Quotes about Boundaries

My mom was very strict. She didn't let me watch anything rated R or anything with cussing.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

Between 2008 and 2010 I exhausted myself because I wanted to please everyone.

Without law in some form, and, also, without butting up against that law, we cannot move forward easily or naturally. We have to have something hard and half-good to rebel against.

Human strength is defined in asserting boundaries. God, it seems, is in the business of dissolving boundaries. So we enter into paradox—what's Three is one and what's One is three. We just can't resolve that, and so we confuse unity with uniformity.

Traveling the road of healthy religion and true contemplation will lead to calmly held boundaries, which need neither to be defended constantly nor abdicated in the name of "friendship." This road is a "narrow road that few travel upon" these days (Matt. 7:14). It is what many of us like to call "the Third Way": the tertium quid that emerges only when you hold the tension of opposites.

People who know who they are find it the easiest to know who they aren't.

Cesar Milan, the "dog whisperer," says that dogs cannot be peaceful or teachable if they have no limits set to their freedom and their emotions. They are actually happier and at rest when they live within very clear limits and boundaries, with a "calm and assertive" master. My dog, Venus, is never happier and more teachable than when I am walking her, but on her leash. Could it be the same for humans at certain stages?

Don't expect or demand from groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-congratulation. This is their nature and purpose.

Human life is about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, creating tribes, and teaching impulse control.

Many of your relationship problems are not really relationship problems. They're personal problems that spill over into relationships.

Busyness is a great enemy of relationships.