Excerpt: These quotes from The Road Less Traveled are worth the read. Scott Peck’s book is a deeply insightful, straightforward, no-bull kind of book.
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Introduction: Love is as Love Does
The Road Less Traveled is a deeply insightful, no bull, tell-you-what-you-need-to-hear book by Dr. Scott Peck that covers, what he believes to be, the attributes that make for a fulfilled person. Dr. Peck references his life experience as a psychiatrist and divides his advice into four parts for fulfillment: Discipline, Love, Religion, and Grace. Below, you will find 15 of my favorite quotes from The Road Less Traveled that transcend the individual parts of the book and speak to his message as a whole. Spend some time reading through these tid-bits of wisdom and reflect on how they might merge with your life’s (road less traveled) path.
Afterall, as Dr. Peck points out, it is only through the action that our desires manifest. In specific, when speaking about love, he comments, “love is as love does,” meaning that our desire to be loving does not make us loving people – it is only through our loving actions that we become loving people. Similarly, our desire to improve our life is not going to improve our life just as long as there is no action involved. Desire is static, intangible, and in our heads. Action is movement, real, and a flowering of the thoughts of our mind. Leave some thoughts in the comment section below on how you might take action from these thoughts in an attempt to live a more fulfilling life — you never know who you might inspire! Good luck!
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Why We ♥ It: Some of the best advice I (Matt here) ever got was: don’t take life advice from people who aren’t living a life you want to live and don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice. I created this poster to act as a reminder to listen more closely to our role models and less closely to our critics, trolls, and tamed-comfort-zone-hugger acquaintances. It’s also a perfect gift for the outdoor adventurer, travel enthusiast, or solo explorer (or soon to be). Available in print or digital download. 👇🏼
...Want to advertise your book, product, or service? Send inquiries to matt@movemequotes.com.
The List: 15 Quotes From The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck
“The only real security in life lies in relishing life’s insecurity.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“The attempt to avoid legitimate suffering lies at the root of all emotional illness.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution. First, you cannot achieve them without suffering, and second, insofar as you do achieve them, you are likely to be called on to serve in ways more painful to you, or at least demanding of you, than you can now imagine. Then why desire to evolve at all, you may ask. If you ask this question, perhaps you do not know enough of joy.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and you cannot be a person worthy of love when your primary goal in life is to passively be loved.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“We are incapable of loving another unless we love ourselves, just as we are incapable of teaching our children self-discipline unless we ourselves are self-disciplined. It is actually impossible to forsake our own spiritual development in favor of someone else’s. We cannot forsake self-discipline and at the same time be disciplined in our care for another. We cannot be a source of strength unless we nurture our own strength. I believe that not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but that ultimately they are indistinguishable.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. The word ‘judicious’ means requiring judgment, and judgment requires more than instinct; it requires thoughtful and often painful decision making.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“My feelings of love may be unbounded, but my capacity to be loving is limited. I therefore must choose the person on whom to focus my capacity to love, toward whom to direct my will to love. True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“When I genuinely love I am extending myself, and when I am extending myself I am growing. The more I love, the longer I love, the larger I become. Genuine love is self-replenishing. The more I nurture the spiritual growth of others, the more my own spiritual growth is nurtured. I am a totally selfish human being. I never do something for somebody else but that I do it for myself. And as I grow through love, so grows my joy, ever more present, ever more constant.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“Everyone in our culture desires to some extent to be loving, yet many are not in fact loving. I therefore conclude that the desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will – namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefore do not love despite our good intentions.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them. This statement may seem idiotically tautological or self-evident, yet it is seemingly beyond the comprehension of much of the human race. This is because we must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it. We cannot solve a problem by saying ‘It’s not my problem.’ We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say ‘ This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.’ But many, so many, seek to avoid the pain of their problems by saying to themselves: ‘This problem was caused me by other people, or by social circumstances beyond my control, and therefore it is up to other people or society to solve this problem for me. It is not really my personal problem.’ The extent to which people will go psychologically to avoid assuming responsibility for personal problems, while always sad, is sometimes almost ludicrous.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Those things that hurt, instruct.’ It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
If you enjoyed these quotes from The Road Less Traveled, you can find more quotes, resources, and info from the book below:
Book Overview: Written in a voice that is timeless in its message of understanding, The Road Less Traveled continues to help us explore the very nature of loving relationships and leads us toward a new serenity and fullness of life. It helps us learn how to distinguish dependency from love; how to become a more sensitive parent; and ultimately how to become one’s own true self. Recognizing that, as in the famous opening line of his book, “Life is difficult” and that the journey to spiritual growth is a long one, Dr. Peck never bullies his readers, but rather guides them gently through the hard and often painful process of change toward a higher level of self-understanding.
Buy from Amazon! Listen on Audible!
Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.
NEW In The Shop: Don’t Let The Tame Ones Tell You How To Live [Poster]
Why We ♥ It: Some of the best advice I (Matt here) ever got was: don’t take life advice from people who aren’t living a life you want to live and don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t go to for advice. I created this poster to act as a reminder to listen more closely to our role models and less closely to our critics, trolls, and tamed-comfort-zone-hugger acquaintances. It’s also a perfect gift for the outdoor adventurer, travel enthusiast, or solo explorer (or soon to be). Available in print or digital download. 👇🏼
...Want to advertise your book, product, or service? Send inquiries to matt@movemequotes.com.
Written by Matt Hogan
Founder of MoveMe Quotes. On a mission to help busy people do inner work—for better mental health; for healing; for personal growth. Find me on Twitter / IG / Medium. I also share daily insights here. 🌱
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