Given Up On Love Quotes & Sayings

I'm giving up on love cause love's given up on me. — Miranda Lambert

I know that my grandmother certainly did nothing to warrant my mother stealing all of her jewelry that my grandfather had given her as gifts over the years, just so she could peddle it for heroin on the street. Those were precious metals and gems that could never be replaced, and each one had a story behind it. A love story between my grandparents, that my mother flushed down a proverbial toilet so that she could shoot up, throw up and pass out. — Ashly Lorenzana

The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their pride, vanity and self-love. They lived on each other's praise. If they had acknowledged Christ as the only good teacher, they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude; and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men! — Adam Clarke

I love the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team for many reasons and they have given me some wonderful memories. When I look back, I don't think about the games they lost but I remember going to see the games when I was a little boy with my grandfather. I remember talking to my mom on the phone after the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006 while I was dressed up in my Captain of the Fallopian Swim Team Halloween costume. I remember taking my lovely wife to her first Cardinals game where she broke out in hives due to the heat and humidity. I remember the joy I felt as I sat with my little man watching our first Cardinals game together at Busch Stadium. I know I need to take my obsession down a notch but in the end it is worth it because it takes me back to times I will never forget and always cherish. — Matt Shifley

Those who don't feel this Love pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn like a cup of spring water
or take sunset like supper, those who don't want to change,
let them sleep.
This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way sleep on.
I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away.
If you're not completely naked wrap your beautiful robe
of words around you, and sleep — Rumi

I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own broken mess of a life. All because I thought Lena didn't love me anymore. But I was stupid, and I was wrong. Lena loved me so much, she was willing to risk everything to save me.
I had given up on Lena, after she had refused to give up on me. I owed her my life. It was as simple as that. — Kami Garcia

I have to own up and say that, much as I love my PowerBook, which now does about 97.8 percent of what I used to use the lumbering old desktop dinosaurs for, I've given up trying to use it on planes. Yes, yes, I know that there are sorts of power-user strategies you can use to extend your battery life - dimming modes, RAM disks, processor-resting, and so on - but the point is that I really can't be bothered. I'm perfectly capable of just reading the in-flight magazine if I want to be irritated. — Douglas Adams

The truth is there are a million steps, and we don't even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love. — Donald Miller

It would be nice if the story ended differently - if he had burst into tears and professed his love for me; if he had said the same three words back and hugged me; if he had given it thought and then asked if we could try a relationship.

But you know what? I said those three words to a boy who didn't love me back, at least not in that way. He casually dropped a "love you" later on, and in a platonic 'you have impacted my life' way, he was telling the truth. But I knew. He had given it thought, and we were not on the same page. I built up all this courage to say "I love you" for the very first time, and I said those words to a person that couldn't reciprocate them.

But guess what?

I don't regret any of it. — Stephen Lovegrove

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

No more light answers. Let our officers
Have note what we purpose. I shall break
The cause of our expedience to the Queen
And get her leave to part. For not alone
The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,
Do strongly speak to us, but the letters too
Of many our contriving friends in Rome
Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius
Hath given the dare to Caesar and commands
The empire of the sea. Our slippery people,
Whose love is never linked to the deserver
Till his deserts are past, begin to throw
Pompey the Great and all his dignities
Upon his son, who - high in name and power,
Higher than both in blood and life - stands up
For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,
The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breeding
Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life
And not a serpent's poison. — William Shakespeare

I love a mysterious underground and have exploited this in many of my books: the ice tunnels of Greenland, the volcanic tubes of Iceland, the mysterious passageways beneath an ancient African hillside or a Buddhist monastery in central China. And of course, London's famous tube system, setting for my book LONDON UNDERGROUND. It's a funny sort of fixation, especially given my mother's claustrophobia, which I saw her deal with on many occasions. We once lined up to take a tour into the Lascaux Caverns in France to see the ancient cave paintings. My mother didn't make it past the first quirky turn into the depths, and she sent me on by myself. Given her interest in history and archaeology, which she used as the basis for a series of mysteries she published and which inspired my own writing, it always surprised me she still loved to write about places she could never visit. — Chris Angus

In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) "the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it." We'd love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place. — Rolf Potts

Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now. "I'm afraid of committing myself," she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none. Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pan, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes not to see the bad things in life. — Paulo Coelho

