Quotes & Sayings About Almost Relationships

We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness. — Nathaniel Branden

Our prayer life and rule of prayer will be shaped by the different stages of our spiritual journey as well. Many people who have just come to know Christ find that their words flow easily. Prayer is a joy for them. But, as with romantic relationships, there is a natural movement beyond this honeymoon phase. When feelings of intense connection with God ebb, we have a new opportunity to engage God - not based on cool spiritual vibes but as an expression of our genuine love for God. Times of spiritual dryness are normal for almost everyone, even if we haven't sinned and to the best of our knowledge haven't done anything to wall off our relationship with God. God may allow this dryness so that we can mature in our relationship with him and learn to seek him not for an ecstatic spiritual experience but out of a deeper love and commitment. — Ken Shigematsu

She wished she were not so aware of the vast gulf between what the men in her life thought she was worth and her actual value. She had, it seemed to her, always asked and expected too much and given too little. She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation. — Joe Hill

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. — Sebastian Marshall

It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their parts together in pleasant and productive ways, but that some almost indistinguishable difference in my anatomy and psyche set me slightly, yet irrevocably, apart. — Peter Cameron

Our relationships with our computers are almost sexual, they're so close. They're just such a huge part of our lives. — Mackenzie Davis

when someone dumps you, it's heartbreaking and insulting and horrible, sure, but being the one who breaks up is almost as bad. — Keren David

I let the music set the tone of the lyrics.I allowed myself to write more about relationships and emotions, in a girly way almost. — Jose Gonzalez

Men's loyalty to their women dies hard - and almost always too late. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") — Cornell Woolrich

We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well. A great deal of research from primatology, anthropology, anatomy, and psychology points to the same fundamental conclusion: human beings and our hominid ancestors have spent almost all of the past few million years or so in small, intimate bands in which most adults had several sexual relationships at any given time. This approach to sexuality probably persisted until the rise of agriculture and private property no more than ten thousand years ago. In addition to voluminous scientific evidence, many explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists support this view, having penned accounts rich with tales of orgiastic rituals, unflinching mate sharing, and an open sexuality unencumbered by guilt or shame. — Christopher Ryan

Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships. — Stanislaw Ulam

If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty - by forms, I am referring to coherent systems of hypotheses, axioms, etc. - to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature ... . You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared. — Werner Heisenberg

A person who suffers from a character disorder frequently has significant behavioral or emotional problems that will almost certainly spell disaster for any marital relationships. One of the most difficult aspects of identifying people with character disorders is that they tend to be unusually charming. People with these kinds of disorders tend to lie, cheat, exaggerate, and take advantage of others. — Neil Clark Warren

For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. On a fine but by no means transcendent date we dream of going home to watch television. We would prefer to be alone with our own thoughts than with a less than perfect fit. We are almost constitutionally incapable of casual relationships. — Sasha Cagen

City wisdom became almost entirely centered on the problems of human relationships, in contrast to the wisdom of any natural tribal group, where relationships with the rest of the animate and inanimate world are still given due place. — James E. Lovelock

One of the most powerful ways that our shame triggers get reinforced is when we enter into a social contract based on these gender straitjackets. Our relationships are defined by women and men saying, "I'll play my role, and you play yours." One of the patterns revealed in the research was how all that role playing becomes almost unbearable around midlife. Men feel increasingly disconnected, and the fear of failure becomes paralyzing. Women are exhausted, and for the first time they begin to clearly see that the expectations are impossible. The accomplishments, accolades, and acquisitions that are a seductive part of living by this contract start to feel like a Faustian bargain. — Brene Brown

Don't let yourself be amazed by the imagination of a writer and his words, writers are almost all the time in a love-hate relationship with words. — Nema Al-Araby

The most dangerous aspect of your relationships is not your weakness, but your delusions of strength. Self-reliance is almost always a component of a bad relationship. — Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp

Mrs. Bird smiled at me as I arrived at her side. "They can surprise us, can't they, our parents? The things they got up to before we were born."
"Yes," I said. "Almost like they were real people once. — Kate Morton

