c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
As I accept the flowers, I release my grip on the balloons, and they bounce gently against the ceiling the way they did before—hovering, annoyed, frustrated, contained by the ceiling and disappointed by the limits of life.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
I guess all the time I spend on social media has made me believe that love exists above the surface, that it’s supposed to be light all of the time.
— Shannon  Mullen
Every grievance you hold hides a little more of the light of the world from your eyes until the darkness becomes overwhelming. Everything you forgive restores that light. So ask yourself, who is it that you are really hurting?
— Donna Goddard, Waldmeer
We draw into our life those who will help us to grow. Naturally, we tend to have mixed feelings about those very people but they are marked for us. We have forgotten that we wrote them an invitation some time ago. We look at them as if they are intruders when all along they are our guests.
— Donna Goddard, Waldmeer
The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There’s nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I’m alone amidst this desolate landscape and there’s nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It’s just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
You can turn every ugly and damaging drama into a genuine blessing by seeing it differently. No one is suffering on purpose. We learn to give up the pleasure we feel in self-righteously blaming others. Healing happens when we see things differently. The question is: do you want suffering or peace? It's that simple.
— Donna Goddard, Waldmeer
We have already said more goodbyes than are necessary. Those were goodbyes that brought about the end of partings. We taught each other that no parting is possible.
— Donna Goddard, Waldmeer
Relationships are valuable no matter who they are between.
— Donna Goddard, Waldmeer
Just as I’m about to continue walking along the shoreline, the left third of the iceberg breaks off suddenly and crashes violently, like a high-rise apartment building imploding in the heart of the city. Tears roll down my face uncontrollably as I watch the two distinct halves of the iceberg drift further and further apart from each other. It’s devastating to watch something that seems so strong and unbreakable crumble in an instant. Even more devastating is the feeling that there’s nothing I can do about it.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
I felt the wild need for any or all of these people that night. Lying there alone, I began to feel - perhaps even to know - that I did not exist apart from their love and need of me.Of this latter I felt less sure, but it seemed possible, if the equation worked both ways.Falling asleep I thought, 'Maybe this, for me, is the hand of God.
— Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts
I grew up with a front-row seat to what a happy, healthy marriage looks like. Never perfect, constantly evolving, always united.
— Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person
I guess love distorts our perception of reality, and it’s even harder to recognize the truth when it’s buried underneath layers of what we imagine relationships should be like.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
I knew I was really there, because I was the thing his arms encircled, the thing his love defined.
— Carolyn Ives Gilman, Halfway Human
Sometimes you have to fight for the past and sometimes you have to let go.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Lies don't end relationships the truth does.
— Shannon L. Alder
Introverts don’t see life as one big cocktail party. We’re content with just a few meaningful relationships.
— Jenn Granneman, The Secret Lives of Introverts: Inside Our Hidden World
I'll always choose you.Gabe Willoughby
— Hope Collier, Haven
Marriage is the beginning of love for your spouse, not the result of it.
— Shannon L. Alder
You see her for who she really is, past all the disillusions most people get tangled up in when they think they are falling in love. You accept her flaws, and you love her just as much because of them as you do in spite of them.
— Blakney Francis, Someone I Used to Know
Can I Tinder swipe for cat cuddles?
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God -- a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bam-boozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Despite all of the social advances in women’s rights and the push for gender equality in the workplace, it seems like modern men still want a woman that they can take care of at home.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
The great obstacle to communication is the tendency to constantly evaluate or moralize with others, creating in them a fear to speak or act. The great key to this communication is to learn to listen attentively with understanding to the other person’s point of view creating an atmosphere of love and approval.
— Stephen Covey
Therefore, while social phobics and patients with AvPD both avoid out of fear, the social phobic’s fears mainly arise in the clinical context of feeling, or actually being called upon to perform in ways ranging from giving a speech to urinating in a public washroom. In contrast the avoidant’s fears generally arise in the context of interpersonal relationships, the main marker I look for in making the diagnosis of AvPD.