Believe me, if Archimedes ever had the grand entrance of a girl as pretty as Gloria to look forward to, he would never have spent so much time calculating the value of Pi. He would have been baking her a Pie! If Euclid had ever beheld a vision of loveliness like the one I see walking into my anti-math class, he would have forgotten all the geometry of lines and planes, and concentrated on the sweet simplicity of soft curves. If Pythagoras had ever had a girl look at him the way Gloria's eyes fix in my direction, he would have given up his calculations on the hypotenuse of right triangles and run for the hills to pick a bouquet of wildflowers. — David Klass

One Dad I know uses what I call Post-It Note therapy on his children. He leaves sticky Post-It Notes everywhere ... in their lunch box, inside their shoes, on top of their sandwich before he wraps it up. He once went into his daughter's room, looking for his hammer, and on the back of her bedroom door were every Post-It Note he'd ever given her - over 250 in all with simple messages like 'Great job' ... 'I love you' ... or 'You're special to me.' Do you think that girl knew, without a doubt, that her Dad valued her and loved her? — Jack Canfield

Grace is more than being lucky to be on God's side. Grace is God's goodness showered on people who have failed. Grace is God's love on those who think they are unlovable. Grace is God knowing what we are designed to be. Grace is God believing in us when we have given up. Grace is someone at the end of their rope finding new strength. But there's more to grace. Grace is both a place and a power. Grace is God unleashing his transforming power. Grace realigns and reroutes a life and a community. Grace is when you turn your worst enemy into your best friend. Grace takes people as they are and makes them what they can be. Grace ennobles; grace empowers. Grace forgives; grace frees. Grace transcends, and grace transforms. — Scot McKnight

Reaching Out
I have given so much to things that weren't worth my time. When all along, it's the people I love that I should have carried. It's the ones I cared for whom I should have been responsible.
But maybe I'm too late. Because I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to ask you if you're okay. I don't know how to tell you I am so afraid of losing you. How much light would leave my life if you were no longer part of it.
I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I'm sorry I haven't told you in so long. But please don't think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here. — Lang Leav

Caviar used to be my drug of choice, but since my husband is on a no-salt diet, I've kind of given it up. I still have dreams of sitting down and gorging, though. I love it with a good vodka; I don't like it with champagne. — Iris Apfel

All too often I try to skate away from the things I'm afraid of and things I don't like and am unwilling to accept. I'm selfish and difficult to handle. I give my men cause for concern. I worry them, but they haven't given up on me yet and I love them all the more for it. — Gillibran Brown

As soon as she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss, his life, himself - what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for - was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by that same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She stopped close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped on his shoulders.
She had done all she could - she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shyly, blissfully. He put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss. — Leo Tolstoy

I was brought up on the books of The Wizard of Oz and my mother told me that these were great philosophies. It was a very simple philosophy, that everybody had a heart, that everybody had a brain, that everybody had courage. These were the gifts that are given to you when you come on this earth, and if you use them properly, you reach the pot at the end of the rainbow. And that pot of gold was a home. And home isn't just a house or an abode, its people, people who love you and that you love. That's a home. — Ray Bolger

Don't count him out, Julia. He hasn't given up on you. — Laura Miller

Any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts' deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love? So Eddie didn't expect her to answer until she did - from another world, and through a single thickness of wood. "Eddie? Sugar, is it you?" Eddie's head, which had seemed perfectly normal only seconds before, was suddenly too heavy to hold up. He leaned it against the door. His eyes were similarly too heavy to hold open and so he closed them. The weight must have — Stephen King

Together, on his back porch, his cigarette smoke rising like incense to the heavens, we spoke to the God of grace we both are so grateful to know up close and personal. It may be the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard. Jesus, for some reason you've given us another day, and you've set us in Narnia. There are people who still think it's frozen, and there are people who are longing to be thawed but don't know it. God, I pray that what you've called us to do would be the subversive work of the kingdom, that we would help participate in the melting of Narnia, and that people would come alive and would drink and dance and sing and just celebrate life in ways that are so marvelous that the world would press its face against the glass and see the redeemed celebrate life. Amen. — Cathleen Falsani

