• A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!
  Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) assassinated 16th US President (1861-1865), abolisher of slavery, cited in: Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln. A Life, S. 334, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008

• We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (1926-2004) Swiss US American psychiatrist, death and dying resear-
  cher, founder of Near-death studies, author, On Death and Dying, 1969, Scribner, paperback edition 1981, 9. June 1997

Red Cayenne pepper

• A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably. Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) US American First Lady (1933-1945) supporter of her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies, advocate for civil rights, enhancer of the status of working women, chairwoman of the United Nations committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, cited in: It Seems to Me. Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt,
  The University Press of Kentucky, 18. May 2001

• Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible. Thus he is master of his enemy's fate. Sun Tzu (544-496 BC) ancient Chinese military general, commander, strategist, philosopher, author, The Art of War, 2nd century BC, Delacorte Press, 10. March 1983

• God has entrusted me with myself. No man is free who is not master of himself.
  Epictetus (60-100 AD) Greek stoic philosopher, cited in: Goodreads Quotable Quote

• All things must necessarily be accomplished in the truly humble man. He does not need to ask God, he can command God, because the height of divinity is nothing less than the depth of humility […] The humble man and God are one; the humble man is master of God as well as himself, and everything possessed by angels is in the nature of the humble man; what God does, the humble man does also, and what God is he is: one life and one being; that is why our Lord has said: "Learn from me that I am gentle and humble in spirit". Meister Eckhart O.P. (Eckhart of Hochheim) (1260-1328) German mystic, Dominican theologian, philosopher, text On humility, undated

• A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master […]. Modern man protects himself against seeing his own split state by a system of compartments. Certain areas of outer life and of his own behavior are kept, as it were,
  in separate drawers and are never confronted with one another. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist, psycho-
  analyst, founder of a new school of depth psychology, author, Man And His Symbols, Dell, 15. August 1968

• Man, as an extension of God, is creator of his own electric body. He is master of his electric body to the extent of
  his knowing the Light of God in him. [...]
  God says to man: »What I do, ye shall do«, but man is unbelieving for long ages.
  Walter Russell (1871-1963) US American polymath, natural philosopher, mystic, architect, painter, sculptor, builder, author (unified theory in physics and cosmogony), The Message of the Divine Iliad Vol. 1, S. 129, University of Science and Philosophy, June 1971

• When the soul is not master of one's reactions to the world, then that soul is everyone's dupe. The person of character is not for sale. He does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. He does not need plenty; he can lose
  with grace. Character is persistent. […]
  The heroic character is a person of truth, master of his own actions, and expresses that mastery in his behavior,
  not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.
  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) US American philosopher, Unitarian, lecturer, poet, essayist, Essays. First Series, "Heroism", Prudence, 1841, Charles E. Merrill Company, New York, 1907

• Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never dawns in which this element is without value. Latent inner power is what we call Character, a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means.
  It is conceived of as a certain indemonstrable force, a Familiar of Genius, by whose impulses the hero is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart. Character is of a stellar and in-diminishable greatness.
  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) US American philosopher, Unitarian, lecturer, poet, essayist, Essays. First Series, chapter 8 "Heroism", PDF, 1841, Charles E. Merrill Company, New York, 1907

• Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup which is already full. The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian playwright, essayist, novelist, writer, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, chapter 3, 1894

• Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
  1. Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
  2. Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
  3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
  4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
  5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
  6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

• [F]or a conscious being,
  ➤ to exist is to change,
  ➤ to change is to mature,
  ➤ to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
  Henri Bergson (1859-1941) influential French philosopher, Nobel laureate in literature, 1927, Creative Evolution ['L'Évolution créatrice', French edition 1907], Arthur Mitchell, translator, The Evolution of Life – Mechanism and Teleology, chapter 1, Henry
  Holt and Company, New York, English edition 1911

• Once you've reached a certain age, the idea of wasting any opportunity – particularly the opportunity to love – is seen as the blasphemy it is. You might as well just spit at God as turn away from the chance to really love. And that's why love burns brightly at midlife; you're no longer under the delusion that the sparks that are flying here fly along every day. Marianne Williamson (*1952) US American spiritual teacher, political activist, visionary, lecturer, author, The Age of Miracles. Embracing the New Midlife, 1. April 2009

• Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us
  away and deposits treasures we never imagined.
  ➤ Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom;
  ➤ out goes anger, in comes discernment;
  ➤ out goes despair, in comes kindness.

