Quotes & Sayings About Giving Up For Love

So if I can give anyone advice in this business on love and balancing, it's that you truly have to take a second, step back, to figure out who you are and what you want. And it is okay if those people around you don't fit into that. Because what you don't want to do is end up living your life for someone else. — Eva Marcille

The trees all whisper, leaves gossiping. The stones are heavy thinkers, the sullen silent types. He used to make up stories for everything in nature, giving it all voices, lives. If the moor wind ever sings, you mustn't listen, not with all of your ears. Use only the edges. Listen the way you'd look out the corners of your eyes. The wind is lonely, love, and always looking for company. — Victoria Schwab

I am happiest when I am working though, when I am being creative. I realized at a very young age what I loved doing. I think it is so important for people to pursue the things that they love and not give up on their dreams. — Josh Peck

And I will love words for their own sake, like 'hyacinth' and 'Piccadilly' and 'onyx.' And I'll have a good old dog, and think what I like, and be part of a different sort of family, with friends, you know? - who understand that things are only worth what you're willing to give up for them. — Rick Elice

I love showing up and giving a performance without the benefit of a lot of rehearsal or dissection. It's fun to me to act on a kind of instinctual level and go straight for the performance. — Ron Perlman

Nicole's door opened, and she stomped down the hall. "I have something to say," she said, giving him the Slitty Eyes of Death. "You're totally unfair, and if I run away, you shouldn't be surprised." "Don't make me put a computer chip in your ear," Liam answered. "It's not funny! I hate you." "Well, I love you, even if you did ruin my life by turning into a teenager," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Did you study for your test?" "Yes." "Good." He looked at his daughter - so much like Emma, way too pretty. Why weren't there convent schools anymore? Or chastity belts? "Want some supper? I saved your plate." She rolled her eyes with all the melodrama a teenager could muster. "Fine. I may as well become a fat pig since I can't ever go on a date." "That's my girl," he said and, grinning, got up to heat up her dinner. — Kristan Higgins

When we started hanging out together, it felt right. You're the one, Kayla - the one I've been looking for, and
now that I've finally found the girl of my dreams, I'm not giving up. — Chrissy Moon

Sometimes in a relationship, we can be so caught up in our feelings for the other person that we squeeze God into the background. It becomes a confusing, emotional mess and we wonder why God isn't giving us more direction, when all the while He is there waiting to be allowed back into first place in our hearts. Only when He is truly in first place are we ready for a God-written love story. — Leslie Ludy

I didn't even think, just went with instinct. Opening my arms, I felt the tiny life placed there. Wrapping him close and tight to my chest, I felt my heart swelling with love. So small, so delicate. Using the tip of my finger, I traced his face, his little lips, his chin and cheeks, his eyes. "You're right, Tea, he is beautiful."

"He has your eyes," she whispered. "We still need to name him."

"Christian Simon Doyle. After your dad and your idiot friend."

Her voice sounded raw when she spoke again. "That's perfect."

"You're perfect. Thank you, Tea, thank you for my son, for our life, thank you for not giving up on me. — L.A. Fiore

I'm like, over love. Crush, smush. I can't. I'm giving up on love at this point. I'm hoping for a crush. Actually, no. I don't want a crush. I want someone to crush on me. — Xosha Roquemore

Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn't gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. "Here," she said.
"Don't you want it?"
"Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I'm giving it to you."
"Why?"
Meghan stood up and got me a fork. "Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?"
"Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it's the very last piece, but you let him have it," I said.
"So it's really amazing cake," said Meghan. "And I want you to have it. — E. Lockhart

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving. — Faith Baldwin

All throughout Scripture we see Jesus loving people whom others deemed foul, broken, dirty, and unworthy...People may criticize you for giving your time and attention to people who are ostracized or considered permanently broken. They may say it's not safe, that they're not worth your time, and that these people gave up the right to be treated well when they made their bad decision. They said that to Jesus too. But while many self-proclaimed followers of God sat back and criticized the openness of Jesus' love for people, he called them out for their lack of it: (Mark 2:14-15). — Jarrid Wilson