But forecasters often resist considering these out-of-sample problems. When we expand our sample to include events further apart from us in time and space, it often means that we will encounter cases in which the relationships we are studying did not hold up as well as we are accustomed to. The model will seem to be less powerful. It will look less impressive in a PowerPoint presentation (or a journal article or a blog post). We will be forced to acknowledge that we know less about the world than we thought we did. Our personal and professional incentives almost always discourage us from doing this. — Nate Silver

As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn't done studying. I applied for a master's in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans - i.e., "human relationality" - that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced - of passion, of hunger, of love - bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats. At Stanford, I had the good — Paul Kalanithi

Be flexible. Be compassionate. Rules can never cure insecurity. Integrity matters. Never try to script what your relationships will look like. Love is abundant. Compatibility matters. You cannot sacrifice your happiness for that of another. Own your own shit. Admit when you fuck up. Forgive when others fuck up. Don't try to find people to stuff into the empty spaces in your life; instead, make spaces for the people in your life. If you need a relationship to complete you, get a dog. It is almost impossible to be loving or compassionate when all you feel is fear of loss. Trust that your partners want to be with you, and that if given the freedom to do anything they please, they will choose to cherish and support you. Most relationship problems can be avoided by good partner selection. Nobody can give you security or self-esteem; you have to build that yourself. — Franklin Veaux

He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time. — Brian Andreas

For our family, the entire structure of our life, our home, our business relationships - the entire purpose is for everyone to be able to create in a way that makes them happy. Fame is almost an inconsequential by-product of what we're really trying to accomplish. We are trying to put great things into the world, we're trying to have fun, and we're trying to become the greatest versions of ourselves in the process of doing things we love. — Will Smith

Something snapped inside her. "Of course I'm afraid! Relationships do bad things to me." He started to respond, but the pain had gone on long enough, and she didn't want to hear it. "You know what I want? I want peace. I want a good job and a decent place to live. I want to read books and listen to music and have time to make some female friendships that are going to last. When I wake up in the morning, I want to know that I have a decent shot at being happy. And here's what's really sad. Until I met you, I was almost there. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Such insignificant differences as a few hundred years here or there were the motive for long, long controversies, both public and academic, which almost always resulted in the violent breakup of personal relationships and even in mortal enmities. — Jose Saramago

I love when I reach Marcus on the phone and as he says hello, I can hear the music he's listening to in the background. That music is the sound of him without me. How he surrounds himself when I'm not there, which is almost all the time. — Megan McCafferty

Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun," constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger "high." A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now. — Stephen Covey

How many relationships would be better if they were born out of something genuine rather than merely a petty desire? Divorce would drop because people would know why they started doing something in the first place. Teen pregnancy would almost be eradicated because for the first time we wouldn't need to simply succumb to our desires and cravings pushed onto us from the media and society in general. Prostitutes would be searching for redundancy packages and brothel owners for new careers, and the whole shallow and superficial nature of sex would be under the spotlight. — Evan Sutter

I can't say I was happy with your mother. I can't say I enjoyed almost twenty years of being judged by her and always found wanting. — Joe Hill

According to the dictionary, knock has two definitions: "to strike something with a sharp blow," and "to find fault with, a harsh and often petty criticism." Perhaps in human relationships both of these meanings could apply. Almost all men will respond to sincere praise and rebel at harsh and cutting criticisms. — Marvin J. Ashton

A great purposelessness has descended upon modern civilizations. People at large have lost any sense of the meaning and purpose of life; and without an understanding of our own purpose, there can be no true commitment. Whether that commitment is to marriage, family, study, work, God, relationships, or the simple resolutions of our lives, it will be almost impossible to fulfill without a clear and practical understanding of our purpose. Commitment and purpose go hand in hand. — Matthew Kelly

A wannabe small town girl comes to a big city chasing her dreams where she meets her charming prince; they fall in love, stay together and make love every day, almost. But they don't live happily thereafter because her grandpa wants to see her get married.
*Conditions Apply- Same caste, NRI, rich, dumb and asshole. — Subhasis Das

Trust is a tricky thing. It is the foundation of every healthy relationship. It is the security that makes intimacy possible. It can be simultaneously strong and yet very fragile. It takes great effort and time to build, but it can be broken quickly.