• The USA lacks a maturity of mind and soul.
  Maturity is not the same thing as intelligence. Americans suffer no lack of intelligence, if only in the classical sense of the word: access to education and information, of which they have a surfeit. But if we do not read deeply enough in the newspaper [...] and if we do not listen between the lines of the blaring television lead stories to see paterrners of meaning, all that information serves us not at all. The failure of Americans to process the information they have is a problem of materity. [...]
  [T]he American mind suffers from a deadening superficiality.

• Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world. Father Richard Rohr O.F.M. (*1943) US American Franciscan friar, author, What the Mystics Know. Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1. May 2015

• After years of research, depth psychologists and others argue that each sex carries both the psychological and physi-
  cal traits of the other. No man is purely masculine, just as there is no purely feminine woman. Jungian psychologists
  call the feminine characteristics of the male psyche the Anima; the female psyche's masculine characteristics they
  the Animus.
  Both the Animus and Anima develop in complex fashion as the personality grows to maturity. Neither men nor women can reach psychological maturity without integrating their respective contrasexual other. A man's female elements enhance his manhood, just as a woman's male aspects enhance her womanhood. Robert Moore, Ph.D. (1942-2016)
  US American Jungian psychoanalyst, professor of psychology, consultant, theorist, author, Douglas Gilette, US American author,
  The Warrior Within. Accessing the Knight in the Male Psyche, William Morrow & Company, 1st edition August 1992

• As you lower your entropy in consciousness you get more power, more ability to have an effect.
  Lowering entropy by improving the organization (profitability) of accumulated experiences increases the energy / power / information available to the evolving entity.
  Lowering entropy, spiritual growth, increasing the quality of consciousness, evolving one's consciousness, and growing up are all different expressions for the same thing. Video presentation by Thomas Campbell (*1944) US American physicist, consciousness researcher, sponsored by and at London School of Economics, Physics, Metaphysics & the Consciousness Connec-
  tion, part 9 of 18, YouTube film, minute 0:05, 9:00 minutes duration, filmed 22. February 2008, posted 13. April 2008

• Love is defined as the fundamental state of a low entropy consciousness. It is not that a low entropy conscious-
  ness is loving. A low low entropy consciousness fundamentally is love.
  Video presentation by Thomas Campbell (*1944) US American physicist, consciousness researcher, sponsored by the London School of Economics, Physics, Metaphysics & the Consciousness Connection, part 9 of 18, YouTube film, minute 0:22, 9:00 minutes duration, filmed 22. February 2008, posted 13. April 2008

• Man must have results, real results, in his inner and outer life. I do not mean the results which modern people strive after in their attempts at self-development. These are not results, but only rearrangements of psychic material, a pro-
  cess the Buddhists call 'samsara' and which our Holy Bible calls 'dust'. Jacob Needleman, Ph.D. jacobneedleman.com (1934-2022) US American professor of philosophy and religion, UCSF, author, cited in: Goodreads Quotable Quote

• Though no one notices at the time, in-loveness obli-
  terates the humanity of the beloved. One does a cu-
  rious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him,
  for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person. If two people are in love, they tread on star dust for a time and live happily ever after – that is so long as this experience of divinity has obliterated time for them. Only when they come down to earth do they have to look at each other realistically and only then does the possibility of mature love exist. If one person is in love and the other not, the cooler one is likely to say, "We would have something better between us if you would look at me rather than
  at your image of me.
  Robert A. Johnson (1921-2018) US American Jungian analyst, lecturer, author, Owning Your Own Shadow. Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, Harper Collins, San Francisco, 1991, reprint 5. March 1993, Harper One, 9. June 2009

