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The Road Less Traveled [Book]

    The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck

    By: Scott Peck

    From this Book:  28 Quotes

    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.

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    Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

    1. 5 Powerful Reasons Why You Should Stop Selectively Listening and Start Truly Listening to Children.
    2. 15 Quotes from The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck

      “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

        “No marriage can be judged truly successful unless husband and wife are each other’s best critics.  The same holds true for friendship.  There is a traditional concept that friendship should be a conflict-free relationship, a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ arrangement, relying solely on a mutual exchange of favors and compliments as prescribed by good manners.  Such relationships are superficial and intimacy-avoiding and do not deserve the name of friendship which is so commonly applied to them.  Mutual loving confrontation is a significant part of all successful and meaningful human relationships.  Without it the relationship is either unsuccessful or shallow.” ~ Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

          “For true listening, no matter how brief, requires tremendous effort.  You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” ~ 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

              “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

                “Dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another.  But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove.  It has its genesis in a parental failure to love and it perpetuates the failure.  It seeks to receive rather than to give.  It nourishes infantilism rather than growth.  It works to trap and constrict rather than to liberate.  Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.” ~ 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

                    “When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual.  There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship.  It is a matter of necessity rather than love.  Love is the free exercise of choice.  Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.” ~ 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 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

                          “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” ~ The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

                            “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien

                              “When it comes to love, you should be your own best friend before you try to be someone else’s one and only. You should always know yourself the best before getting to know someone else.” ~ Gigi Engle, Elite Daily

                                “Finding the right person for you is finding another soul that can jive along with yours. It doesn’t have to be a flawless love; it just has to be the right love.” ~ Gigi Engle, Elite Daily

                                  “The person who is perfect for you is far from perfect. That’s the way it should be. You can’t have a healthy, robust relationship with someone who has never tasted life.  You can’t have a lasting love without having a past that has shaped you.  You can’t handle a person who is so vacuous he came out of life unscathed. In the end, we’re all just trying to find someone as f*cked up as we are.” ~ Gigi Engle, Elite Daily

                                    “Despite what you may think, there’s nothing wrong with being messed up. The person who is messed up is actually the best person you can date.  This person’s baggage and experience is what makes him or her beautiful. He or she can still function in society despite having seen what life is about and how ugly things can get.” ~ Gigi Engle, Elite Daily