Quotes from Games People Play

“Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Beautiful friendships” are often based on the fact that the players complement each other with great economy and satisfaction, so that there is a maximum yield with a minimum effort from the games they play with each other.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Such a woman is called "Mother's FRIEND" always ready to give judicious Parental advice and living vicariously on the experience of others”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Pastimes and games are substitutes for the real living of real intimacy.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Society frowns upon candidness, except in privacy; good sense knows that it can always be abused; and the Child fears it because of the unmasking which it involves. Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is the social significance of games.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Salesman: ‘This one is better, but you can’t afford it.’ Housewife: ‘That’s the one I’ll take.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“The solitary individual can structure time in two ways: activity and fantasy.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“In short, a diamond bracelet is a much more honest instrument of courtship than a perforated stomach. She has the option of throwing the jewelry back at him, but she cannot decently walk out on the ulcer. ("Look How Hard I've Been Trying")”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“The position is, then, that at any given moment each individual in a social aggregation will exhibit a Parental, Adult or Child ego state, and that individuals can shift with varying degrees of readiness from one ego state to another.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“we shared a common interest in how the past effects people—some let it decide who they are, while others make it part of what they will do.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“As this is written, a sow bug crawls across a desk. If he is turned over on his back, one can observe the tremendous struggle he goes through to get on his feet again. During this interval he has a ‘purpose’ in his life. When he succeeds, one can almost see the look of victory on his face. Off he goes, and one can imagine him telling his tale at the next meeting of sow bugs, looked up to by the younger generation as an insect who has made it. And”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“The essential and similar feature of both procedures and rituals is that they are stereotyped. Once the first transaction has been initiated, the whole series is predictable and follows a predetermined course to a foreordained conclusion unless special conditions arise.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Cowboy: ‘Come and see the barn.’ Visitor: ‘I’ve loved barns ever since I was a little girl.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“В большинстве случаев человек проводит всю жизнь, обманывая мир, а обычно и себя самого.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Настоящий человек может быть определен следующим образом: это тот, кто действует спонтанно, но рационально и достойно и учитывает при этом интересы других людей.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Раны причиняют боль, но как приятно, когда раны залечиваются”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“ощущение независимости достигается, как мы считаем, высвобождением или пробуждением трех способностей: включённости в настоящее, спонтанности и близости”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“Как утверждают многие клиницисты, невротики обращаются к врачу не для того, чтобы
вылечиться, а чтобы понять, как стать еще лучшим невротиком. Сценарные аналитики
утверждают нечто похожее: пациент приходит не для того, чтобы вылечиться, а чтобы научиться лучше играть в свои игры.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“компания женщин, каждое утро собирающаяся по очереди в чьем-нибудь доме, чтобы выпить кофе и поиграть в "Непутевого мужа", скорее всего окажет весьма прохладный прием новой соседке, которая хочет играть во "Все замечательно".”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“На основе жизненной позиции, занимаемой человеком, нетрудно сделать вывод о том, какое у него было детство.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

“очень многие охотнее тратят деньги на выпивку, наркотики и азартные игры, чем на психиатрическую помощь, которая могла бы их спасти.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play

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Popular quotes

“There is probably no better or more reliable measure of whether a woman has spent time in ugly duckling status at some point or all throughout her life than her inability to digest a sincere compliment. Although it could be a matter of modesty, or could be attributed to shyness- although too many serious wounds are carelessly written off as "nothing but shyness"- more often a compliment is stuttered around about because it sets up an automatic and unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.

If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful her art is, or compliment anything else her soul took part in, inspired, or suffused, something in her mind says she is undeserving and you, the complimentor, are an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin with. Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged."

"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in my practice to delineate the various typologies of personality as cats and hens and ducks and swans and so forth. If warranted, I might ask my client to assume for a moment that she is a swan who does not realzie it. Assume also for a moment that she has been brought up by or is currently surrounded by ducks.

There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks and swans are swans. Sometimes to make the point I have to move to other animal metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you were raised by the mice people? But what if you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate each other's food for the most part. They each think the other smells funny. They are not interested in spending time together, and if they did, one would be constantly harassing the other.

But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?

The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is unmothered.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

“So, who's going to tell Mrs Beale she's got a month to plan a wedding feast ?"
Hell's fire. Mrs Beale was a marvelous cook. She also had what he considered an unnatural relationship with her meat cleaver. Since he'd inherited SaDiablo Hall, he had gained a finer appreciation of why his father had stayed away from anything to do with the kitchen unless cornered. The woman was downright scary at times.
The fact that she and Beale, the Hall's butler, were happily married was something he tried not to think about because it made him wonder things about Beale he'd rather not wonder.
"If we both went to Amdarh, we could just write her a note," Jaenelle said.
He looked at Jaenelle. She looked at him.
"Good idea," he said.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Dreams Made Flesh

“That’s what you taught me - we don’t have to accept destiny or Des Tiny. We can create our own future, all of us. We have the power to rule our lives - we just have to make the choice to use it.”
― Darren Shan, quote from Sons of Destiny

“The seeds of love have taken hold and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from The Rules of Attraction

“I like seals,” he said to me, as if to excuse the apparent oddness of his taking the au pair to the zoo. Hmmm.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Jinx

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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