Almost every relationship has encountered difficulties over broken trust. I would even argue that most difficulties in relationships stem directly from a breach of trust. Strong relationships (especially marriages) require strong trust, so here are a few ways to to build it (or rebuild it). — David Willis

I suppose we were better observers than communicators; we were all subjects to be worried over, complained about, even adored, but never quite people to be held or loved. There was an intellectual, almost absurd distance. — Carrie Brownstein

I think with relationships you have to risk getting hurt. You have to learn to almost know how to let your heart go when that time comes for that right person. You have to be open to having a friendship with somebody of the opposite sex. We can't let fear keep us from being open to relationships. — Rebecca St. James

You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, I
wrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

But the second kind seek out the women who love women, who can procure a young man for them and add to the pleasure which they get from finding themselves with him; much more, they can, in the same way, find the same pleasure with them as with a man. [ ... ] For in the relationships they have with them, they play the role of another woman for the women who love women, and the woman offers them at the same time more or less what they find in a man, so that the jealous friend suffers from feeling that the man he loves is inseparable from the woman who is for him almost a man, at the same time as he feels him almost escaping from him, because, for these women, he is something he does not know, a sort of woman. — Marcel Proust

Newness wears off.
This is something I've learned about relationships. I've had more than a few run their course, the idiosyncrasies that were once endearing becoming annoying, the jump of my heart into my throat at the sight of her lessening to a skip, then a pause, then the bare recognition that at some point slips into dread, and you know it's time to end it.
It's different with Alex. The newness might have faded, which is inevitable, but it's grown into something better. The panic of not being able to come up with something to say to her has settled into the comfort of companionable silence, my hand resting on her knee, or her head on my chest. The frantic need to be near her and know how she feels has morphed into an almost pleasant ache of missing her when she's not with me, because I know we'll be together again. — Mindy McGinnis

It's true,' Elena said, 'that my own need for provocation is something other people seem to find very difficult to understand. Yet to me it has always made perfect sense. But I do admit that it has brought nearly all of my relationships to an end, because it is inevitable that that end is also - as you say, by the same logic - something I will feel driven to provoke. If the relationship is going to end, in other words, I want to know it and confront it as soon as possible. Sometimes,' she said, 'this process is so quick that the relationship is over almost as soon as it has begun. Very often I have felt that my relationships have had no story, and the reason is because I have jumped ahead of myself, the way I used to turn the pages of a book to find out what happens in the final chapter. I want to know everything straight away. I want to know the content without living through the time span. — Rachel Cusk

It's fascinating, really, when you think about it. How a person can slip into a new life as one would a new pair of shoes. At first there's a keen awareness of the fit: a stiffness at the heel, the binding of the width, the curve pressed to the arch. But with time and enough steps, the feel becomes so natural you almost forget you're wearing them at all. — Kristina McMorris

The increased participation of women in the workforce, the dramatic changes in the education of women, and changes in social values have also led to significant structural changes in the institution of the family. Divorces have increased dramatically in almost every part of the world, partly due to new legislation making them easier to obtain, and, according to experts, partly because of the increased participation of women in the workforce. Some experts also note the role of online relationships; according to several analyses, between 20 and 30 percent of all divorces in the U.S. now involve Facebook. — Al Gore

I can forgive almost any crime if a great story is left in its wake. — Pat Conroy

It is almost as if we are all playing a big game of hide-and-go-seek. We all hide expecting to be found, but no one has been labelled the seeker. We stand behind the wall, at first excited, then worried, then bored, then anxious, then angry. We hide and hide. After a while, the game is not fun anymore. Where is my seeker? Where is the person who is supposed to come find me here in my protected shell and cut me open? Where is that one who will make me trust him, make me comfortable, make me feel whole? Some people rot on the spot, waiting for the seeker that never comes. The most important truth that I can relate to you, if you are hiding and waiting, is that the seeker is you and the world, behind so many walls, awaits. — Vironika Tugaleva