— Martin Kantor, Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder, 2nd Edition
We became six people at a table in Hampton Court. We rose and walked together down the avenue. In the thin, the unreal twilight, fitfully like the echo of voices laughing down some alley, geniality returned to me and flesh. Against the gateway, against some cedar tree I saw blaze bright, Neville, Jinny, Rhoda, Louis, Susan and myself, our life, our identity. Still King William seemed an unreal monarch and his crown mere tinsel. But we – against the brick, against the branches, we six, out of how many million millions, for one moment out of what measureless abundance of past time and time to come, burnt there triumphant. The moment was all; the moment was enough.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
All of us are interested in things outside of our stewardships, and we should be, but the most important way to do anything about them is to magnify our own stewardships. When you focus on your own responsibility, you become relatively unconcerned with other peoples stewardships...The highest form of influence is to be a model, not a critic; a light, not a judge.
— Stephen R. Covey
It’s not about describing someone as that’s typically an attempt to make whatever they are comfortable for whoever we are. Instead, we may wish to skip the agenda of the description and embrace the wonder of the person.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
If you closely scrutinize relationships everywhere that struggle, in most cases, it is due to lack of self-awareness of one or both parties...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
Or maybe it was already too late; you only get one first love. She was mine, but I had not been hers. She was only going to look for some echo of it, and if I had made the right noises, that echo might have been me for a while.
— Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy
Very few people have ever experienced the feeling of being completely understood. When they experience it, it can become one of the richest feelings they have ever had.
— Stephen Covey
How can any of us even know what to believe anymore? Our culture’s full of so much phoniness and deception. Companies advertise products to make us believe that we will be more beautiful, more healthy, or live longer by consuming their products. We are seduced by lovers who feed their porn addictions when we’re asleep. We’re taught to believe that if we work hard and take risks, that we can achieve our dreams, yet youth unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades. Fairytales tell us that true love exists, but half of all marriages end in divorce.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
She can’t worry. She can’t ‘fix.’ She can’t love.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Perhaps love in the digital age is more like Netflix binge-watching: we enjoy bursts of fantasy, and then move on to something else when it’s done. Like browsing for a new series on Netflix, if the relationship doesn’t fit perfectly, you can trade it in for something new with the click of a button or a swipe on your phone.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
It is unpleasant and disturbing to be rejected. It is deeply satisfying to be accepted.
— Stephen Covey
Family is the most important thing in this life.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
We’re lost in each other, in the heart of Toronto, slow dancing to nothing but the beat of my heart and the sound of her breath on my neck. I know the subway trains are trembling beneath my feet and that we’re amidst the constant buzz of city life, yet I hear nothing but my heart beating and feel nothing but her breath on my neck.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Maybe love’s more than the daily comforts: more than morning coffees and flowers and notes in my lunch bag and holding hands while watching the stars. It’s about never giving up, believing in each other, and supporting each other through the good and the bad.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Can you revive wilted tulips?
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Of course her dumb Lab’s going to do whatever it takes to retrieve the ball. What he craves more than freedom is companionship.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
Sometimes our heroes let us down.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
There are all these relationships that are like cookie cutter shapes; identical and repetitive. Then there are all these relationships that aren't even relationships! Just facades for show and tell. But every once and a while, you'll see this bird breaking out of this cage and it's so weird and it's so obscure and you've hardly ever seen it before so you don't even know at first if you should name it Ugly or Beautiful! Relationships, stories of love, that just shatter the walls around the mind. They made it. They broke through. Like Ugly-Beautiful birds bursting forth from rusty cages! And then suddenly you stop and you think to yourself, "Maybe love really is real.
— C. JoyBell C.
Great relationships create great characters. Make them feel real. Alive. Tangible and unforgettable. Bad relationships kill them. Bury them. Make you wish they hadn't wasted your precious time.
— Luke  Taylor
It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
If you fear that defending your boundaries is being controlling, don't worry. There is a difference between being controlling and having boundaries. Controlling people is about telling them what to do. Setting boundaries is about saying what you do or do not want to happen to you.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
To carefully listen is a powerful way of saying to another that we value that person. When we take the time to understand we communicate that we care, we want to understand, we respect their expression, we give dignity and an individual sense of worth. Communication lies more in feeling than in words.
— Stephen Covey
Its better to "stay single" than being "single again
— Sharfaraz Ahmed
In her attempt to make me a good man, I made her a bad woman.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
Lie with me Lie to me not! 
