c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It takes 5 to 7 years to turn a novice into a case officer capable of working in the capitals of the world.
— Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
I wish to keep reading.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Reach out to your sacred-dreams.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
I don’t want to finish reading the book.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Passionate life is the beauty of a sacred-existence.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Reach out, with all your heart, to your divine-dreams.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
If you begin to ask questions, you will find the answers.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
We write to share our thoughts and our lives.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
We travel to new places, with every book, we read.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
We encounter great souls by reading great books.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
Until you begin to write, then you will see the beauty of writing.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The choice of daring life is a great spirit.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The sacred-souls of authors are displayed in the beauty of their books.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
The death of American soldiers is as painful as the death of civilians in Afghanistan, and what makes our world a better place is not pouring more guns and weapons in this country, but educating the uneducated population. Since, those guns can ended up in the hands of dangerous group that can take the lives of many poor people in Afghanistan and everywhere else.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
— C.G. Jung
I mean, if the relationship can't survive the long term, why on earth would it be worth my time and energy for the short term?
— Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?""Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.
— Mae West
There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.
— Shmuley Boteach
I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.
— Nick Hornby
When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.
— Tom Robbins
I suffer from girlnextdooritis where the guy is friends with you and that's it.
— Taylor Swift
Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.
— Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven
Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack in places. And I mean, yeah once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable. Once it starts to rain inside the Osprey, it will never be remodeled. But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And its only that time that we see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face to face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade, but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
— John Green, Paper Towns
When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.
— Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Dairy Queen
Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.
— Patti Callahan Henry, Between The Tides
For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
Every couple has ups and downs, every couple argues, and that’s the thing—you’re a couple, and couples can’t function without trust.
— Nicholas Sparks, At First Sight
A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up.
— Mae West
I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.
— Albert Camus, The Fall
Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a dozen times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.
— Christopher Pike, Remember Me
Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.
— Bill Maher
What we wait around a lifetime for with one person, we can find in a moment with someone else.
— Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty
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 be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
— T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.
— Brian L. Weiss, Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love
Of course it hurt that we could never love each other in a physical way. We would have been far more happy if we had. But that was like the tides, the change of seasons--something immutable, an immovable destiny we could never alter. No matter how cleverly we might shelter it, our delicate friendship wasn't going to last forever. We were bound to reach a dead end. That was painfully clear.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.
— L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
He could totally be your boyfriend," [Angel] went on with annoying persistance. "You guys could get married. I could be like a junior bridesmaid. Total could be your flower dog.""I'm only a kid!" I shrieked. "I can't get married!""You could in New Hamps
— James Patterson, Max
All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the Lord's green earth-you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent (which means, to him, that you're not going to be in his pockets)-but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he going to treat you like sports fish.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.
— Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house, that's what it means.
— Henny Youngman
Mocking a woman is like drinking too much wine. It may be fun for a short time, but the hangover is hell.
— Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker
And then the line was quite but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.
— Deepak Chopra
We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everyhwere.
— Tim McGraw
When what you hear and what you see don't match, trust your eyes.
— Dale Renton
I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.
— Amy Poehler
You Can't Lose Something You Never Had
— Kate Hudson
I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.
— Brené Brown
Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved.
— William Paul Young
I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon.
— C. JoyBell C.
Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.
— David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments
An unarticulated crush is very different from an unrequited one, because at least with an unrequited crush you know what the hell you're doing, even if the other person isn't doing it back. An unarticulated crush is harder to grapple with, because it's a crush that you haven't even admitted to yourself. The romantic forces are all there -- you want to see him, you always notice him, you treat every word from him as if it weighs more than anyone else's. But you don't know why. You don't know that you're doing it. You'd follow him to the end of the earth without ever admitting that your feet were moving.
— David Levithan, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd
Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?
— Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
Assumptions are the termites of relationships.
— Henry Winkler
You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
— Stephen R. Covey
She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
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
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.
— Shannon L. Alder
What you want most you push away from you.You want more than you care to admit.
