Merle Shain Quotes & Sayings

There are really only two ways to approach life - as victim or as gallant fighter - and you must decide if you want to act or react, deal your own cards or play with a stacked deck. And if you don't decide which way to play with life, it always plays with you. — Merle Shain

Our times are obsessed with finding fulfillment, so there are times when some people try too hard, and there are people who want to have the newest feelings just as there are those who want to have the latest model car. You can't play at love any more than you can be proud of your humility, or add water to your perfume and have it smell the same, but men and women both have been known to try. — Merle Shain

I overheard a young man once saying to his wife, "I can't control you. That's the problem and it's been the problem ever since day one!" And then I heard her answer him and heard her terrible voice. "No!" she said. "The problem isn't that you can't control me, the problem is that you're trying to. Why don't you stop worrying about controlling me and start worrying about controlling yourself? — Merle Shain

Anger is a passion, so it makes people feel alive and makes them feel they matter and are in charge of their lives. So people often need to renew their anger a long time after the cause of it has died, because it is a protection against helplessness and emptiness just like howling in the night. And it makes them feel less vulnerable for a little while. — Merle Shain

There are many pages in the book, many kinds of lives we each can live, many ways to be rich, and even more to be poor. — Merle Shain

Our strength is in our dreams, and those who do not dare to dream damn themselves. — Merle Shain

But who would rush at a benighted man, and give him two black eyes for being blind? — Merle Shain

Until you divest yourself of the notion that you are a collection of needs, an empty vessel that someone else must fill up, there will be no safe place to harbor yourself, no safe shore to reach. As long as you think mostly of getting, you will have nothing real to give. — Merle Shain

We are all persons courtesy of someone else, and since we need others to perceive us in order to experience ourselves, it is very hard to like yourself when those nearest you seem to doubt your worth. And when those around you don't see you as you want to see yourself, it is only too easy to lose the way and start auditioning instead for them. — Merle Shain

Feelings take you into uncharted territory from time to time it's true, but you almost always benefit from the journey one way or the other. We tend to think of the rational as a higher order, but it is the emotional that marks our lives. — Merle Shain

It takes great generosity to accept generosity. — Merle Shain

The day you spend hoping, the day you spend waiting, the day you spend in despair, is a day in your life as much as the tomorrow you hope for, but which may never come, so betting today on tomorrow is always a bad bet. — Merle Shain

Love is short, forgetting is long, and understanding longer still. — Merle Shain

One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you, and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless. — Merle Shain

The act is unjustifiable that either begs for a blessing, or, having succeeded gives no thanksgiving. — Merle Shain

You can tell a lot about what a man lacks by watching what he is cynical about, and many of us are cynical about love. — Merle Shain

The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that no one is cheated in this world, unless it's by himself. — Merle Shain

Power breeds resentment and withers the slow-growing plant that is trust, and people who use it to capture others not only fail to make friends but often end up captives themselves. And perhaps what is sadder still is that when you control other people you take away all that there might be in a real encounter with them and replace it with your fears. And while you might get gratitude for a while, or guilt and tears, you won't get what they had to offer if you'd let them give you what was really in their hearts. — Merle Shain

There are problems connected with infidelity and problems connected with being faithful at any cost, and I am for letting those concerned choose the problems they'd prefer. There need not be one rule for all. Infidelity is enlarging and fragmenting and very very dangerous, but it has been known to retrieve people as well as marriages, so it can't be only bad. — Merle Shain

The romantic myth is so strong that it survives the wear and tear of marriage by simply detaching from it and floating up on ahead, and women who are rather fond of the men they married, as well as ones who are not, go through life with a bag packed for the day when the shining knight on a white charger arrives, just in case he does. — Merle Shain

Some men are more perfect than others. — Merle Shain

Friends are people who help you be more yourself, more the person you are intended to be. — Merle Shain

The conflict between what one is and who one is expected to be touches all of us. And sometimes, rather than reach for what one could be, we choose the comfort of the failed role, preferring to be the victim of circumstance, the person who didn't have a chance. — Merle Shain

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all. — Merle Shain

Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all ... — Merle Shain

The people in your life are like the pillars on your porch.
Sometimes they hold you up, and sometimes they lean on you.
Sometimes it's enough to know they are standing by. — Merle Shain

