Top 100 Henry Cloud Quotes
#1. Passing thoughts can sometimes indicate unconscious preoccupations that may need to be examined.
Henry Cloud
#2. To grow, we need things that we do not have and cannot provide, and we need to have a source of those things who looks favorably upon us and who does things for us for our own good.
Henry Cloud
#3. To get greater than 100% return on a growth step, give up defensiveness. Defensiveness stifles performance, and destroys relationships.
Henry Cloud
#4. Some managers are able to let go of the past better than others. Those that have the greatest difficulty abandoning things are often those unable to face reality.
Henry Cloud
#5. 1. Whose problem is this?
2. What can I do to help him experience the problem?
3. What am I doing to keep him from experiencing the problem?
Henry Cloud
#6. People who own their lives do not feel guilty when they make choices about where they are going. They take other people into consideration, but when they make choices for the wishes of others, they are choosing out of love, not guilt; to advance a good, not to avoid a bad.
Henry Cloud
#7. Dating is a place to practice how to relate to other people.
Henry Cloud
#8. Independence is not an option for us. Remember, God existed without us.
Henry Cloud
#9. No matter how much you talk to yourself, read, study, or practice, you can't develop or set boundaries apart from supportive relationships with God and others. Don't even try to start setting limits until you have entered into deep, abiding attachments with people who will love you no matter what.
Henry Cloud
#10. Be Hard on the issue, Soft on the person.
Henry Cloud
#11. Don't use all-or-nothing thinking. Take each day as its own day, and don't worry about it if you mess up one day. The most important thing you can do is just get back up on the horse.
Henry Cloud
#12. The natural response to evaluation is to feel judged. We have to mature to a place where we respond to it with gratitude, and love feedback.
Henry Cloud
#13. A runner can never see the finish line in the middle of a marathon,
Henry Cloud
#14. The point here is that grace can be available to us, but we might not be available to grace.
Henry Cloud
#15. The law of sowing and reaping is the most trustworthy law of behavior.
Henry Cloud
#16. Who a person is will ultimately determine if their brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed.
Henry Cloud
#17. Marriage is not slavery. It is based on a love relationship deeply rooted in freedom. Each partner is free from the other and therefore free to love the other. Where there is control, or perception of control, there is not love. Love only exists where there is freedom.
Henry Cloud
#18. You can't master people, but you can become a master at choosing and dealing with people.
Henry Cloud
#19. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Henry Cloud
#20. Every human being must have boundaries in order to have successful relationships or a successful performance in life.
Henry Cloud
#21. Love Our ability to give and respond to love is our greatest gift. The heart that God has fashioned in his image is the center of our being. Its abilities to open up to love and to allow love to flow outward are crucial to life.
Henry Cloud
#22. Just as homeowners set physical property lines around their land, we need to set mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries for our lives to help us distinguish what is our responsibility and what isn't.
Henry Cloud
#23. The ultimate answer, then, to the problem of pain is a person. It's God himself.
Henry Cloud
#24. As iron sharpens iron, we need confrontation and truth from others to grow. No one likes to hear negative things about him or herself. But in the long run it may be good for us.
Henry Cloud
#25. Values are sometimes worth living and dying for, and are certainly worth dating and breaking up over.
Henry Cloud
#26. I think that God will provide opportunities and people and experiences, and everything we need to date and ultimately to find the one.
Henry Cloud
#27. You have to be able to face losing some things you might want in order to be free to do the right thing.
Henry Cloud
#28. People who always want to be happy and pursue it above all else are some of the most miserable people in the world.
Henry Cloud
#29. Setting boundaries isn't an alternative to loving your child. It is a means of loving her.
Henry Cloud
#30. Instead of doing what many compliant people do when they wake up and find themselves lost, she didn't leave the relationship to find herself.
Henry Cloud
#31. When we fail to express our needs, we remain islands unto ourselves - detached, alone, arrogant, and proud. But when we expose our needs, we are able to receive the supplies and nurture necessary for survival.
Henry Cloud
#32. Avoidance of risk is the greatest risk of all.
Henry Cloud
#33. Never say to a third party something about someone that you do not plan to say to the person himself.
Henry Cloud
#34. Our kids aren't an annuity for our retirement, social system, or medical frailty.