— Tarjei Vesaas, The Bridges
And now you are and I am and we're a mystery which will never happen again.
— E.E. Cummings
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
— Alain de Botton
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
Why don’t we break up? I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Love is a commitment that will be tested in the most vulnerable areas of spirituality, a commitment that will force you to make some very difficult choices. It is a commitment that demands that you deal with your lust, your greed, your pride, your power, your desire to control, your temper, your patience, and every area of temptation that the Bible clearly talks about. It demands the quality of commitment that Jesus demonstrates in His relationship to us.
— Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love
If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.
— Toni Bentley
But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
I hope we'll be friends forever, together we'll always be. I don't think you understand just how much you mean to me. And one day when we part our ways, we'll think back to the past and think about how happy we are 'cause our friendship will always last.
— Bridget Davis
We met each other when we were young, before we knew enough about disappointment, and once we did we found we reminded each other of it.
— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
It's not your job to like me - it's mine
— Byron Katie
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
Being single doesn't mean you're weak, it means that you're strong enough to wait for the right person.
— Niall Horan
But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
— Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
..he may love you, he may miss you, but ultimately he's just not that into you.
— Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
Words were weapons, his father had taught him that, and he'd wanted to hurt Clary more than he'd ever wanted to hurt any girl. In fact, he wasn't sure he had ever wanted to hurt a girl before. Usually he just wanted them, and then he wanted them to leave him alone.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.
— Justina Chen
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.
— Oscar Wilde
Be sure it's your real self you're showing. Because it is your real self that needs to be loved.
— Daphne Rose Kingma, Finding True Love: The 4 Essential Keys to Bring You the Love of Your Life
The best you can hope for in a relationship is to findsomeone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It isfutile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someonewho is capable of significant change; that sort of personexists only in our imaginations.
— Scott Adams, God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
Share your weaknesses. Share your hard moments. Share your real side. It'll either scare away every fake person in your life or it will inspire them to finally let go of that mirage called "perfection," which will open the doors to the most important relationships you'll ever be a part of.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.
— Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
Share too much and someone can hurt you.
— Dorothy Koomson, My Best Friend's Girl
They hurt you. You hurt 'em back. Or maybe it is the other way around. Whatever. Someday you might find a way to forgive each other. But it won't be like it used to 'cause that pain never really goes away.
— Brian K. Vaughan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: No Future for You
People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.
— Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
He doesn't need to be reminded you're great.
— Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
Why does anyone stay in an unhappy relationship? Because people do. They do it all the time. And the truth is, when you’re in it, when you’re up to your neck in the everyday part of life with another human being, sometimes you don’t exactly notice how bad things really are. It’s not always as apparent as it would seem. Unhappiness, when it involves another person, can be like that line from The Sun Also Rises about going bankrupt, how it happens two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.
— Sarah Dunn
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
Funny how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie.
— Robert Bloch, Psycho
A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.
— Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters
Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.
— André Breton
What a relationship looks like on the outside isn't the same as what it's like on the inside. You can be more in love with someone in your mind than with the person you see every day.
— Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation
The real thing that keeps men and women apart, is fear. Women blame men and men blame women, but the culprit is fear, women are afraid of one thing, men are afraid of a different thing; the fears of women have to do with losing while the fears of men have to do with not being good enough for something. One is loss, the other is insecurity. Men are innately more insecure than women and women are innately more needful of companionship than men. It's good for both men and women to be able to recognize and identify these fears not only within themselves, but within each other, and then men and women will see that they really do need to help each other. It's not a game, it's not a competition, the two sexes need one another.
— C. JoyBell C.
I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I´m going to spend the rest of my life? Marrid to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?
— Suzanne Finnamore
I used to think--and given the way we ended up, maybe I still do--that all relationships need the kind of violent shove that a crush brings, just to get you started and to push you over the humps. And then, when the energy from that shove has gone and you come to something approaching a halt, you have to look around and see what you've got. It could be something completely different, it could be something roughly the same, but gentler and calmer, or it could be nothing at all.
— Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire the other is to get it. 