Truth is that we all need facts we cannot continue to eat only the food that is given to us. Sometimes we have to feed ourselves otherwise we set our self up for dependency on the wrong nutrition without realizing that we were being poisoned the whole time. — R. Lewis

I don't know what it takes to make marriage work, but I'm going to keep trying until I get it right. I haven't given up on love or marriage. — Stephanie Mills

[On love:] I have no respect for anyone who says they've given up, or that they're not looking or that they're tired. That is to abrogate one's responsibility as a human being. — Harlan Ellison

Oh, don'tleave now, little bird," Sarren crooned, licking blood from one long bony finger. "It's just getting interesting. You can't fly away just yet."
"I wasn't leaving," I snarled. "I'm not about to let you spread your superplague or virus or whatever you want to call it. You might have given up on this world, but I'm not ready to die yet. I don't need your brand of salvation." The katana shook as I raised it in front of me, but I gripped the hilt and forced my arms to be steady. "So, come on, you psycopath. Let's do this. I'm not tied to a table anymore."
Sarren's grin widened, making him even more frightening. " I still owe you for this, love," he said, gesturing to his left eye, cloudy and blind. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. Perhaps, I will pluck out both your eyes, then remove all your teeth, and make a necklace from them. Or maybe a wind chime. I do love wind chimes, don't you, little bird? — Julie Kagawa

You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer look "through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes. — Anne Rice

Where does love go? When something you have taped on the wall falls off, what has happened to the stickum? It has relaxed. It has accumulated an assortment of hairs and fuzzies. It has said "Fuck it" and given up. It doesn't go anywhere special, it's just gone. Energy is created, and then it is destroyed. So much for the laws of physics. So much for chemistry. So much for not so much. — Lorrie Moore

This isn't over. I won't give up on you."
"I've given up on you," he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has."
I stared at him in disbelief. All this time, he'd never phrased it like that. His protests had always been about some greater good, about the remorse he felt over being a monster of how it had scarred him from love. I've given up on you. Love fades. Mine has.
I backed up, the sting of those words hitting me as hard as if he'd slapped me. Something shifted in his features, like maybe he knew how much he'd hurt me. I didn't stick around to see. Instead, I pushed my way out of the aisle and ran out the doors in the back, afraid that if I stayed any longer, everyone in the church would see me cry. — Richelle Mead

Make arrangements, yet don't live for tomorrow. Live throughout today. As you get up every morning, be thankful that you are given one more day to take in more lessons. You are given more opportunities to get on track, to live all the more genuinely and transparently, to love more, and to give more. — Adam Green

M. I've never really thought of M objectively before, as another person. She's always been my mother I've hated or been ashamed of. Yet of all the lame ducks I've met or heard of, she's the lamest. I've never given her enough sympathy. I haven't given her this last year (since I left home) one half of the consideration I've given the beastly creature upstairs just this last week. I feel that I could overwhelm her with love now. Because I haven't felt so sorry for her for years. I've always excused myself - I've said, I'm kind and tolerant with everyone else, she's the one person I can't be like that with, and there has to be an exception to the general rule. So it doesn't matter. But of course that's wrong. She's the last person that should be an exception to the general rule.

Minny and I have so often despised D for putting up with her. We ought to go down on
our knees to him. — John Fowles

True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. Time — Alice Miller

Love is when you start denying all the definitions it was given before and you start finding your own. It is when the other person craves to see your bare soul more than your bare skin. It is something that happens between souls, where the touch of their fingers on your skin lits fire to your soul and destroys you in the most beautiful way possible and makes you end up craving to be destroyed even more. — Akshay Vasu

I will let you carry me into the fecundity of destruction. I choose a body then, a face, a voice. I become you. And you become me. Silence the sensational course of your body and you will see me, intact, your own fears, your own pities. You will see love which was excluded from the passions given you, and I will see the passions excluded from love. Step out of your role and rest yourself on the core of your true desires. Cease for a moment your violent deviations. Relinquish the furious indomitable strain.
I will take them up. — Anais Nin

She wasn't afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.
'I'm afraid of committing myself,' she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.
Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life. — Paulo Coelho