— Lukhman Pambra
Defensive devaluation is a protective device that makes love bad, trust unimportant and people "no darn good any way". People who have been deeply hurt in their relationships will often devalue love so it doesn't hurt so much. And they often become resigned to never loving again.
— Henry Cloud, Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't
If we're highly empathetic and emotionally sensitive we're at greater risk of becoming involved with a manipulator.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Beware of relationships that substitute intensity for emotional intimacy.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Selfishness is self-absorption, self-seeking behaviour that either disregards the rights and needs of others or tramples them deliberately in favour of personal gain.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Abuse can take many forms. It always involves a boundary violation, although every boundary violation is not necessarily abuse.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Many of us find it hard to set boundaries and defend them because we fear doing so will cause rejection or abandonment. We may avoid confrontations to make things easier. We may feel guilt if we say no or if we think we might hurt someone's feelings. We fear boundaries will keep us from being loved.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
Boundaries protect the things that are of value to you. They keep you in alignment with what you have decided you want in life. That means the key to good boundaries is knowing what you want.
— Adelyn Birch, Boundaries After a Pathological Relationship
I thought you might supply some tendernessI lackedBut out of all the things I offered you took mybreath awayand now I want it back
— Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist
When we enter into a relationship, we want to matter to our partner, to be visible and important....We want to know our efforts are noticed and appreciated. We want to know our relationship is regarded as important by our partner and will not be relegated to second or third place because of a competing person, task, or thing.
— Stan Tatkin, Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship
The lack of mindfulness often makes us carry the unnecessary possessions, stale ideologies and rotten relationships along, which unnecessarily clutter our lives and consciousness, and stagnate our growth.
— Banani Ray, Flow Yoga The Mindful Path of Action for Transforming Stress into Happiness
The mentality of a successful relationship: detached and dedicated.
— Bogdan Vaida
Women and men are lost in the same labyrinth .. on different floors.
— Bogdan Vaida
Seconds feel like centuries when I am not in your presence.
— A.H. Septimius
We met at a cross-roads in life,But we were going different directions.We were part of each other's lives,But only for a moment.The first person that you meet in lifeWon't necessarily be the one who's forever.Just look at you and me,And it's not hard to see thatThis is the moment before life goes on.We are still friends;We are still really good friends.Please tell me that you agree.But I'm not the one for you,And you just can't see yourself with me.
— Margo T. Rose, The Words
First love," said Ida with a sigh. "That's the one that kills you.
— Lang Leav, Sad Girls
Don't ever stop believing in your own transformation. It is still happening even on days you may not realize it or feel like it.
— Lalah Delia
Because sooner or later, all kinds of love - crazy love, wild love- fade into the same thing. The love becomes old and predictable -safe.
— Lang Leav, Sad Girls
What does a freelance researcher do?” “Researches things.” He winks at me and helps lift my bike onto a cobblestone walkway. “It’s not an interesting or particularly sexy job. Nobody wants to date a perpetual studier, but I bet there’s an army of guys crawling over each other to get to you.”More like crawling away. “You’re ridiculous. Who’d ever want to date me?”“Someone like you? There’d be a line at your door as soon as work got out.”“Oh, would you be in the line?” Sarcasm. Not a real question. I don’t care if he responds—heat burns my toes, ears, and everything in-between—well, maybe I care a little.Jack pauses and gazes into me. “Yeah … I’m in the line … and I’m better than all the other guys so you should really pick me. I’m funny. I’m strong, like, I could sweep you off your feet and run without breaking a sweat. I can also blow milk through my nose, but only if I’m drunk and the milk is warm.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
Women are another race. They are always changing, like the moon. You can only win by being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor. Even if you are not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I’ve never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn’t have to play a game. I've never been with anyone with whom I could be exactly who I am.
— Orson Welles, My Lunches with Orson
Something I eventually learned: Prince's top girlfriend was always in Minneapolis. When you came to Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way in. When you left Minneapolis, you were the girl on her way out. This would have been a valuable piece of information for me to keep in my own hip pocket.
— Mayte Garcia, The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince
Forgiveness can be bittersweet. It contains the sweetness of the release of a story that has caused us pain, but also the poignant reminder that even our dearest relationships change over the course of a lifetime.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
When we respond to our pain and suffering with love, understanding, and acceptance—for ourselves, as well as others— over time, we can let go of our anger, even when we’ve been hurt to the core. But that doesn’t mean we ever forget.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
We cannot simply forgive and forget, nor should we.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
I just don't have a tremendously strong belief that relationships can work. I'm really quite convinced that they don't. And if they do, it's really quite terribly brief and sporadic.
