo Coudert
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At what age should one marry? As a rule of thumb, perhaps not until you are past the age of feeling strongly that you must marry.
Jo Coudert
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To live with the terrible truths about ourselves is the only way of not living them out. A need denied has infinitely more power than a need accepted.
Jo Coudert
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You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. Of all the people you will know in the lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave or lose.
Jo Coudert
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There is no way of steering successfully between a failed situation and a failed self except by stopping and taking our bearings.
Jo Coudert
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Affection may be abiding and love may be abiding, but the state of being in love is transitory.
Jo Coudert
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We can win the struggle to avoid responsibility for our personal lives, but if we do, what we lose is our lives.
Jo Coudert