I turn my head a little. The radio's caroling "Tonight," velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria's song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago. But where is she now, where did she go, and what did I do with her?
Our paths ran along so close together they were almost like one, the one they were eventually going to be. Thin fear came along, fear entered into it somehow, and split them wide apart.
Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn't be answered, the door rings that wouldn't be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.
Now there aren't two paths anymore; there's only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

But every woman thinks she'll be the one to change me. That our sex will be so magical, I'll be star-struck by her goods in the bedroom and put a ring on it. Or the least ask her out to a movie. And when I don't, they get all upset and confused. I'm the one who should be confused. I straight up tell them, and almost every time, they get mad when the agreement clearly was not a fuck tonight and dinner tomorrow. — Angeline Kace

Seems almost as if the very thing we thought would make us happy (stuff) has stolen the thing that among others brings us the most happiness: relationships, real connected time-invested relationships. Relationships — Dave Ramsey

Mentorships, similar to other important relationships, usually end. Ideological differences and a need to chart a personal path might preclude parties from maintaining the original balance that stabilized a mentoring relationship. Conflict between an apprentice and his master is not always bad; in fact, it is almost inevitable, if the apprentice's destiny is to exceed the accomplishments of the master. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Relationships aren't neat and clean. They're ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. On this planet nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. Girls and boys, men and women who have been taught this way almost always believe love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important as being powerful, dominant, in control, on top-being right. Women who give seemingly selfless adoration and care to the men in their lives appear to be obsessed with 'love,' but in actuality their actions are often a covert way to hold power. Like their male counterparts, they enter relationships speaking the words of love even as their actions indicate that maintaining power and control is their primary agenda. — Bell Hooks

Most folks believe we are hardwired biologically to long for sex but they do not believe we are hardwired to long for love. Almost everyone believes that we can have sex without love; mosr folks do not believe that a couple can have love in a relationship if there is no sex. — Bell Hooks

Although the ending was more John Carpenter than John Updike, Carroll hadn't come across anything like it in any of the horror magazines, either, not lately. It was, for twenty-five pages, the almost completely naturalistic story of a woman being destroyed a little at a time by the steady wear of survivor's guilt. It concerned itself with tortured family relationships, shitty jobs, the struggle for money. Carroll had forgotten what it was like to come across the bread of everyday life in a short story. Most horror fiction didn't bother with anything except rare bleeding meat. ("Best New Horror") — Joe Hill

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

We cannot win in team situations or in relationships by ourselves. It is like trying to pick up a pencil with only one finger ... Even if that one finger is extremely strong, it will prove almost impossible to pick up that pencil unless you use your other fingers or some other part of your hand. Teamwork is a bit like using all of your fingers. Each one is unique and contributes something different, but they unite in pursuit of a common goal. — Terry Orlick

Not just Ricky, all my past relationships with men had been like a spate of pesky diseases - each more formidable than the other. It was almost as if I had run a 'sucky boyfriends marathon' or something, and won. — Shuchi Singh Kalra

By the end of the affair, she had acquired so much miserable information about men and women she almost decided to give up relationships for good. — Angela Carter

But sometimes this hatred broke like a wave, unexplainably collapsing under its own weight, and before it would begin to well up again, she suddenly felt nothing but pure compassion for him, a kindness and forgiveness that almost broke her heart. — Sana Krasikov

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. — W. H. Auden

Touch had always saved them in the past. No matter the anger or hurt, no matter the depth of the aloneness, a touch, even a light and passing touch, reminded them of their long togetherness. A palm on a neck: it all flooded back. A head leaned upon a shoulder: the chemicals surged, the memory of love. At times, it was almost impossible to cross the distance between their bodies, to reach out. At times, it was impossible. Each new the feeling so well, in the silence of a darkened bedroom, looking at the same ceiling: If I could open my fingers, my heart's fingers could open. — Jonathan Safran Foer