— Morrissey
To forgive, we may need to open our minds to a fuller exploration of the context in which the events occurred, and feel compassion for the circumstances and everyone involved, starting with ourselves.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Ultimately, we forgive others in order to free ourselves.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Real forgiveness in close relationships is never easy. It can’t be rushed or engineered.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Audrey, if you had the choice, would you rather be his muse or be in his arms?" "I want to be both. I know it's the exception rather than the rule, but I can't hepl what I want.
— Lang Leav, Sad Girls
We nurture our sense of connection with the larger whole, noticing that the whole is only as healthy as its smallest part.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
ANTHONY: Women don't like to be told what to do. They like to be the ones telling us what to do. You want her to do something, you're gonna have to go about it a different way
— Cambria Hebert, #Hater
My boy?he is evenbetter than books.-fiction has nothing on you.
— Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in this One
At the exact time that our society embraces shaming, blaming, judgment, and rejection, it also holds acceptance and belonging as immensely important. In other words, it's never been more impossible to 'fit in,' yet 'fitting in' has never been more important and valued
— Brené Brown
There comes a moment when we must choose how we’re going to love someone. Some forms of love leave a sweet memory once they’re gone, others leave scars. But there are forms that when stolen, destroy part of who we are—love that transforms us.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
Are you real?” Stupid. Of course he’s real.“Yes, Julie. I’m not the mystical man from your dreams.
— Caroline George, The Vestige
A relationship is the union of two psychological systems.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
When we set an intention to explore our emotional hot spots, we create a pathway to real love.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Angelina said, "Mom. I don't want you to die. That's the whole thing. You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you when you died, when you die. Mom. I wanted that.
— Elizabeth Strout, Anything Is Possible
Often in close relationships, the subject being discussed is not the subject at all.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Tolerating women is surprisingly easier than understanding them.
— Raheel Farooq
And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.... The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
You don't have to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
When we develop our ability to love in one realm, we simultaneously nourish our ability in others, as long as we remain open to the flow of insight and compassion.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
So often we operate from ideas of love that don’t fit our reality.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
One of the biggest problem is to notice everything,Secrets and lies kill relationships.
— Napz Cherub Pellazo
Feelings of apathy as they relate to our relationships often stem from insufficiently paying attention to those around us.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Only when we start to distinguish reality from fantasy that we can humbly, with eyes wide open, forge loving and sustainable connections with others.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
What makes awe such a powerful call to love is that it’s disruptive. It sneaks up on us. It doesn’t ask our permission to wow us; it just does. Awe can arise from a single glance, a sound, a gesture.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
One foundation of loving relationships is curiosity, keeping open to the idea that we have much to learn even about those we have been close to for decades.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
When we don’t tell those we love about what’s really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
He returned her gaze, yearning for sentimental solace; love which emanated from a familiar source, mattered little how bedevilling. They shared an intimate moment, a silent tête-à-tête, which seemed to confront doubts each harboured.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
Although much of the work we do in committed relationships we do with our partners, sometimes it’s necessary to start with ourselves.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
With our close friends, family members, and lovers, we hope to create a special world, one in which we can expect to be treated fairly, with care, tenderness, and compassion.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Be open to the possibility that there are other paths available to you in relating to yourself and to another.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
You are too sensitive", says the emotionally immature ignorant without empathy.
