quotations about relationships
A relationship isn't something that has to be created in a day or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. It's something that'll always be just a little flawed.
NORA ROBERTS
Summer Desserts
The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
HARRIET LERNER
Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up
Thus both man and woman are dehumanized in the traditional conception and their relationships are made immoral. They live in intimacy without genuine love and care. Their best relationships are made purely utilitarian; woman lives in them for security and man for selfish needs. The relationships are not viewed as intrinsically valuable, whereas it is these relationships which, if not so viewed, nurture the best sentiments of human beings and enhance their autonomy and worth.
ROOP REKHA VERMA
"Femininity, Equality, and Personhood", Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities
The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself?
HERBERT SPENCER
An Autobiography
It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.
MARTIN AMIS
Time's Arrow
No matter how successful a relationship may be, both sexually and emotionally, the lack of money can hamper and undermine, little by little, even the greatest passion.
LAURA ESQUIVEL
Swift as Desire
There are moments in relationship when you didn't speak, you didn't have to; but you talked a lot.
AMAN JASSAL
Rainbow: The Shades of Love
It's important not to lose who you are in a relationship just because it's nice to cuddle with somebody.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Seventeen Magazine, May 2007
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
Substance in a relationship requires a true self.
R. A. FELLER
Poems & Scraps for Healing & Growth
The more you move in rhythm with someone, the closer you become with that person.
GEORGE LEONARD
The Silent Pulse
There is no compensation for the woman who feels that the chief relation of her life has been no more than a mistake. She has lost her crown. The deepest secret of human blessedness has half whispered itself to her, and then forever passed her by.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
We have all heard that the best relationships are composed of two whole and complete individuals coming together as one. It's a lovely theory, but I don't know anyone whole and available to date, do you? If we waited until we were healed before we had a relationship, there would be no hope for any of us. I think the best relationships are made up of two people willing to do whatever it takes within that relationship to heal. Then at least we stand a chance.
CYNTHIA MORGAN
You're Already Hypnotized: A Guide to Waking Up
We die to each other daily.
What we know of other people
Is only our memory of the moments
During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.
To pretend that they and we are the same
Is a useful and convenient social convention
Which must sometimes broken. We must also remember
That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Invisible Monsters
You bring all you ever were and are to any relationship you have today.
FRED ROGERS
The World According to Mister Rogers
Unity of feelings and affections is the strongest relationship.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
When a match has equal partners, then I fear not.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
A good relationship is a contest of love.
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO
attributed, goodreads
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living