I look at him with the nostalgic affection men are said to feel for their wars, their fellow veterans. I think, I once threw things at this man. I threw a glass ashtray, a fairly cheap one which didn't break. I threw a shoe (his) and a handbag (mine), not even snapping the handbag shut first, so that he was showered with a metal rain of keys and small change. The worst thing I threw was a small portable television set, standing on the bed and heaving it at him with the aid of the bouncy springs, although the instant I let fly I thought, Oh God, let him duck! I once thought I was capable of murdering him. Today I feel only a mild regret that we were not more civilized with each other at the time. Still, it was amazing, all those explosions, that recklessness, that Technicolor wreckage. Amazing and agonizing and almost lethal. — Margaret Atwood

Mann's sexuality and his attitudes towards it are extremely complex - and the complexities are inherited in the figure of Aschenbach. Mann had lived through a series of (almost certainly unconsummated) relationships with young men. — Philip Kitcher

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

There was only one hope she didn't and wouldn't allow herself to hold on to: that if, in almost thirty years, she hadn't found a man, not a single one, who was exclusively significant for her, who had become inevitable to her, someone who was strong and brought her the mystery she had been waiting for, not a single one who was really a man and not an eccentric, a weakling or one of the needy the world was full of - then the man simply didn't exist, and as long as this New Man did not exist, one could only be friendly and kind to one another, for a while. There was nothing more to make of it, and it would be best if women and men kept their distance and had nothing to do with each other until both had found their way out of the tangle and confusion, the discrepancy inherent in all relationships. — Ingeborg Bachmann

If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren't neat and clean - they're ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. If you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances, you don't hide behind them — Taylor Jenkins Reid

You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language? — Theresa May

We're so marinated in the culture of speed that we almost fail to notice the toll it takes on every aspect of our lives - on our health, our diet, our work, our relationships, the environment and our community. — Carl Honore

Almost everything in leadership comes back to relationships. — Mike Krzyzewski

I admired so many things about you. Almost everything. But I don't want to wind up like you. I don't want to starve to death, all alone on some island inside my own head. Hopeless. — Jenna Brooks

All the Kamals were fluent in irritation. They loved each other but were almost always annoyed by each other, in ways that were both generalised and existential (why is he like that?) and also highly specific (how hard is it to remember to put the top back on the yoghurt?). — John Lanchester

I almost can't believe I'm going to make myself vulnerable to him again. But what is love but the most extreme and exquisite form of risk perception? I know that relationships don't last. And yet, with him, the risk of not being with him is much worse than any other hurt I can imagine. — Megan McCafferty

It's all about our egos. She felt she was on the edge of understanding something important. They could fall in love with fresh, new people, or they could have the courage and humility to tear off some essential layer of themselves and reveal to each other a whole new level of otherness, a level far beyond what sort of music they liked. It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you'd shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher. — Liane Moriarty

[L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up. — Walter Benjamin

He came back the next day, and the next, and the day after that, and they argued. The arguments always started about the binding itself, but then they began to stray out into more interesting topics
the relationships and interrelationships in their families, the politics that went on, and the doings of the kingdoms and lordships of the world; and finally, about themselves, or rather, each other. The arguments started early and ended late: it was almost improper.
After about three days of this, T'Thelaih realized that she was going to have to be bound to this man, just to have the leisure to argue properly with him. — Diane Duane

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself; ... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all. — Soren Kierkegaard

We don't miss what we never had, but we miss terribly things we almost had. And we miss things we used to have most of all. Through we hope and pray for our relationships, our looks, and our lives to improve, having more also means having more to lose. — Tonya Hurley

One might go on to say that perhaps justice fails to be done only if the concept we entertain of justice is retributive justice, whose chief goal is to be punitive, so that the wronged party is really the state, something impersonal, which has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense. — Desmond Tutu

When it comes to loving D/ s relationships, the three little words mostly likely to have a significant , positive, and lasting impact on your partner's well-being is probably "I love you." Once we venture beyond that simple three-word endearment, however, the competition gets much stiffer. If I had to predict a winner in the four little words category, I'd choose "I believe in you." When a Dominant believes in his submissive, she eventually grows to believe in herself. That sort of empowerment is priceless beyond measure, and almost always bears sweet fruit. — Michael Makai

Life was good. Everything was going right. It was almost scaring him because usually when things were going this well it was the calm before the storm hit. — Michelle Sutton