I was head over heels in love with her. No, that didn't describe it. I was tear my fucking heart out and throw it at her, beg her to take it into hers. I was falling from the greatest heights with no safety net below. I was giving everything of my own life for hers, giving up every inch of my soul so she could wear it proudly. I was a former king on my knees in front of the queen. A jester begging for a chance. I was powerless, helpless and at her mercy. — Karina Halle

I love you, Godric St. John, and now I'm breaking my word. I will not leave you. You may either come with me to Laurelwood or I'll stay here with you in your musty old house in London and drive you mad with all my talking and relatives and ... and exotic sexual positions until you break down and love me back, for I'm warning you that I'm not giving up until you love me and we're a happy family with dozens of children. — Elizabeth Hoyt

We must always remember that God is Love. "A fool indeed is he who, living on the banks of the Ganga, seeks to dig a little well for water. A fool indeed is the man who, living near a mine of diamonds, spends his life in searching for beads of glass." God is that mine of diamonds. We are fools indeed to give up God for legends of ghosts or flying hobgoblins. It is a disease, a morbid desire. — Swami Vivekananda

Our earth is like a child who has grown up without parents, having no one to guide her ... Some have attempted to help her but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her with no consideration, other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought for their own children who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her with little consideration and then when she shudders of blows her breath. They are offended and raise their fist at God. — William P. Young

Give up being perfect for being authentic. Be who you are. Love who you are. Others will too. — Hal Elrod

After every abortive escape attempt, he returned to his mother, doing so both after the separation from Verlaine and at the end of his life, when he had finally sacrificed his creative gifts by giving up his writing to become a businessman, thus indirectly fulfilling his mother's expectations of him. Although Rimbaud spent the last days of his life in a hospital in Marseille, he had gone back to western France immediately before that, where he was looked after by his mother and sister. The quest for his mother's love ended in the prison of childhood. — Alice Miller

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs. — Tim Kreider

If you love anything better than God you are idolaters: if there is anything you would not give up for God it is your idol: if there is anything that you seek with greater fervor than you seek the glory of God, that is your idol, and conversion means a turning from every idol. — Charles Spurgeon

I don't regret giving up football for acting. I love football and am very proud I played for Morton. But the truth is, I wasn't going to get much higher in football. At the same time, I sensed I could go somewhere in acting. I'm 28, which is young for acting, whereas in football I'd now be near the end of my career. — Martin Compston

After a few (or many) bad relationships, its so easy to shut down, give up, and stop believing that the right person is out there for us. Our hearts yearn to fall in love, but our minds insist its not possible, and we enter into a tug-of-war with ourselves. Its as if one part of us is screaming, Yes! I deserve a great relationship! while another part insists, Ill never find him or her. When our beliefs contradict our desires, we experience an inner conflict that not only paralyzes us, but can actually prevent us from recognizing the possibilities for love that exist all around us. — Arielle Ford

Thank you, Adam," I told him. "Thank you for tearing Tim into small Tim bits. Thank you for forcing me to drink one last cup of fairy bug-juice so I could have use of both of my arms. Thank you for being there, for putting up with me." By that point I wasn't laughing anymore. "Thank you for keeping me from being another of Stefan's sheep - I'll take pack over that any day. Thank you for making the tough calls, for giving me time." I stood up and walked to him, leaning against him and pressing my face against his shoulder.
"Thank you for loving me."
His arms closed around me, pressing flesh painfully hard against bone. Love hurts like that sometimes. — Patricia Briggs

My head, something happened to its insides. It was as if a storm at sea happened, but only for a moment, and only on the inside of my head. My ribcage, something definitely happened there. It was as if it unknotted itself from itself, like the hull of a ship hitting rock, giving way, and the ship that I was opened up inside me and in came the ocean.
He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life.
But he looked really like a girl.
She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life. — Ali Smith

