David Viscott

“Even those who venture to dip a toe in the pond of risk never allow themselves to get used to the water.”

“Sorrow ages you prematurely. When you're in emotional debt, you're pessimistic about the future and, even in your green years, long to return to the past to remedy the shortfalls of love and opportunity you suffered.”

“There is some place where your specialties can shine. Somewhere that difference can be expressed. It's up to you to find it, and you can.”

“Frequently, visualization is the key to lose weight. Imagine yourself with your desired body, and work for it. At some point in the future, this wish will come true.”

“If your life is ever going to get better, you'll have to take risks. There is simply no way you can grow without taking chances.”

“In the end, the only people who fail are those who do not try.”

“In other relationships, it may be permissible to overpower people, but not between people who are living together. That relationship is supposed to be between equals.”

“People now feel time accelerating. Lists allow them to feel some sense of accomplishment.”

“You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be.”

“You don't have to try, you just have to be.”

“Your ultimate goal in life is to become your best self. Your immediate goal is to get on the path that will lead you there.”

“Once a person says, "This is who I really am, what I am all about, what I was really meant to do," it is easier to decide how to spend one's time.”

“To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.”

“There comes a time in some relationships when no matter how sincere the attempt to reconcile the differences or how strong the wish to recreate a part of the past once shared, the struggle becomes so painful that nothing else is felt and the world and all its beauty only add to the discomfort by providing cruel contrast.”

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.”

“If we are the sum of everything that happens to us, to limit a person's experience is to limit their growth.”

“Just imagine that you are the person you want to be.”

“Although everyone fights, few people know how to have a good argument, an argument that clears the air and makes it less likely a future argument will take place on the same subject.”

“Take the best action toward your most important goal right now.”

“The highest love a person can have for you is to wish for you to evolve into the best person you can be.”

“It is important for children to understand that some of the disappointment their parents feel for them is often really the parents' disappointment in their own lives.”

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”

“Many risks fail because they were not taken in time. Too many risks are postponed until unnecessarily elaborate preparations are made. This does not mean that one should say, Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! That is foolish and self-destructive. . . . But don't sit back waiting for the perfect moment. It almost never comes.”

“A home is a place in time. And no place stays the same after you finally grow up and leave it. No place can ever change as much as the person who grows up there.”

“No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.”

“When you respond to an unreasonable person by getting emotional, you give them victory. How do you manage unreasonable people? You dismiss them. Like shadows”

“This is really America in therapy, people trying to get themselves together and be whole.”

“Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.”

“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”

“You are the only one who has to live your life.”

“Before you decide to have an argument, think about what you really want to accomplish. Do you just want to let your feelings out, or is there a point you are trying to make? What is it?”

“Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.”

“If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.”

“Unfortunately, some parents simply don't love their children. Probably they don't even love themselves. That may be the heart of their problem. Having parents like this is a terrible burden for any child and can shadow him all through life. It can even destroy him.”

“Lists today are a way of trying to get through the day, because we are losing a sense of time.”

“Each child should try to see in his parents the children they previously were. Each parent should try to see in his child the adult he seems to be becoming.”