— Robin Sacredfire
Without equanimity, we might give love to others only in an effort to bridge the inevitable and healthy space that always exists between two people.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Whether we fear the existence of boundaries with others or crave more of them, there’s no denying that individuation and separation are inevitable parts of loving relationships that become the site of tension.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
We have to know ourselves to know where we end and another person begins, and we have to develop the skills to navigate the space between us. Or else we will seek wholeness through false means that honor neither us nor those we love.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
How we traverse the space between us when conflict arises has a profound effect on the health and longevity of our relationships.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
A particularly difficult line to navigate is the one between fear and love, especially for parents, who want more than anything to protect their children from suffering.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
The paradigm for our relationships is formed from our earliest experiences and is actually hardwired into our neurological and emotional network.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Letting go of the belief that we’re powerless to help relieve our own suffering enhances our ability not only to heal but also to genuinely love and receive the love of others.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
The key in letting go is practice. Each time we let go, we disentangle ourselves from our expectations and begin to experience things as they are.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Mindfulness won’t ensure you’ll win an argument with your sister. Mindfulness won’t enable you to bypass your feelings of anger or hurt either. But it may help you see the conflict in a new way, one that allows you to break through old patterns.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
We learn from conflicts only when we are willing to do so.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Breaking the circle”My eyes darken when I see my new lover. Fresh prey.My body doesn’t really react in a sexual way.It’s the devil inside me that celebrates next conquest.We exchange meaningless sweet words.His hungry gaze penetrates my breasts and ass.Another drink and laughter.And then another one.Sometimes I get very drunk or high.And then I don’t feel him between my legs.I don’t see his sweating face.I don’t hear his moans and questions if I came.I can’t stay sober when I cheat on you.I’m such a coward that I can’t even face this inner monster.It consumes me, it takes away my dignity. It makes me do horrible things.It hurts you, the only one who ever loved me.Who knows what I really am.No. It’s not the monster. It’s me. I am the whore.I dig my nails into your soft flesh until it bleeds.I am the one pushing you away, feasting on your kindness. I blame those hard punches of my past for my infidelity. Those cruel hands. Those hateful words. I try not to, I really do. I try to be a better person.But how can I if I am just nobody?You know why I leave. Yet you stay. You’re there when I’m back.With your sorrow and cry and resentment and wrath.Why?If I’m broken because of my pain what’s your excuse?Why do you keep letting me treat you like a stray dog?Don’t you have any respect for yourself?What the fuck is wrong with you?And just when I think I have my own slave for life you break the circle. You shut the door with a grimace of relief.You can’t look at me anymore. See, you’re finally free!My inner innocent girl is happy for you. But the monster inside kicks and laughs at me.I’m left alone.I dress up and go hunting.
— Asper Blurry, Train to the Edge of the Moon
You are theremedy of intensityi need in my life, tospin me out of themiserable monotonyof working on life'sdaily assemblylines.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
With these surface waters, through a series of delicately adjusted, interlocking relationship, the life of all parts of the sea is linked. What happens to a diatom in the upper, sunlit strata of the sea may well determine what happens to a cod lying on a ledge of some rocky canyon a hundred fathoms below, or to a bed of multicolored, gorgeously plumed seaworms carpeting an underlying shoal. or to a prawn creeping over the soft oozes of the sea floor in the balckness of mile-deep water.
— Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us
To truly love ourselves, we must challenge our beliefs that we need to be different or better.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Maybe what we really need is to change our relationship to what is, to see who we are with the strength of a generous spirit & a wise heart.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
I asked myself only when he needed my help, "How will the broken heal the wounded?
— Sanhita Baruah
I wish not to tell you how I feelI choose silence so that you leaveKiss me goodbye and set me free
— Sanhita Baruah
When people have different ideas about which of these four modes of interacting applies to a current relationship, the result can range from blank incomprehension to acute discomfort or outright hostility. Think abut a dinner guest offering to pay the host for her meal, a person barking an order to a friend, or an employee helping himself to a shrimp off the boss' plate. Misunderstandings in which one person thinks of a transaction in terms of Equality Matching and another thinks in terms of Market Pricing are even more pervasive and can be even more dangerous. They tap into very different psychologies, one of them intuitive and universal, the other rarefied and learned, and clashes between them have been common in economic history.
— Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Until we begin to question our basic assumptions about ourselves and view them as fluid, not fixed, it’s easy to repeat established patterns and, out of habit, reenact old stories that limit our ability to live and love ourselves with an open heart.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Better Associations:If you associate yourself with a change maker,Your life will by all means become better.You will wink at challenges and begin to think.In times of frustrations, you will not sink.If you miss the way to a great destination,Just look for those going to that direction.Mount the shoulders of a giant believerAnd you will become a great achiever.People around you determine your speed.They will influence the growth of your seed.People you are around will decide your strengthAnd also the figure of your success’ lengthI trust you want to become a better you.It matters, what your associates plan to do.It depends, where your companions want to go.It relies on what your friends believe and know.Quit friendships that build you nothingChoose friends who bring out of you somethingOne iron sharpens another ironGo along with great people and ride on.
