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We all live in a tragicomic situation, a life that is in part absurd simply because it is not of our own making. We are born into a disordered world, into a family we did not choose, into circumstances we would have had somewhat improved, and we are even called by a name we did not select. (40)

Sheldon B. Kopp

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Sheldon B. Kopp
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More quotes by Sheldon B. Kopp

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Each of us is ultimately alone.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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We must learn to give ourselves permission to blunder, to fail, and to make fools of ourselves every day for the rest of our lives. We do so in any case.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)
Sheldon B. Kopp
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So it is that God tugs at a pilgrim's sleeve telling him to remember that he is only human. He must be his own man, remain in exile, and belong to himself. He must pay attention to his own feelings and to the meaning of what he does, if he is to be for himself, and yet for others as well.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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The continuing struggle was once described in the following metaphor by a patient who had successfully completed a long course of psychotherapy: 'I came to therapy hoping to receive butter for the bread of life. Instead, at the end, I emerged with a pail of sour milk, a churn, and instructions on how to use them.' (138)
Sheldon B. Kopp
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That is one of the reasons why a man should pick a path with heart, so that he can find his laughter.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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I've never began any important venture for which I felt adequate prepared
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Dreams provide a kind of wisdom of the heart, an echoing voice of a profound human sensitivity too often lost to us in the reasonable life of days.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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It has been a long time since I believed in Reality. I prefer the loveliness and the terror of my subjective experiences to those coldly scientific explanations which in the long run turn out to be no more real, and far less fun, than my own fantasies and musings.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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I have long trusted dreams as prophetic visions. I do not mean that they foretell the future, only that they illuminate the present, when my eyes are closed, so that I may see clearly.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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He may only get to keep that which he is willing to let go of.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty. (10)
Sheldon B. Kopp
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If outrageous imagination is the wine of madness, then come fill my cup.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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Each person's only hope for improving his lot rests on recognizing the true nature of his or her basic personality, surrendering to it, and becoming who he or she really is.
Sheldon B. Kopp
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For each of us, the only hope resides in his own efforts, in completing his own story, not in the other's interpretation. (63)
Sheldon B. Kopp