• The psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to newer, higher-order systems as man's existential problems change.
  Clare W. Graves, Ph.D. (1914-1986) US American professor of psychology, originator of a theory of adult human develop-
  ment, author, Introductory quote, presented by clarewgraves.com homepage, undated

• The mature personality provides a means for bringing relations of reciprocity and willing amity to the entire family of human beings. The mature provides for the interchange and utilization of the entire experiences of humankind. He or she lives in a moral world which tears down manmade barriers of law and custom widening the means of communication and coopera-
  tion between humans.
  The mature is a committed person, committing self to continuous self-development, and to intimate relations and co-
  operation with all people. He or she is one who believes in face to face interaction and assessment, one who believes
  friendly eyes are the indispensable mirror for reflecting what is. He or she believes in an absolutely open society where every nook, every corner is exposed to anyone who is curious. He or she behaves so as to demonstrate that every per-
  son may be freely heard. Clare W. Graves, Ph.D. (1914-1986) US American professor of psychology, originator of a theory of adult human development, author, Conceptions of the Mature Personality from Dr. Graves' Research. Nodal FS, undated

• Systems thinking also needs the disciplines of building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and personal mastery to realize its potential.
  ➣ Building shared vision fosters a commitment to the long term.
  ➣ Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world.
  ➣ Team learning develops the skills of groups of people to look for the larger picture beyond individual perspectives.
  ➣ And personal mastery fosters the personal motivation to continually learn how our actions affect our world.

• When personal mastery becomes a discipline […] it embodies two underlying movements.
  1. The first is continually clarifying what is important to us.
  2. The second is continually learning how to see current reality more clearly.

• The boss in the herd can be referred to as the alpha horse. [...] The alpha horses are generally off by themselves because the other horses don't want to be around them. [...] The leader is generally an older mare – in a wild herd. Stallions come and go, but mares stay for life. It's not necessarily going be the bossy mare. It's going to be the one
  with all |life experience. It's the leader that can be trusted. Whether it's with people or with horses
  ➣ the way to develop trust is through consistency.
  ➣ If you're consistent then you're dependable.
  ➣ If you're dependable you become trustworthy.
  ➣ If you're trustworthy the horse will be at peace with you.
  ➣ And if the horse is at peace with you then they can become soft.

• Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts; most especially, the ability, despite our grief and losses, to courageously inhabit the past the present and the future all at once. The wisdom that comes from maturity
  is recognized through a disciplined refusal to choose between or isolate three powerful dynamics that form human
  identity: what has happened, what is happening now and what is about to occur.
  Immaturity is shown by making false choices: living only in the past, or only in the present, or only in the future, or
  even, living only two out of the three.
  Maturity is not a static arrived platform, where life is viewed from a calm, untouched oasis of wisdom, but a living ele-
  mental frontier between what has happened, what is happening now and the consequences of that past and present;
  first imagined and then lived into the waiting future.
  Maturity calls us to risk ourselves as much as immaturity, but for a bigger picture, a larger horizon; for a power-
  fully generous outward incarnation of our inward qualities and not for gains that make us smaller, even in the winning.
  David Whyte (*1955) US American poet, writer, Consolations. The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, Many Rivers Press, 1. January 2015

• Maturity beckons also, asking us to be larger, more fluid, more elemental, less cornered, less unilateral, a living conversational intuition between the inherited story, the one we are privileged to inhabit and the one, if we are large enough and broad enough, moveable enough and even, here enough, just, astonishingly, about to occur.
  David Whyte (*1955) US American poet, writer, Consolations. The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, Many Rivers Press, 1. January 2015

• What is poison?
  Anything beyond what we need is poison. It can be power, laziness, food, ego, ambition, vanity, fear, anger, or whatever.
  What is fear?
  Non acceptance of uncertainty. If we accept uncertainty, it becomes adventure.
  What is envy?
  No acceptance of good in the other. If we accept good, it becomes inspiration.
  What is anger?
  No acceptance of what is beyond our control. If we accept, it becomes tolerance.
  What is hate?
  Non-acceptance of people as they are. If we accept unconditionally, it becomes love.