— Israelmore Ayivor, Become a Better You
Living in a story of a limited self—to any degree—is not love.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness.
— Sharon Salzberg
Relationships should be like flat pack come with easy to follow instructions so that you knew which bits fitted where 
— Jenny O'Brien
Sometimes, he gets on my nerves;At other times, I burn the ladder.
— Sanhita Baruah
Relationships are messy and painful, and hard to maintain. It takes time build, but only seconds to destroy.
— Alexis Tiger
Cultivating loving kindness for ourselves is the foundation of real love for our friends and family, for new people we encounter in our daily lives, for all beings and for life itself.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
You can only feel love to the extent in which you love yourself. If you deficiently love yourself, you will never believe that another person could truly love you. If you overly love yourself, no one’s love will be good enough, and the world will seem pale and cold.
— Michael Brent Jones, Dinner Party: Part 2
Hopefully not by sad experience, you will find that some interactions most private, can be the coldest and most closed off, and some interactions seemingly common or casual can be the most intimate.
— Michael Brent Jones, Dinner Party: Part 2
When we experience inner impoverishment, love for another too easily becomes hunger: for reassurance, for acclaim, for affirmation of our worth.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Sanskrit has different words to describe love for a brother or sister, love for a teacher, love for a partner, love for one’s friends, love of nature, and so on. English has only one word, which leads to never-ending confusion.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Real Love may run on a lower voltage, but it’s also more grounded & sustainable.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
From our first breath to our last, we’re presented again and again with the opportunity to experience deep, lasting, and trans-formative connection with other beings: to love them and be loved by them; to show them our true natures and to recognize theirs.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
Throughout the empire, it was whispered that although the husband waded through mud, the wife walked upon water. She, it was said, was graced with a gentle touch which tamed the most vicious of men.
— A.H. Septimius, Crowns Of Amara: The Return Of The Oracle
When we constantly hear that we should be smarter, better connected, more productive, wealthier—it takes real courage to claim the time and space to follow the currents of our talents, our aspirations, and our hearts, which may lead in a very different direction.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection
The sun still lives his silent vows to the moon, by bowing to kiss her feet whenever she walks in the room.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
You don't have to live happily ever after with every single person in your life in order to live happily ever after. Some unfortunate endings are necessary.
— Joyce Rachelle
If it comes, let it come. If it goes, it's ok, let it go. Let things come and go. Don't let anything disturb your peace. Stay calm and carry on.
— Germany Kent
If it comes, let it come. If it goes, it's ok, let it go. Let things come and go. Stay calm, don't let anything disturb your peace, and carry on.
— Germany Kent
You play me with your jazz & leave me with the blues.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
Love is not the answer, peace is. Throughout my whole life I have experienced and seen others use love as a reason to treat people with unkindness by being controlling, jealous, shouting in anger, and projecting guilt and shame. If you love someone but there is not peace in your heart when you think of that person then your work is not done. Do not stop at love, continue all the way towards the freedom of inner peace. Love starts when peace begins. Without peace love is simply a mask for our insecurity, judgment, and egoic attachments.
— Alaric Hutchinson
Listen, Google,’ I will say, ‘both John and Paul are courting me. I like both of them, but in a different way, and it’s so hard to make up my mind. Given everything you know, what do you advise me to do?’And Google will answer: ‘Well, I know you from the day you were born. I have read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favourite films, your DNA and the entire history of your heart. I have exact data about each date you went on, and if you want, I can show you second-by-second graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels whenever you went on a date with John or Paul. If necessary, I can even provide you with accurate mathematical ranking of every sexual encounter you had with either of them. And naturally enough, I know them as well as I know you. Based on all this information, on my superb algorithms, and on decades’ worth of statistics about millions of relationships – I advise you to go with John, with an 87 per cent probability of being more satisfied with him in the long run.Indeed, I know you so well that I also know you don’t like this answer. Paul is much more handsome than John, and because you give external appearances too much weight, you secretly wanted me to say “Paul”. Looks matter, of course; but not as much as you think. Your biochemical algorithms – which evolved tens of thousands of years ago in the African savannah – give looks a weight of 35 per cent in their overall rating of potential mates. My algorithms – which are based on the most up-to-date studies and statistics – say that looks have only a 14 per cent impact on the long-term success of romantic relationships. So, even though I took Paul’s looks into account, I still tell you that you would be better off with John.
— Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Sometimes we find the sweetest solidarity in the midst of solitude.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
She was the kind of person who never gave you enough time to miss her.
— Zadie Smith, On Beauty
... you might go to great lengths to avoid disappointing the people in your life, as I did for many years in relationships. The problem with this approach, however, is that it sets an impossible standard. Disappointment is inevitable in all relationships. It is impossible for two people to have the exact same feelings and desires all of the time. Inevitably, someone will want something, and the other person will not. A natural response to not getting something that we want is disappointment.As long as we avoid disappointing others at any cost to our ourselves, we will never feel truly safe and connected in our relationships. We will always have that nagging fear that if we were to disappoint them, they would be gone. This is a fine razor's edge to walk along. It can be incredibly freeing and relaxing to acknowledge that you will disappoint people in your life, and that they will disappoint you.
— Aziz Gazipura, The Solution To Social Anxiety: Break Free From The Shyness That Holds You Back
Love starts when peace begins.
— Alaric Hutchinson, Living Peace
I, the infirm, find myself caring for the sorrows and fears of the well.
— Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death
Walking through suffering is a work that is bound by limitation. Often it isn't that the afflicted are unwilling to let others in. It is just that there comes a certain point in a person's suffering where there is no apparent port of entry.
— Russ Ramsey, Struck: One Christian's Reflections on Encountering Death
All women are lifelong members of the Secret Service...So, if you must lie, better make sure you cover your tracks because there is no such thing as a 'dumb blonde'...
— Virginia Alison
Discover a deep, healthy love for yourself....Relationships are meant to complement your life not complete it. If you're unable to bring a healthy sense of self-love into them you will always be seeking validation and end up disappointed by your expectations of others.
— Nanette Mathews
If you have to chase, beg, or plot for love....It will run away at the next "best" offer.
— Nanette Mathews
You can't rock the boat & act like you were just trying to put a baby to sleep.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
Ah, Chantal... Now I think I know how it feels to fly on a trapeze.
— Madeleine Brent, Stranger at Wildings
Or perhaps it's the wickedness in him that she can't resist. There are such women.
— Madeleine Brent, Stranger at Wildings
Love is Future End that you live in you in present to forgot something opposite of your expectations.
— Yaganesh Derasari
Relation is when each have Same words to speak, Conversation will be Awesome.
— Yaganesh Derasari
It reveals how well you value someone - the way you handle their belongings.
— Joyce Rachelle
I want to wake Chrissie and tell her this as if it's a warning: Don't push too hard; your last chance to see a person the way you wanted them to be may come at any moment. One minute you have a parent, or a friend, or a lover, something solid, and physics tells you their resistance will always be there to meet you as you press yourself into relief against them. Then all of a sudden your mother is a fading outline in a thunderstorm, wet and weak and so far out of reach; or your lover who may also be your best and only friend is pulled so quickly into someone else's life that you don't even realize he's left yours until you're getting a save-the-date card; or your father is somewhere at the end of the world and even if you had a number for him, you'd feel wrong calling to tell him to quit collecting stuff when it's painfully clear you have nothing to offer to replace it. But I don't wake Chrissie because she's sleeping like a baby, and anyway, she isn't a baby and she doesn't need me to tell her what it is to watch somebody let you down by being human in the saddest and neediest ways, what it is to push at something that has long since given way.
— Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
You're either living on purpose or living accidentally, so live ON purpose WITH purpose!
— Ken Donaldson, Marry YourSelf First! Companion Workbook
Everyone endeavours to eliminate through the other individual his own weaknesses, defects, and deviations from the type, lest they be perpetuated or even grow into complete abnormalities in the child which will be produced.
— Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy
we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds.
— Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy
The bait we set, never truly entraps the love, but lust.
— Sameer  Khan
When she bites my lips,I see stars dancing right next to the sun.
— J.A. ANUM
Do you see how the sky holds the sun?In a powerful but effortless way that shows off her beauty and strength?That's how a King holds his Queen.