It can be much harder to be on the receiving end of a transaction than to be the one who gets to give. In fact, being given to can mean being taken from. There is a very strong connection between pride and giving, and those who do the giving get to feel that they are worthy, while those who are given to often feel that they are not. — Merle Shain

We marry to grow up, to escape our parents and to inherit our share of the world, not knowing who we are and who we will become, so it is left to marriage to make it clear which ones of us are growing in the same directions and which are ships meant to have passed in the night. — Merle Shain

The best kind of men have a certainty in themselves that isn't done in when countered by a certainty in their women, and they are much adored. — Merle Shain

It has been said that a lot of women of our generation "grew up to be the men they always wanted to marry — Merle Shain

Perhaps the old view of 'Me breadwinner, you hausfrau' worked for our grandparents, when people obligingly popped off before boring each other to death, but it won't work any longer because we are living too long and divorce is needed today to do what death acomplished more economically before. — Merle Shain

I'm not sure there can be loving without commitment, although commitment takes all kinds of forms, and there can be commitment for the moment as well as commitment for all time. The kind that is essential for loving marriages - and love affairs, as well - is a commitment to preserving the essential quality of your partner's soul, adding to them as a person rather than taking away. — Merle Shain

Whether the melon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the melon, it's the melon that suffers." And so it would appear to me — Merle Shain

The roots of love sink down and deep and strike out far, and they are arteries that feed our lives, so we must see that they get the water and sun they need so they can nourish us. And when you put something good into the world, something good comes back to you. — Merle Shain

Most women would rather have someone whisper their name at optimum moments than rocket with contractions to the moon. — Merle Shain

The dream of romantic love is taken more seriously in North America than it is anywhere else in the world, which is why we believe in fidelity and why we believe in infidelity as well. It is also, of course, what makes our divorce rate as high as it is. Falling in love at first sight and instant gratification are part of the world in which we live, so there are people who believe adamantly in fidelity. They just don't believe in it for long. — Merle Shain

Compassion is the thing that leads you gently back to yourself. — Merle Shain

Friends are like windows through which you see out into the world and back into yourself. If you don't have friends you see much less than you otherwise might. — Merle Shain

Girls gave sex to get love and boys gave love to get sex and conning girls was the favorite indoor sport. — Merle Shain

Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life. — Merle Shain

Sex deepens love and love deepens sex, so physical intimacy transforms everything and playing with it is playing with fire. — Merle Shain

If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained. — Merle Shain

The answer doesn't lie in learning how to protect ourselves from life-it lies in learning how to become strong enough to let a bit more of it in. — Merle Shain

Marriage is supposed to do everything, like Duz, which is more than half its problem. It is said to save us, define us, give us purpose, keep us from loneliness, and incidentally balance our diet and wash our socks, and when it doesn't, we get divorced. — Merle Shain

Life is like fording a river, stepping from one slippery stone to another, and you must rejoice every time you don't lose your balance, and learn to laugh at all the times you do. — Merle Shain

One can't run in a park without a dog or make angels in the snow without a child and there are things one can't do without a lover, so the loss of the lover is like an amputation and the patient goes into shock. — Merle Shain

You have to be very careful when you give to others that you don't tell them how great you are rather than how much you value them. — Merle Shain

It takes a lot of mulch, love does, to create a froth. — Merle Shain

The job of a friend is not to decide what should be done, not to run interference or pick up the slack. The job of a friend is to understand, and to supply energy and hope, and in doing so to keep those they value on their feet a little longer, so that they can fight another round and grow strong in themselves. — Merle Shain

There are no perfect men of course, but some are more perfect than others, and we can use all of those we can get. — Merle Shain

There are some decisions in life that only you can make. — Merle Shain

You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you. — Merle Shain

Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope. — Merle Shain

Each of us is a seed, a silent promise, and it is always Spring. — Merle Shain

No marriage is one person's failure any more than it's one person's success, so it works best to see a marriage that has ended simply as something that didn't work out. — Merle Shain

Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can be different from being what you'd like them to be, although often they turn out the same — Merle Shain