Distributing Christmas Presents – Lovis Corinth (Franz Heinrich Louis)1913. Wikioo

This Christmas and New year, as in previous years, I will publish some meaningful and relevant quotations, accompanied by some beautiful works of art, as a Christmas ‘gift’ to all my readers. I wish you all a happy and peaceful Christmas. For those who do not celebrate it, or experience this as a difficult time, I wish you a calm period of rest and relaxation.

I want to thank you all most sincerely for your support and interest this year; I am now getting between 5000 and 6000 views of my blog per month, and many kind and thoughtful messages, which let me know that you find my writing helpful.

This is heartwarming and encouraging for me. Waysofthinking.co.uk is about to enter its eighth year of existence and I hope it- and you, and I- will continue for many more years!

Thank you for following waysofthinking.co.uk. 🧚‍♀️LOVE TO YOU ALL, FROM LINDA. 🌲❤️

A Christmas Carol at Bracken Dene – 1879. Arthur Hughes. Wikimedia Commons

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

*****

“There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone.”

Winnicott

Christmas Eve, 1887 – John Everett Millais. Wikioo

“Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.”

Charles Dickens

*****

“There cannot be change without loss.”

Stephen Grosz

Christmas Morning – Carl Larsson. 1894. Wikimedia Commons

“There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.”

Erma Bombeck

*****

“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”

Donald Woods Winnicott

     

Georg Flegel (1566–1638) Kerzenstilleben (Candle still life) Wikimedia Commons

“Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.”

Charles Dickens

*****

“The fact that grief takes so long to resolve is not a sign of inadequacy, but betokens depth of soul.”

Donald Woods Winnicott

Konstantin Korovin: Moonlit Night. Winter.1913. Wikimedia Commons

“Sometimes someone isn’t ready to see the bright side. Sometimes they need to sit with the shadow first. So be a friend and sit with them. Make the darkness beautiful.”

Victoria Erickson

*****

“Love is more than simply being open to experiencing the anguish of another person’s suffering. It is the willingness to live with the helpless knowing that we can do nothing to save the other from his pain.”

Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

Street. Night before Christmas – Chernihiv Regional Art Museum (Chernihiv, Ukraine)Heorhiy Narbut. 

“…to love is to like, approve of, and support another’s real self and to encourage the other to activate, express, and nurture that real self. This investment in the other enlarges, enriches, and completes the experience of the self.”

James F. Masterson

*****

“We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.”

St Exupéry

Christmas – Jozsef Rippl Ronai. 1910. Wikioo

“Those who are nurtured best, survive best.”

Louis Cozolino

*****

“It’s the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals, the relationship that heals—my professional rosary.”

 Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner

Fritz von Uhde. Winter Landscape. Christmas Eve, 1890. Wikimedia Commons

“To be human is to be lonely. To become a person means exploring new modes of resting in our loneliness. When we are willing to accept loneliness as a normal, recurring experience of life, we can learn to integrate it more graciously.”

Irvine Yalom

*****

“No-one is useless in this world whom lightens the burden of another.”

Charles Dickens

Christmas Morning – Henry Mosler. 1916. Wikioo

“For it is in giving that we receive.”

Francis of Assisi

*****

“The self is not something that we are born with; it is something that emerges from our interactions with others.”

Daniel Stern

Ivan Fedorovich Choultsé (1874–1939) Winter morning in Engadine. Wikimedia Commons

“The task we must set ourselves is no to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity.”

Erich Fromm

*****

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white.”

Irving Berlin

© Linda Berman