— J.A. ANUM
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relationship with their significant other, just because they do not want to go through the trouble of breaking up, because it's safe, because other people expect it of them, because there is a fear of being alone... and in the process of doing this, they miss out on the life that is meant for them. Our lives must not be lived to be safe, to be out of trouble, to meet the expectations of others, and to avoid fear. On the contrary, our lives must be lived with courage, which can only be present if there is fear; our lives must be lived for what we know in our hearts is for us, not for what other people believe is for us; our lives must be lived even when it is not safe and even when things are troublesome. To die in full knowledge that you have pleased everyone safely, or to die in full knowledge that you seized what you knew was meant for you -- which way do you choose to die? Because that is the way you must choose to live!
— C. JoyBell C.
You gave me a soul touch. A touch beyond physical. The most powerful of touch. I thought it was about you but I was wrong it was about me. In me. It took me a lifetime to realize it was me, not you. Thank you for showing me my soul.
— Renae A. Sauter
Relationships are at the heart of your wellbeing and happiness. Nurture them and they will nurture you.
— Mensah Oteh
When people talk about destiny, they tend to forget that it isn’t deprived from free will, free will to both accept it or destroy it. If you were meant to find love and then hurt the person that loves you back, you’ve just exercised your free will against destiny, and that destiny, that brought that person to you, will now use the exact same force to pull such person away from you. You cannot violate the spiritual laws of the universe. You will always pay a heavy price for being ignorant about this fact. You have the free will to do whatever you wish in the paradise of life, but only as long as you don’t violate the sacred rules, when eating the fruit of selfishness, the tree of good and evil. That need to explore discernment will cost you your happiness, and expel you from the paradise destined to you.
— Robin Sacredfire
Your relationship with others is your relationship to yourself mirrored back to you.
— Renae A. Sauter, An Empowered Life: Mind/Body/Spirit Empowerment
Your heart will always open again if you let it. 
— Renae A. Sauter, An Empowered Life: Mind/Body/Spirit Empowerment
Loneliness doesn't come from missing someone it comes from being disconnected with yourself.
— Renae A. Sauter, An Empowered Life: Mind/Body/Spirit Empowerment
Women think they can act like evil monsters from hell and be loved like a princess. It's as if the dragon and the witch was in them and not in the world.
— Robin Sacredfire
The relationship was perfect, but I hated everything about the person I became.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
There’s a universalunderstanding betweenmen of the silent sorrowa man endures whenhe loses a woman heloves
— Phil Volatile, Crushed Black Velvet
and tonight we held each other, one last time,like a dance to aslow songon an empty floor, underneath a singledisco ballin front of no oneat all
— Phil Volatile, Crushed Black Velvet
Quit trying to change others. You haven’t done such a great job on yourself – yet.
— Mensah Oteh
Two kinds ofpeople will love you:those who confessit, and those whoshow you, likecards on a table,because love isa gamble
— Phil Volatile, Crushed Black Velvet
It is still because of our self-image that we tend to forget answers that may jeopardize our future at crucial moments, or to communicate words that offend who we love the most when we believe we don’t deserve the love of another person.
— Robin Sacredfire
AdiosHer pretty picturelying on theground was likethe topplingof somefascistregimeAnd burningthe photograph,was thecelebration
— Phil Volatile, Crushed Black Velvet
When relationships lose their pitch through lack of interest and become stale or unbearable through enduring stealthy backbiting, the emotional house of cards is under attack. A painstaking reshuffle, however, may brand a new choice of life and create energy for positive thinking, whereas remaining bogged down in dispiriting situations and staying clogged up with immaterial hassle may only spawn forlorn deadlocks.. ("Mes cliques et mes claques")
— Erik Pevernagie
Ultimately, a woman’s nature loves the desire to be desired, a passionate and uncontrollable desire. Sometimes it comes with a sacrifice or greater investment than usual.
— John Shelton Jones, Awakening Kings and Princes Volume I: Sacred Knowledge to Nourish the Mentality, Support Spiritual Growth, Learning the Light, and Progressing to Become a Master Lover While Embracing Desire
be waryof the boys whoonly ever tellhalf-thruthsbecause theywill only ever be half in lovewith you-slay those dragons
— Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in this One