Henry Cloud
#35. Paul says, if we choose to live by the Spirit, we will live; if we choose to follow our sinful nature, we will die (Rom. 8:13).
Henry Cloud
#36. When we refuse to be kind to someone when it would be right to do it; when we lie to each other; when we lash out in violence, we transgress, disregarding the standards and statutes of God.
Henry Cloud
#37. If your boundary training consists only of words, you are wasting your breath. But if you 'do' boundaries with your kids, they internalize the experiences, remember them, digest them, and make them part of how they see reality.
Henry Cloud
#38. It is easy to say we love others, but difficult to allow them the freedom inherent in love.
Henry Cloud
#39. Some goals are not going to fulfill you. Choose goals that you value and care about.
Henry Cloud
#40. Sometimes, we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. In other words, our fences need gates in them.
Henry Cloud
#41. You will be amazed how much can change in your life when you finally begin to let go of what you can never have. All
Henry Cloud
#42. You can always create, seek, and find a range of options to determine how you will respond to what happens, and how you will play the cards in your hand.
Henry Cloud
#43. These actions can lead to the martyr syndrome, in which people sacrifice their own desires to arouse feelings of pity or guilt in others.
Henry Cloud
#44. Appropriate boundaries don't control, attack or hurt anyone. They simply prevent your treasures from being taken at the wrong time. Saying no to adults, who are responsible for getting their own needs met, may cause some discomfort. But it doesn't cause injury.
Henry Cloud
#45. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. - Romans 12:6a, NIV
Henry Cloud
#46. If you're attracted to critical people, you may find relief in their clarity of thought and purity of vision. But you'll also find yourself guilt-ridden, compliant, and unable to make mistakes without tremendous anxiety. Irresponsibles
Henry Cloud
#47. The truth we need to achieve has many aspects. It includes the developmental needs of the real self, the grace of relationship, and the external truth of the precepts of God. And it takes time for all of these to work.
Henry Cloud
#48. What appear to be dangerous and even bad periods in some lives can actually bring them closer to the Lord, because these individuals honestly wrestle with God, as did Jacob at Jabbok, rather than fearfully comply.
Henry Cloud
#49. I'm not an expert in the sociological realities of all the pastors in the world, but I would say that there are some very, very positive things about the state of integrity in church leaders.
Henry Cloud
#50. People who forgive can - and should - also be people who confront. What is not confessed can't be forgiven.
Henry Cloud
#51. Being right can never compete with doing well.
Henry Cloud
#52. Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results.
Henry Cloud
#53. People often think the Devil tries to influence people to do "bad things." While this is true, the demonic strategy is also much deeper. He tries to tempt us to get our needs met without relationship and without humility, the way he wanted to in the beginning.
Henry Cloud
#54. Amy had a secret place deep inside where no one was ever invited.
Henry Cloud
#55. We were created for intimacy, to connect with someone with heart, soul, and mind. Intimacy occurs when we are open, vulnerable, and honest, for these qualities help us to be close to each other.
Henry Cloud
#56. Proverbs 22:3 says that "the prudent man sees the evil and hides himself." Sometimes physically removing yourself from a situation will help maintain boundaries. You can do this to replenish yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually after you have given to your limit, as Jesus often did.
Henry Cloud
#57. Many people give out of obligation and compulsion, which leads to resentment.
Henry Cloud
#58. You aren't alive if you aren't in need.
Henry Cloud
#60. Our ability to give and respond to love is our greatest gift. The heart that God has fashioned in his image is the center of our being.
Henry Cloud
#61. There's no better way to become a disintegrated character than to be your own authority.
Henry Cloud
#62. Parents often yell and nag, instead of allowing their children to reap the natural consequences of their behavior. Parenting with love and limits, with warmth and consequences, produces confident children who have a sense of control over their lives.
Henry Cloud
#63. A leader's responsibility is to cause a vision and mission to have tangible results in the real world.
Henry Cloud
#64. Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it's not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control.
Henry Cloud
#65. One of the worst things you can die with is potential.
Henry Cloud
#66. When two people are free to disagree, they are free to love. When they are not free, they live in fear, and love dies.
Henry Cloud
#67. Here is what the scientific research is finding about happiness: we are wired to experience happiness, but we keep hitting the wrong buttons in our efforts to turn our happiness on.