— Socrates
We walked to meet each other up at the time of our love and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions, and there's no altering that.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same.
— Flavia Weedn
A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark.
— Frances O'Roark Dowell, The Secret Language of Girls
Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.
— Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.
— Emily Giffin, Something Blue
Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another.Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I think when men hear that women want a commitment, they think it means commitment to a romantic relationship, but that's not it. It's a commitment to not floating around anywhere. I want a guy who is entrenched in his own life.
— Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
Daughter! Get you an honest Man for a Husband, and keep him honest. No matter whether he is rich, provided he be independent. Regard the Honour and moral Character of the Man more than all other Circumstances. Think of no other Greatness but that of the soul, no other Riches but those of the Heart. An honest, Sensible humane Man, above all the Littlenesses of Vanity, and Extravagances of Imagination, labouring to do good rather than be rich, to be usefull rather than make a show, living in a modest Simplicity clearly within his Means and free from Debts or Obligations, is really the most respectable Man in Society, makes himself and all about him the most happy.
— John  Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife
I thought he should have realized sooner that important people don't show up very often, and you should hold on to them when they do. Maybe I was smarter than he was all along, because that was something I'd always known.
— Lorraine Zago Rosenthal, Other Words for Love
I used to loathe ambivalence now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend. 
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
How was I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? It feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t know the difference.
— Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before
To us, your power comes from one simple thing: you’re a woman, and we men will doanything humanly possible to impress you so that, ultimately, we can be with you. You’re the driving force behind why we wake up every day. Men go out and get jobs and hustle to makemoney because of women. We drive fancy cars because of women. We dress nice, put on cologne, get haircuts and try to look all shiny and new for you. We do all of this because the more our game is stepped up, the more of you we get. You’re the ultimate prize to us.
— Steve Harvey, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
In the best, the friendliest and simplest relations flattery or praise is necessary, just as grease is necessary to keep wheels turning. 
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship!
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.
— André Gide
To be honest, it was pretty hard to leave. I desperately wanted to turn around, and tell him everything would be okay. That I adore him and I trust him and that I'll stand by him while he goes through this tough time. But I'm just too tired. I'm thirty years old. I'm tired of relationships that are always painful. I'm tired of hurting. I'm tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me. Again. I've been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don't have my prince. I've got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds. I don't want to fight anymore.
— Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup
I didn't know someone could love me like this," she said. "Could love me and love me and love me without...needing space."Lincoln wasn't asleep. He rolled on top of her."There's no air in space," he said.
— Rainbow Rowell, Attachments
I think of how each person in a marriage owes it to the other to find individual happiness, even in a shared life. That this is the only way to grow together, instead of apart.
— Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter
My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can i do?""The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked."That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?""love her," I replied."I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore.""Love her.""You don't understand. the feeling of love just isn't there.""Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her.""But how do you love when you don't love?" "My friend , love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?
— Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.
— Tanith Lee, Wolf Star
You get lonely, is what it is. A person's not supposed to go through life with absolutely nobody. It's not normal. The longer you go by yourself the weirder you get, and the weirder you get the longer you go by yourself. It's a loop and you gotta do something to get out of it.
— Jim Shepard
I need to figure out the secret. I need to work out how to keep things flying back to me instead of always flying away.
— Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home
Jesus waited three days to come back to life. It was perfect! If he had only waited one day, a lot of people wouldn't have even heard he died. They'd be all, "Hey Jesus, what up?" and Jesus would probably be like, "What up? I died yesterday!" and they'd be all, "Uh, you look pretty alive to me, dude..." and then Jesus would have to explain how he was resurrected, and how it was a miracle, and the dude'd be like "Uhh okay, whatever you say, bro..." And he's not gonna come back on a Saturday. Everybody's busy, doing chores, workin' the loom, trimmin' the beard, NO. He waited the perfect number of days, three. Plus it's Sunday, so everyone's in church already, and they're all in there like "Oh no, Jesus is dead", and then BAM! He bursts in the back door, runnin' up the aisle, everyone's totally psyched, and FYI, that's when he invented the high five. That's why we wait three days to call a woman, because that's how long Jesus wants us to wait.... True story.