On the 11th of every month my friend elizabeth would say, "well we made it through another month. so do we get her back now?" we always giggled, but we really did expect to get her back. its not human to let go of love, even when it's dead.
we expected one of these monthly anniversaries to be the Final Goodbye. we figured that we'd said all our goodbyes, and given up all the tears we had to give. we'd passed the test and would get back what we'd lost. but instead, every anniversary hurt more, and every anniversary felt like she was further away from coming back. the idea that there wouldn't be a final goodbye- that was a hard goodbye in itself and, at that point, still an impossible goodbye. no private eye has to tell you it's a long goodbye.
... the loss just doesn't go away- it gets bigger the longer you look at it. — Rob Sheffield

I love French films, and European films. They're not any bigger, but there's just a sort of definition, and a confidence, and strength to them. I'd always, given the option, go and see a French drama. Obviously, we probably get the better ones. But they're just sophisticated on many levels, and grown up, and quite profound - and we don't make films like that. — Jim Broadbent

In the state of enlightenment, you are yourself - "you" and "yourself" merge into one. You do not judge yourself, you do not feel sorry for yourself, you are not proud of yourself, you do not love yourself, you do not hate yourself, and so on. The split caused by self-reflective consciousness is healed, its curse removed. There is no "self" that you need to protect, defend, or feed anymore. When you are enlightened, there is one relationship that you no longer have: the relationship with yourself. Once you have given that up, all your other relationships will be love relationships. — Eckhart Tolle

Love is never something ready made, something merely 'given' to man and woman, it is always at the same time a 'task' which they are set. Love should be seen as something which in a sense never 'is' but is always only 'becoming', and what it becomes depends up on the contribution of both persons and the depth of their commitment. — Pope John Paul II

Anyone who says love is free has never truly been in love. Your lover will need comfort. Your spouse will have bad days. Your child will have their heart broken, more than once and you will be expected to help pick up the pieces. Your beloved pets become a parade of joy and loss. Love costs, sometimes it costs everything you have, and sometimes it costs more. On those days you weigh the joy you gain against the pain; you weigh the energy given from the loving and the energy lost from the duties that love places upon us. Love can be the most expensive thing in the world. If it's worth it, great, but if not, then love does not conquer all, sometimes you are conquered by it. You are laid waste before the breathtaking pain of it, and crushed under the weight of it's obligations. — Laurell K. Hamilton

We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someone in the world who loved them as much as their parents did: a grandmother who was delighted by all their quirks and who thought they were the most amazing creatures on earth. — Will Schwalbe

You once told me that I make you believe in the impossible. You make me believe in love, which I'd given up on. Thank you for proving to me it's not just a fairy tale. — Simone Elkeles

Charlotte had tried to read his work. It seemed only polite, after all, given that they were neighbors. But after a while, she'd simply had to give up. 'Love' always rhymed with 'dove,' (Where, she wondered, did one locate that many doves in Derbyshire?) and 'you' rhymed so often with 'dew,' that Charlotte had wanted to grab Rupert by the shoulders and yell, 'Few, hue, new, woo, Waterloo!' Good gracious, even 'moo' would have been preferable. Rupert's poetry could surely have been improved by a cow or two.
Saying moo on cue at Waterloo. — Julia Quinn

A sharp pain in her chest became more intoxicating with each breath she took. There it was. The reason she had forced herself to keep her distance from love. Why she had given up on trusting someone not to hurt her. Because a broken heart, no matter how figurative, was an unbearable pain to endure. And sometimes, no matter how much you want to be with someone, there's never a guarantee that they want you back. — Courtney Giardina

Then came the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it - a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling! — Virginia Woolf

A prison chaplain in the West of England confessed he had given up one prisoner as hopeless, so stubborn was he against any approach by him, and known throughout the jail as the most truculent and obstinate troublemaker.
But one day the governor was told of a visitor who insisted on seeing him. To his surprise, it was a little girl. "He's my daddy," she explained, "It's his birthday." The governor allowed the prisoner to be sent for.
"Daddy," said the child as he was brought in, "this was your birthday, so I wanted to come and see you." Then taking a lock of hair out of her pocket, she offered it to him. "I had no money to buy a present for you. But I brought this, a lock of my own hair."
The prisoner broke down and clasped her in his arms, sobbing. He became a changed man after that and guarded, as his most precious possession, the lock of hair that reminded him that somebody still loved him. — Francis Gay

