32 Quotes by Marion Milner

I began to have an idea of my life, not as slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.

Perhaps if one really knew when one was happy one would know the things that were necessary in one’s life.

Once you assume your right to interfere in other people’s problems they become in some ways more of a worry than your own, for with your own you can at least do what you think best, but other people always show such a persistent tendency to do the wrong thing.

I used to worry about what life was for – now being alive seems sufficient reason.

It’s weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.

There seemed to be endless obstacles – it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.

Here then was a deadlock. I wanted to get the most out of life, but the more I tried to grasp, the more I felt that I was ever outside, missing things. At that time I could not understand at all that my real purpose might be to learn to have no purposes.

Let no one think it is an easy way because it is concerned with moments of happiness rather than with stern duty or high moral endeavour. For what is really easy, as I found, is to blind one’s eyes to what one really likes, to drift into accepting one’s wants ready-made from other people, and to evade the continual day to day sifting of values. And finally, let no one undertake such an experiment who is not prepared to find himself more of a fool than he thought.

I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.