— Barney Stinson
Annabeth realized that if six of them went on these two quests, it would leave Percy alone on the ship with Coach Hedge, which was maybe not a situation a caring girlfriend should put him in. Nor was she eager to let Percy out of her sight again—not after they’d been apart for so many months.
— Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena
Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. 
— Anthony Robbins
If there is one thing I can pass on from my humbling experiences in life, thus far, I will tell you this, the next time someone tells you "the absence of expectations is the absence of disappointment, do not listen. Have expectations. Keep them great. It'll be a very bumpy ride. You'll even get bruised, sometimes very badly. Sometimes, you'll come to an abrupt halt or even fall off your ride. But you'll grow. And if you do not grow, you do not live.
— Pandora Poikilos
What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together -- in misery, but happy to not be apart.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to power is to choose to limit oneself- to serve.
— William Paul Young, The Shack
There's never a reason to trust someone. If there's a reason, then it's not trust.
— Gerald Morris, The Quest of the Fair Unknown
Over time, any deception destroys intimacy, and without intimacy couples cannot have true and lasting love.
— Bonnie Eaker Weil, Financial Infidelity: Seven Steps to Conquering the #1 Relationship Wrecker
So that’s how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal theloss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that'ssnatched right out of our hands - even if we are left completelychanged, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue toplay out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to theend of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails offbehind. 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 candisappear, melting together in a single, overlapping figure. And aswe live our lives we discover - drawing toward us the thin threadsattached to each - what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried tobring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing themcloser, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their livesare fleeting.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
Men are jealous of every woman, even when they don’t have the slightest interest in her themselves.
— Jan Neruda, Prague Tales
I'm tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me. Again. I've been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don't have my prince. I've got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds. I don't want to fight anymore.
— Kim Gruenenfelder, A Total Waste of Makeup
I'm done. I don't need anything more out of life. I have you, and that's enough.
— Alessandra Torre
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding. 
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
To respect the dignity of a relationship also implies accepting the end when it comes. Except in my mind, except in my dreams, where the aftertaste of her still lingers.
— André Brink, Before I Forget
Be a bit of a challenge not because you're playing games but because you realize you're worth the extra effort. 
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
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
There was no one to be seen so she gave in freely to her sobs as she made her way home, pressed her arms against her stomach; the pain lodged in there like an ill-tempered f
— John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In
She was still under the spell of her infatuation. She had tried to forget him, realizing the inutility of remembering. But the thought of him was like an obsession, ever pressing itself upon her. It was not that she dwelt upon details of their acquaintance, or recalled in any special or peculiar way his personality; it was his being, his existence, which dominated her thought, fading sometimes as if it would melt into the mist of the forgotten, reviving again with an intensity which filled her with an incomprehensible longing.
— Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Nothing is stranger or more ticklish than a relationship between people who know each other only by sight, who meet and observe each other daily - no hourly - and are nevertheless compelled to keep up the pose of an indifferent stranger, neither greeting nor addressing each other, whether out of etiquette or their own whim.
— Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
Asking for help with shame 
— Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
The bank of love is never bankrupt.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Ask yourself, does this person make me feel good about myself? Do I feel safe, strong and free with this person? Those are the questions you need to ask....You have to be strong to truly be open.
— April Sinclair, I Left My Back Door Open
Roen snorted. "You two have the strangest relationship in the Dells."Archer smiled slightly. "She won't consent to make it a marriage.""I can't imagine what's stopping her. I don't suppose you've considered being less munificent with your love?""Would you marry me, Fire, if I slept in no one's bed but yours?"He knew the answer to that, but it didn't hurt to remind him. "No, and I should find my bed quite cramped.
— Kristin Cashore, Fire
I believe with all my heart that the cliches are true, that we are our own best friends and best company, and that if you're not right for yourself, it's impossible to be right for anyone.
