Relationships Quotes

“You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul.”
― Julie de Lespinasse

“Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.”
― Albert Einstein

“I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”
― Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle

“And now you are and I am and we're a mystery which will never happen again.”
― E.E. Cummings

“I believe in love the verb, not the noun.”
― Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“the wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“Thought I couldn't live without you
It's gonna hurt when it heals too
Even though I really love you
I'm gonna smile cause I deserve to
Quickly I'm learning to love again
All I know is I'mma be ok”
― Leona Lewis

“Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.”
― Marty McConnell

“Learn to deal with the fact that you are not a perfect person but you are a person that deserves respect and honesty.”
― Pandora Poikilos, Excuse Me, My Brains Have Stepped Out

“Because introverts are typically good listeners and, at least, have the appearance of calmness, we are attractive to emotionally needy people. Introverts, gratified that other people are initiating with them, can easily get caught in these exhausting and unsatisfying relationships.”
― Adam S. McHugh

“A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.”
― Charles Dickens

“Love without sacrifice is like theft”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“Love cannot live where there is no trust.”
― Edith Hamilton, Mythology

“I believe in the immeasurable power of love; that true love can endure any circumstance and reach across any distance.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

“It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.”
― John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog

“But why, why, why can't people just say what they mean?”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“Death is the easy part, the hard part is living and knowing you could be so much more then you’re willing to be.”
― robert m drake

“You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away.
Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the
loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's
snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completely
changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to
play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the
end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off
behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday.
Leaving behind a feeling of insurmountable emptiness...
Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost.
Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can
disappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And as
we live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threads
attached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to
bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them
closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives
are fleeting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“What you want most you push away from you.
You want more than you care to admit.”
― Tarjei Vesaas, The bridges

“The quickest way to rectify that mistake (choosing the wrong person) is by learning from that, moving on, and choosing much more wisely in the future.”
― Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same.”
― Flavia Weedn

“They lay silently. She was staring at something across the room. She was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It wouldn't work. It's the attraction of opposites,' he said.

We're not opposites.'

I don't mean just you and me. Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave.”
― James Salter

“Right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.
But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt.But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.”
― Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story