Henry Cloud
#68. People tend to look at dating sort of like a safari - like they're trying to land the trophy.
Henry Cloud
#69. Just as we leave the effects of our work behind in results, we leave the effects of our interactions with people in their hearts, minds, and souls.
Henry Cloud
#70. Mature, healthy people need other people; they don't isolate themselves ... Needing love isn't being immature. Rather, it gives us the energy we need to go out and slay our dragons.
Henry Cloud
#71. A good test of a relationship is how a person responds to the word 'no.' Love respects 'no,' control does not.
Henry Cloud
#72. When you cease to blame your spous eand own the problem as yours, you are then empowered to make changes to solve your problem.
Henry Cloud
#73. If you protect your children from the pain of irresponsibility, you set them up for many struggles in adulthood.
Henry Cloud
#74. You can set a boundary with your words when you are honest and when you establish a consequence for another's hurtful actions.
Henry Cloud
#75. True listening and understanding occurs only when the other person understands that you understand.
Henry Cloud
#76. It's scary to realize that the only thing holding our friends to us isn't our performance, or our lovability, or their guilt, or their obligation. The only thing that will keep them calling, spending time with us, and putting up with us is love. And that's the one thing we can't control.
Henry Cloud
#77. But until then, you might find yourself laboring much longer than you should, still trying to get someone to change, thinking that one more coaching session will do the trick - or one more bit of encouragement, or one more session of feedback or confrontation. Or worse, one more concession.
Henry Cloud
#78. When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the denouement.
Henry James
#79. The animals have desire, or appetite. But only humans have the ability not merely to desire things, but also the creative will to take responsibility for that desire and bring about the achievement of it. That creative ability resides in the nature of God, and he has passed it on to us.
Henry Cloud
#80. Leadership is not taken, it is given. People give leadership to those that they trust. They allow people that they trust to have influence over their lives.
Henry Cloud
#81. Proactive people show you what they love, what they want, what they purpose, and what they stand for. These people are very different from those who are known by what they hate, what they don't like, what they stand against, and what they will not do.
Henry Cloud
#82. Dating should be a part of your life, not your life a part of dating. There is more to life than finding a date.
Henry Cloud
#83. Character = the ability to meet the demands of reality.
Henry Cloud
#84. Unsafe people will never identify with others as fellow sinners and strugglers, because they see themselves as somehow above all of that.
Henry Cloud
#85. Dating is a give and take. If you only see it as "Taking," you are not getting it.
Henry Cloud
#86. Where there is deception there is no relationship.
Henry Cloud
#87. Pruning is strategic. It is directional and forward-looking. It is intentional toward a vision, desires, and objectives that have been clearly defined and are measurable. If you have that, you know what a rose is, and pruning will help you get one of true beauty.
Henry Cloud
#88. Encourage your child to think for himself, disagree, and talk about his feelings while accepting your authority.
Henry Cloud
#89. Happiness comes as a by-product of the "life well lived." And
Henry Cloud
#90. Good pain is pain in the service of a purpose. Bad pain is pain endured because we are resisting a needed growth step.
Henry Cloud
#91. Often people do not see options available to them other than the patterns they have always lived out.
Henry Cloud
#92. Remember that parenting is a temporary job, not an identity. Kids with parents who have a life learn both hat they aren't the center of the universe and that they can be free to pursue their own dreams.
Henry Cloud
#93. The Bible tells us clearly what our parameters are and how to protect them, but often our family, or other past relationships, confuses us about our parameters.
Henry Cloud
#94. You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem.
Henry Cloud
#95. One of the most powerful, though difficult, lessons we all need to learn on our spiritual pilgrimage is that even when bad things happen and we do not understand why, we can trust God to be present and working on our behalf.
Henry Cloud
#96. hard on the issue, soft on the person.
Henry Cloud
#97. The amount of truth a relationship can handle is proportional to the amount of perceived love that's present.
Henry Cloud
#98. When leaders lead in ways that people's brains can follow, good results follow as well.
Henry Cloud
#99. A second chance is not a repeat of the first chance. A second chance is a moving forward to something new.
Henry Cloud
#100. Closed systems run down and get more chaotic over time. Always get better by being 'open' to outside energy and templates of better ways to function.
Henry Cloud
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