I'm not here to solve your problems. I'm here to support you in your own decisions. I'm not going to walk away, Amy. Not now, not when the going gets tough, not ever. I'm right here at your back."
"For how long?"
"For as long as you'll have me. I love you, Amy."
Staggered, she stared at him. "But you don't do love."
"I never said that. I said love hasn't worked out for me. But all it takes is the right one. You're the right one."
No one had ever said such a thing to her before, and it made her heart swell hard against her ribcage. "I love you, Matt. So much."
He smiled like she'd just given him the best gift he'd ever had. She settled against his good side, and they stared up at the star-laden sky. "I knew I'd find something on this journey," she said. "I wasn't sure what, but I knew it'd be something special. — Jill Shalvis

love can be painful. But real love? It beats any obstacle along the way. And it saves people who are beyond saving. People who the world has given up on. It can be redemption." I — Lola StVil

It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do — C.S. Lewis

I think ... I think, Calder, that we have to figure out how to forgive, not for the people who wronged us, but for us. We can't keep bitterness attached to our hearts because eventually, it might become part of us - so deeply ingrained we can't work it back out. I think we have to focus on the beauty we've been given in this life, and make that the thing that defines us. Because people defined by bitterness end up destroying themselves from the inside out, and eventually they destroy everyone who tries to love them, too. That's not going to be us. — Mia Sheridan

It's my earliest memory: arranging my brother's marbles into words. It is summer, and I am beneath the oak that stands in the back corner of the work yard. Thomas, ten, whom I love above all the others, has taught me nine words: SARAH, GIRL, BOY, GO, STOP, JUMP, RUN, UP, DOWN. He has written them on a parchment and given me a pouch of forty-eight glass marbles with which to spell them out, enough to shape two words at a time. — Sue Monk Kidd

At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It's you the hearse is taking away. I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr'* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushed over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together.
*The world is empty. I don't want to go on living. — Andre Gorz

In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again ... We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night. — Mary Cantwell

Now, they should have been in bed, making out and groping until one of them finally came up for air long enough to put on a condom. But they didn't move. They stood in the middle of the room, skin to skin, arms around each other and kissing like ... like ... Like this. It was as if no one had ever given Dom the memo about the difference between fucking and making love. About how to kiss a one-night stand versus how to kiss a boyfriend. Sergei — L.A. Witt

Do you know why I call you Estella?" Mateo asked, lacing his fingers with mine and raising our hands up into the big blue sky. "Why?" "Because you are my star," he said, his voice low and smooth, raising the hairs on my arms. "You shine brighter than the sun." "But even the sun goes away every night." "But it is the sun's absence that makes us feel its power. We know the loss, the beauty and the life that the moon can't replace. That is why we hang on to each day we are given. That is why I hang on to you." He lowered our hands and kissed my knuckles. "I love you, Vera. I've had the moon, the dark, the cold, for too long. I want my star back. My Estrella. — Karina Halle

The priest rose to take up the crucifix; at that, she strained her neck forward like someone who is thirsty, and, pressing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she laid upon it with all her expiring strength the most passionate kiss of love she had ever given. Then he recited the Miserateur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began he unctions: first on the eyes, which had so coveted all earthly splendors; then on the nostrils, greedy for mild breezes and the smells of love; then on the mouth, which had opened to utter lies, which had moaned with pride and cried out in lust; then on the hands, which had delighted in the touch of smooth material; and lastly on the soles of the feet, once so quick when she hastened to satiate her desires and which now would never walk again. — Vladimir Nabokov

I admire your courage. I know what you've given up to be here. I know the kind of artist it takes to land a role. I know that you won't receive one on your own. And I imagine you, myshka, two years from now, working at Phantom with the same aspirations, the same dreams, in the same place where you are now. It's wasted courage. And wasted love. You shouldn't have to waste those things."
I'm speechless.
And overwhelmed. When someone reaches out and gives you a hand - for no other reason than to see your success - it's powerful. And rare.
He wipes beneath my eye with his thumb. "I'd rather feed your hunger than watch you starve — Krista Ritchie

In an undertone, I murmured, "This isn't over. I won't give up on you."
"I've given up on you," he said back, voice also soft. "Love fades. Mine has. — Richelle Mead