Original splitting version

1. Great people talk about ideas.
2. Average people talk about things.
3. Small people talk about other people.

Corrected holistic version

1. Basic (body-oriented) people talk about things.
2. Relational (heart-centered) people talk about other people.
3. Mental (mind-oriented) people talk about ideas.
4. Maturing (integrating) people consider interrelatedness.
   Hence, they tend to address all three levels of existence and wholesomeness.
   Elfriede Ammann

• Blame is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Accountability by definition is a vulnerable process. It means me calling you and saying, "My feelings were really hurt about this." And talking, not blaming. Blaming is simply a way that we discharge anger. People who blame a lot seldom have the tenacity and grit to actually hold people accountable. […] Blaming is very corrosive in relationships. It's one of the reasons we miss our opportunities for empathy.
  Video animation by the illustration website gobblynne featuring Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW (*1965) US American shame, vulnerability, empathy researcher, Graduate College of Social Work, University of Houston, public speaker, author, Brené Brown on Blame, presented by RSA Animate RSA Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, London, United Kingdom, recorded August 2013, YouTube film, minute 2:08, 3:25 minutes duration, posted 3. February 2015

• Fast cognitive awareness, our real-time emotion and real-time emotional awareness, happens before a slow cognition (thought-reflex) triggers a line of reasoning, interpretation, beliefs to 'make sense' of real-time experience.
  The Vago Maps (Integral),
  Four Quarter Archetypes (Shadow-work),
  Metacognition/ Metamemory (Mindfulness) of mnemonic strategies,

• Immaturity can stimulate a lot of virtual scenarios that play out in a person's head. Doubts and insecurities can add their own list of expectations, therefore disappointments, to a plan. […]
  Emotional maturity is taking personal responsibility for the different hormone releases and inhibitions we set into motion. Fortunately, too much slow cognition thinking (doubts and fears), is easily balanced with increased fast cognition (empathic intuitive knowing), when one decides it's time to do so.
  Rodger Hyodo (*1957) Canadian miraculous brain injury healee, personal coach, author, removed Facebook comment, 20. March 2016

• We are born with inalienable emotional needs for love, safety, acceptance, freedom, attention, validation of our feelings, and physical holding. Healthy identity is based on the fulfillment of these needs […]. These needs are felt and remembered cellularly throughout our lives, though we may not always be intellectually aware of them. They were originally experienced in a survival context of dependency. We may still feel, as adults, that our very survival is based on finding someone to fulfill our basic needs.
  But early, primal needs can be fulfilled fully only in childhood (since only then were we fully dependent). In adulthood the needs can be fulfilled only flexibly or partially, since we are interdependent and our needs are no longer connected to survival.
  Our problem is not that as children our needs were unmet, but that as adults they are still unmourned! The hurt, bereft, betrayed Child is still inside of us, wanting to cry for what he missed and wanting thereby to let go of the pain and the stressful present neediness he feels in relationships. In fact, neediness itself tells us nothing about how much we need from others; it tells us how much we need to grieve the irrevocably barren past and evoke our own inner sources of nurturance. David Richo, Ph.D., M.F.T. (*1940) US American psychotherapist, teacher, workshop leader, writer, How to Be an Adult in Relationships. The Five Keys to Mindful Loving, Shambhala Publications, Boulder, Colorado, 1st edition 18. June 2002