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met. — Steven Wright

I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage. — Suzanne Finnamore

She pictured a dandelion gone by, the white, almost airless pieces of her family scattered so far. — Elizabeth Strout

Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is - or should be - the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all - perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows. — Rachel Carson

We wind our way up the spiral staircase and then down the long hallway that leads to his room. I feel almost like I'm watching the scene unfold from outside my body. My fingers are interlocked with his as he pulls me toward a moment that's going to change everything. We are ten steps away. Five steps. I can't decide. But then I do. — Paula Stokes

The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories. — Paulo Coelho

I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. — Paul Kalanithi

Why do people stay in relationships that are tough from almost the very beginning? — Ira Sachs

Your mother wasn't upset. "Scars stay with you so you don't forget," she said. She seemed almost satisfied. — Jinat Rehana Begum

Because their shame is so much deeper and more agonizing, Extreme Narcissists will stop at nothing to avoid feeling it. In fact, almost everything they say and do is intended to avoid the experience of shame. The narcissistic defenses they mobilize against shame are so extreme and pervasive that they color everything about the person's personality, relationships, and behavior, creating a kind of shell or armor against the threat of shame. — Joseph Burgo

I once loved a girl who almost loved me, but not as much as she loved John Cusack. — Chuck Klosterman

A beautiful woman can have almost any man she wants. A rich man can have almost any woman he wants. — Oliver Gaspirtz

When I create music, it is a reflection of my soul, my experiences in life and my relationships with other people and cultures. Psychology, and understanding who we are as people in this world, is present in almost every creative thought I have. — Yanni

Human beings are hard-wired to make relationships. We do so in many capacities, fleeting and long-lasting, between different sexes, both inside and outside of the confines of the almost universally accepted partnership we called marriage. — Louisa Leontiades

I recently heard a talk about identity in which the speaker said it's almost as though we are born into a world in which we are constantly being labeled by others
our parents, our friends, our family, and people we don't even know. Each person, from the outside looking in, comes up with a label to slap onto us without our permission. Some labels are kind and some are truthful, but many of them are lies. And sometimes we leave the negative labels on so long that we believe what they say; we allow those labels to define us. — Debra Fileta

He mentioned the connection between us. He identified with me. These are the things that many people want to hear, that most "normal" people want to be able to truthfully say, but almost no one can. — Rasmenia Massoud

This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer - a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight. — Ian McEwan

The individual psychotherapy patient comes to the therapist with an almost automatic deference, a sense of dependence and compliance. The role pattern is old and established: the dependent child seeking guidance from a parent figure. There is no such traditional image for the family, no established pattern in which an entire family submits to the guidance of an individual. And the family structure is simply too powerful and too crucial for the members to go trustingly into an experience that threatens to change the entire matrix of their relationships. If the family therapist is to acquire that initial "authority figure" or "parent" role that is so necessary if therapy is to be more powerful than an ordinary social experience, he has to earn it. — Augustus Y. Napier

The majority of research I've reviewed describes an intense male value on inde-pendence and what appears to be an almost phobic response to dependence. In fact, for many men it's not even an option to ask for assistance or to admit they "don't know." This places tremendous pressure on men to deny their vulnerability and need for information which makes detachment from relationships easier. — Mary Crocker Cook

Making movies is not rocket science. It's about relationships and communication and strangers coming together to see if they can get along harmoniously, productively, and creatively. That's a challenge. When it works, it's fantastic and will lift you up. When it doesn't work, it's almost just as fascinating. — Julia Roberts

In 'We Were the Mulvaneys,' animals are almost as important as people. I wanted to show the tenderness in our relationships with cats, dogs, and horses. Especially cats. — Joyce Carol Oates

Jessica guffawed. "Well, almost every need. It will be every need when we walk in the door and they have gorgeous men waiting for us as well."

"Nope, not happening." Cassandra took a chip, dipped it in the salsa,and popped it in her mouth. "Not interested in a relationship. Men are high maintenance, and relationships only bring pain."

Jessica flicked a chip across the table at her and sat back in her chair. Her
expression became sober as she looked at her best friend. "Seriously Cassie,
you don't believe that. — Cecilia Aubrey