He said cynicism's self-protection, a defense mechanism used by cowards who give up on love because they're afraid love's given up on them. — Linda Yellin

Johanna sat by the fire every night and worked on her tapestry. Dumfries waited until she was settled in her chair and then draped himself across her feet. It became a ritual for Alex to squeeze himself up next to her and fall asleep during her stories about fierce warriors and fair maidens. Johanna's tales all had a unique twist, for none of the heroines she told stories about ever needed to be rescued by their knights in shining armor. More often than not, the fair maidens rescued their knights.
Gabriel couldn't take issue with his wife. She was telling Alex the truth. It was a fact that maidens could rescue mighty, arrogant warriors. Johanna had certainly rescued him from a bleak, cold existence. She'd given him a family and a home. She was his love, his joy, his companion.
She was his saving grace. — Julie Garwood

I've given up on you...Love fades. Mine has. — Richelle Mead

Being loved continuously when you believe that you're unlovable is like throwing salt on a wound. It stings like acid. You want it desperately, instinctively knowing deep down you were wired to need it. But the more love given, the more unworthy of love you behave, constantly trying to find ways to make up for the void and pain that reside like a monster inside your heart. — Christa Black

I'm a nature lover, I want at any given time to be able to bring lots of plants into my house, have lots of light flooding in, have lots of natural elements. Reclaimed lumbers, actual live edge slab tables. I do love technology, but I want the TV to be hidden away a little, I want the speakers to be up on the ceiling. — Sebastian Clovis

in life. It is important, I think, to remember that in a mature relationship, love is not a feeling, but rather a way of being and, as some have said, it is a decision. If we are to love we must avoid the trap of behaving however we might happen to feel on any given day. That puts love on a seesaw with us; down one day and up the next! Rather, to love someone while also maintaining our own love for ourselves, we must deliberately and wisely choose what we do in our relationship. At least as importantly, we must control how we respond to what our partner may do. After all, love doesn't grow from being adored. It grows when it persists and endures through times when we or our partner are difficult to love. Indeed, love thrives on challenges, especially those we address within our own hearts. — John Gray

You have worked to build me what I asked for all the days of our lives. Even when the task seemed impossible, even when it would have been easier to give it up, you did not, but kept on going. You have kept me warm in winter, and cool in summer. You have laughed with me, and you have cried. You have given me children who are almost, but not quite, my greatest joy.
For the greatest joy of all is the way you held my wish in the center of your heart thorough all the days of our lives. That is where the room that you have built for me lies. Just as the room I built for you lies within mine. And in this way have all our wishes been granted. Together, we have made ourselves a home. — Cameron Dokey

I don't care if Todd Rand is as kind as Jesus himself, my place was with you and I will never regret that. You and Damien and Spencer gave Dominique and me an amazing life that I love more than I can ever tell you. Things worked out the way they were supposed to. This family was always the best option for me, Dante, the only option I'd ever have chosen if I'd been given the choice. This changes nothing in my heart. We were all meant to be together, meant to make up a family that defied the odds. I hope that Todd and Flynn are wonderful and that I can have relationships with both, but if they don't want to know me, I'm not going to be upset. I already have the perfect family for me, and since you're the head of this family, that's on you. — Ella Fox

All life on planet earth is terminal, and while we can certainly contribute to our own well-being in amazing ways, none of us is ultimately in control. One day, my life will be swallowed up by Life. And for today, I am choosing truth, joy, and love wherever and however I can.

I am resolute in my desire to learn, to fulfill my calling and to engage each day with as much joy as I am graciously given or can borrow. — Steve Hayner

Falling in love: how does it work? Over the years we gather the odd clue, but nothing adds up. We'd like to think we have a picture of our future partner projected in our mind, all their qualities recorded as if on film, and we just search the planet for that person until we find them, sitting in Casablanca waiting to be recognised. But in reality our love lives are blown around by career and coincidence, not to mention lack of nerve on given occasions, and we never have respectable reasons for anything until we have to make them up afterwards for the benefit of our curious friends. — Michel Faber