— Rachel Machacek, The Science of Single: One Woman's Grand Experiment in Modern Dating, Creating Chemistry, and Finding Love
It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.
— Nick Hornby
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'Didn't you mean them?'At the moment.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
What is it about men that make women so lonely?
— Elliot Perlman
What marriage offers - and what fidelity is meant to protect - is the possibility of moments when what we have chosen and what we desire are the same. Such a convergence obviously cannot be continuous. No relationship can continue very long at its highest emotional pitch. But fidelity prepares us for the return of these moments, which give us the highest joy we can know; that of union, communion, atonement (in the root sense of at-one-ment)...To forsake all others does not mean - because it cannot mean - to ignore or neglect all others, to hide or be hidden from all others, or to desire or love no others. To live in marriage is a responsible way to live in sexuality, as to live in a household is a responsible way to live in the world. One cannot enact or fulfill one's love for womankind or mankind, or even for all the women or men to whom one is attracted. If one is to have the power and delight of one's sexuality, then the generality of instinct must be resolved in a responsible relationship to a particular person. Similarly, one cannot live in the world; that is, one cannot become, in the easy, generalizing sense with which the phrase is commonly used, a "world citizen." There can be no such think as a "global village." No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality.(pg.117-118, "The Body and the Earth")
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Truth is, something that I thought was perfect was taken away from me, and I never wanted perfect again. I wanted middle of the road, stuff I didn’t care about so that I couldn’t lose anything I really loved ever again.
— Cecelia Ahern, The Time of My Life
My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
There is no mystery-- that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.
— Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses
I was trying to decide if you still had free will as a wolf. If I was a terrible person for planning to drug my girlfriend and drag her back to my house to keep in the basement.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Forever
She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing.
— Sarah Dunn
Trying to fall out of love is like trying to climb a mountain. Blindfolded, on crutches, naked in a hail storm.
— Louise Caiola
I never tell my boyfriend that I'm busy when I'm not. No matter how effective they are, cheap techniques like that just don't agree with me. So it's always okay, it's always all right. In my opinion the surest way to hook a man is to be as open with him as possible.
— Banana Yoshimoto, Asleep
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It
With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. We cannot know at the outset how the relationship will affect us. Like a chemical mixture, if one of us is changed, both of us will be. Will we grow in self-actualization, or will it destroy us? The one thing we can be certain of is that if we let ourselves fully into the relationship for good or evil, we will not come out unaffected.
— Rollo May, The Courage to Create
Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.
— Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis
— Ellen Bass, The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
Solid character will reflect itself in consistent behavior, while poor character will seek to hide behind deceptive words and actions.
— Myles Munroe, Waiting and Dating
He feared me as many men fear women: because their mistresses (or their wives) understand them. They are scarcely adult, some men: they wish women to understand them, and to that end they tell them all their secrets; and then, when they are properly understood, they hate their women for understanding them.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
You don't fix a man the way you do a fault in a pipe or a leak in a roof. You take him as he is, Mary Brenna, or you don't take him at all...adjustments can't be all made on one side, darling, else the balance goes off and what's being built just falls down.
— Nora Roberts, Tears of the Moon
She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.
— Sarah Dunn
It was completely fifth garde and completely silly and I loved it, because he wasn't afraid to be silly. It was like kissing him first - I could do whatever I wanted and not have to worry what he'd think of me.
— Kelley Armstrong, The Gathering
Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously. 
— Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
So many events and moments that seemed insignificant add up. I remember how for the last Valentine´s Day, N gave flowers but no card. In restaurants, he looked off into the middle distance while my hand would creep across the table to hold his. He would always let go first. I realize I can´t remember his last spontaneous gesture of affection.
— Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce
..I find it incredible impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nicks's "Landslide," especially the lyric: "I've been afraid of changing, because I've built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don't cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox.
— Mindy Kaling
All's fair in love and war," said Ron brightly, "and this is a bit of both.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Love is something you do for someone else, not something you do for yourself.
— Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages Singles Edition
We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.
— Kimberly Novosel, Loved
[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
— Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.
— Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home