Top 9 Quotes & Sayings by William C. Menninger

The Criteria of Emotional Maturity: The ability to deal constructively with reality The capacity to adapt to change A relative freedom from symptoms that are produced by tensions and anxieties The capacity to find more satisfaction in giving than receiving The capacity to relate to other people in a consistent manner with mutual satisfaction and helpfulness The capacity to sublimate, to direct one's instinctive hostile energy into creative and constructive outlets The capacity to love.

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.

In positive terms, we can state that psychological maturity entails finding greater satisfaction in giving than in receiving; having a capacity to form satisfying and permanent loyalties; being primarily a creative, contributing person; having learned to profit from experience; having a freedom from fear (anxiety) with a resulting true serenity and not a pseudo absence of tension; and accepting and making the most of unchangeable reality when it confronts one.

It is just as important, perhaps more important, for the teacher to have the benefit of personal counseling when he needs it as it is for the student.

It is difficult to give children a sense of security unless you have it yourself. If you have it, they catch it from you.

A fellow must know where he wants to go, if he is going to get anywhere. It is so easy just to drift along. Some people go through school as if they thought they were doing their families a favor. On a job, they work along in a humdrum way, interested only in their salary check. They don't have a goal. When anyone crosses them up, they take their marbles and walk out. The people who go places and do things make the most of every situation. They are ready for the next thing that comes along on the road to their goal. They know what they want and are willing to go an extra mile.

Maturity is the capacity to love, to care about other people in the broadest sense ... and to continue to increase this capacity beyond our families to the community, to the state, to the nation, and to this shrinking little world.

The amount of satisfaction you get from life depends largely on your own ingenuity, self-sufficiency, and resourcefulness. People who wait around for life to supply their satisfaction usually find boredom instead.

Hate can only flourish where love is absent.