Affirm my life every morning and let myself have a good day, free myself each night to dream the necessary dreams, find pleasure in serving those I love, give up guilt at refusing to when they demand my self-annihilation, find joy in teaching, joy in talking to loving readers ... , give my self time every day to walk or go to a museum, be generous because it reminds me how much abundance I have been given, be loving because it reminds me not to feel jealous of those who only seem to have more, seize my life, release my anger, bless the known and the unknown world ...
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live for ever.
I no longer do. — Erica Jong

I was the first man to fall in love with you, son of Clinias, and now that the others have stopped pursuing you I suppose you're wondering why I'm the only one who hasn't given up - and also why, when the others pestered you with conversation, I never even spoke to you all these years. Human causes didn't enter into it; I was prevented by some divine being, the effect of which you'll hear later on. But now it no longer prevents me, so here I am. I'm confident it won't prevent me in future either. — Plato

No," said Simon. "I know we're not much compared to you, but we don't kill our friends. We try to save them. If Heaven didn't want it that way, we ought to have been given the ability to love." He shoved his hair back, baring the Mark more fully. "No, you don't need to help me. But if you don't, there's nothing stopping me from calling you up again and again, now that I know you can't kill me. Think of it as me leaning on you Heavenly doorbell ... forever. — Cassandra Clare

To those who have given up on love: I say, Trust life a little bit. — Maya Angelou

You've had ample opportunity to send me up the river ... you could've easily gotten me locked up long ago just by opening your mouth. I didn't need to marry you to gain your silence. You've given it to me from the start. If you didn't turn on me then, when you had plenty of reason to, I trust that you won't do it now, ring or no ring. I married you, Karissa, because I love you. Nothing more, nothing less."
As many times as he's said those words ... I love you ... it still makes my stomach flutter to hear them come from him. The butterflies soar. He's not an outwardly emotional person, not at all, so when he says it, I know he means it.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss him. His lips are soft, sweet. His tongue tastes like peppermint. "I love you, too, you know."
"I know. — J.M. Darhower

Solitary though we may have become, we haven't of course given up all hope of forming relationships. In the lonely canyons of the modern city, there is no more honoured emotion than love. However, this is not the love of which religions speak, not the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind; it is a more jealous, restricted and ultimately meaner variety. It is a romantic love which sends us on a maniacal quest for a single person with whom we hope to achieve a life-long and complete communion, one person in particular who will spare us any need for people in general. — Alain De Botton

Yeah, I feel sort of unfinished in New York, even though I spent so many years there. I think it's because I never got a chance to do any Broadway, or even off-Broadway. I would love to do that and I haven't given up on that. — Eva LaRue

As much as childhood was the greatest thing that most of us have ever experienced, with it characterized by our care free attitude and our thirst and hunger to live life on each given day to the fullest. I love where my life is now, after all life was never intended for us to go backwards but simply for us to reminisce and keep moving forward. — Njabulo P. Vilakazi

It's rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to dance, to love your life. It's much easier and much more common to be miserable. We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think it's our job to live each day like it's a special occasion, because we've been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world. When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better. — Shauna Niequist

For all its amazing strength, our hearts are made of eggshells, and sometimes all it takes is someone you'd almost given up on declaring their love for it to crack wide open — Leisa Rayven

He knows exactly what I need even when I don't. I'm not sure how he knows me so well, but he does. He knows that when I try to push him away, it means I need him even more. And when I say I don't want to talk, it means I really need to. I'm crazy that way and other guys would've given up on me months ago. But Garret's still here and he isn't going anywhere. Just thinking about that makes me feel like the luckiest girl alive. — Allie Everhart

Child. This ability to grieve - that is, to give up the illusion of his "happy" childhood, to feel and recognize the full extent of the hurt he has endured - can restore the depressive's vitality and creativity and free the grandiose person from the exertions of and dependence on his Sisyphean task. If a person is able, during this long process, to experience the reality that he was never loved as a child for what he was but was instead needed and exploited for his achievements, success, and good qualities - and that he sacrificed his childhood for this form of love - he will be very deeply shaken, but one day he will feel the desire to end these efforts. He will discover in himself a need to live according to his true self and no longer be forced to earn "love" that always leaves him empty-handed, since it is given to his false self - something he has begun to identify and relinquish. — Alice Miller

There are lots of reasons why a woman stays with a man, even when she's given up on changing him and can predict with certainty the shape that the rest of her life with him is going to take. — A.S.A Harrison