• You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it
  the floor, because it is the key – not only to consciousness – but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity.
  And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be
  active in. It's not just parroting your parents or the thoughts of your learned teachers. It is now more than ever about
  understanding yourself so you can become yourself.
  Joss Whedon (*1964) US American screenwriter, film and television producer, director, actor, composer, comic book author, Be
  All Your Selves. Embracing Our Inner Contradictions, 181st Commencement Address, Wesleyan University, 26. May 2013

• Research suggests that over 95% of our behavior is unconsciously motivated. This statistic speaks to the importance of getting to know your shadow. The existence of these archetypes – driven by unmet needs and psy-
  chic wounds from childhood – are the causes of this unconscious behavior. [...].
  Our mission is to strip away everything we’re not. Jung called the process of realizing this unique human individuation. You separate yourself or individuate from the archetypes and behavioral patterns of your culture and society to discover what you are – your Authentic Self. [...].
  Self-liberation, then, is the goal of psychological work and it's why "know thyself" was an essential dictum in Ancient Greece. It brings us to personal freedom. It liberates us to our unconscious motivations and habits of the past. And
  it is everyone's birthright.

Basic Human Needs Continuum by Clayton Alderfer (1940-2015) US American psychologist

• Four key takeaways based on Maslow's need theory
  1. We are all more alike than we are different. We truly are part of a human family.
  2. Most of us are feeling more insecure, unloved, and unworthy than we admit to ourselves or others.
     And these unmet needs fuel our unconscious behavior.
  3. True positive mental health, or mature adulthood]], is reached when we resolve these hidden tensions within ourselves.
     Only then can we access our innate potential as mature adults.
  4. Focus on your overall life direction.
     Are you moving in the direction of growth (and feeling greater satisfaction)?
     Or are you regressing in an attempt to meet your basic needs and feeling frustration?

• To make mistakes is human;
  to stumble is commonplace;
  to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.
  William Arthur Ward (1921-994) US American writer, cited in: Goodreads Quotable Quote

• The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,
  while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
  Statement by Otto Ludwig (1813-1865) German social critic, dramatist, novelist, cited in: J. D. Salinger (1919-2010) US American author, novel The Catcher in the Rye, chapter 24, Little, Brown and Company, 1951

• Real maturity is the ability to imagine the humanity of every person as fully as you believe in your own humanity. Tobias Wolff (*1945) US American educator, short story writer, memoirist, novelist, cited in: Maturity Quotes and Quotations, presented by Famous Quotes & Authors

• Freedom is thus not the opposite to determinism. Freedom is the individual's capacity to know that he is the determined one, to pause between stimulus and response and thus to throw his weight, however slight it may be,
  on the side of one particular response among several possible ones. […]
  Out of this capacity to experience a "gap" between self and world, between stimulus and response, man has deve-
  loped his capacity to use symbols, to reason, and to speak in language. These are the unique ways in which mind
  expresses itself. […]
  Indeed I would define mental health as the capacity to be aware of the gap between stimulus and response,
  together with the capacity to use this gap constructively. Article by Dr. Rollo May may-rollo (1909-1994) US American existential psychologist, Freedom and Responsibility Re-Examined, S. 95-110, quote on page 103, Bureau of Publications,
  Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, published in the book Esther Lloyd-Jones, editor, Esther M. Westervelt, editor,
  Behavioral Science and Guidance. Proposals and Perspectives, 1. Januar 1962

• Personality has three main parts:
  1. the receiving portion (receptors) that looks out on stimuli (attention and appreciation are its great functions);
  2. a responding side (effectors) that looks toward behavior or response;
  3. and that which lies between stimulus and response whose function is to correlate and adjust behavior to stimulus. This third region is where our real personal values lie. This is where we grow most.

• Youth condemns; maturity condones.
  Amy Lowell (1874-1925) US American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts, Pulitzer Prize laureate for poetry, 1926, Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, S. 60, Ardent Media, 1931; cited in: AZ Quotes

• Maturity implies otherness. [...] The art of living is the art of living with.
  Julius Gordon, US American rabbi, Growing Up Jewishly, CCAR, 1952