Overall the theme is about never giving in ... not letting anyone tell you what to do or take anything away from you. Always being yourself, whatever that may be. The content obviously takes a darker and romantic approach to relationships about love and loss, as well as overcoming adversity in everyday life. Generally, just being tough and standing up for what you believe. — Ashley Purdy

Paper or razor blade, never give up And just remember just to hold out more A couple years ago I couldn't just control that thought You'd find me buskin' on the street When it was cold outdoors And now I'm sweating on the stage With the sold out tours Writing love songs for the sake of it Never to make a hit — Ed Sheeran

Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It's not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon. — Marlena De Blasi

I love my nation, I cannot see you degraded, weakened any more than you are now. Therefore I am bound for your sake and for truth's to cry, "Hold!" and to raise my voice against this degradation of my race. Give up these weakening mysticism and be strong ... — Swami Vivekananda

Stop strokin' that gun, Kyle," Gator said. "You're makin' me nervous. I'm thinkin' you're about to make love to the damn thing."
"She is purty," Kyle said, giving the gun one last caress, his eye watching the truck ahead. "Slow down a little, and let them get ahead of us, Gator."
"What if they put up a roadblock?" Jonas asked.
Ryland opened one eye. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Can the chatter and let me sleep. We've got swimming to do and I'm getting too old for this shit."
"Do they have sharks off this coast?" Jonas asked.
Sam snickered. "You and those sharks, Jonas."
"I have nightmares, man," Jonas protested.
"I'll feed you to a damn shark if you don't let me sleep," Ryland drawled.
Kadan and Nico exchanged amused glances.
Ryland opened both eyes. "I heard that. I'm not that old. — Christine Feehan

You saved me, you know. Life had me running. Had me by the throat, and I really was falling under, losing hope. And then I met you, and you gave me a reason to keep my head above water. You taught me to swim. You taught me to life. And instead of giving up, I fell in love. I fell under your spell, Kylie, and ever single day since, I've fallen further and further under for you. — Jasinda Wilder

You have been walking the ocean's edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper. Love flows down.
The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes.
Tell me, is the earth worse for giving in like that?
Do not put blankets over the drum.
Open completely. — Rumi

I want everything or nothing. A life for a life, taking one and giving up another without hesitation and beyond recall. Or else better have nothing! — Ivan Turgenev

The High Places," answered the Shepherd, "are the starting places for the journey down to the lowest place in the world. When you have hinds' feet and can go 'leaping on the mountains and skipping on the hills,' you will be able, as I am, to run down from the heights in the gladdest self-giving and then go up to the mountains again. You will be able to mount to the High Places swifter than eagles, for it is only up on the High Places of Love that anyone can receive the power to pour themselves down in an utter abandonment of self-giving. — Hannah Hurnard

She was very fond of thinking and getting at the truth of things, but was so far from being pedantic, so full of youthful ways that from the first moment one began to love all these originalities in her, and to accept them. [ ... ] This naive combination in her of the child and the thinking woman, this childlike and absolutely genuine thirst for truth and justice, and absolute faith in her impulses
all this lighted up her face with a fine glow of sincerity, giving it a lofty, spiritual beauty, and one began to understand that it was not so easy to gauge the full significance of that beauty which was not all at once apparent to every ordinary unsympathetic eye. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To conquer the dangers of giving up, do what your passion moves you to do. — Israelmore Ayivor

I couldn't help but suspect something he'd seen or encountered had changed his view of what had happened between them. It had somehow set him free. And he'd let it fly, that gorgeous blackbird of a love he'd been keeping in a cage. What was it like for him, every day standing outside in the wind and rain to stare at the ocean, yearning for some sign of her, never giving up hope? At The Peak perhaps she'd finally come into view, a ship coming neither toward him nor away, only riding that perfect line between heaven and earth, long enough for him to know that she had loved him, that what they had was real, before slipping out of sight, probably forever. — Marisha Pessl

Jesus came to show us that the gospel explains success in terms of giving, not taking; self-sacrifice, not self-protection; going to the back, not getting to the front. The gospel shows that we win by losing, we triumph through defeat, we achieve power through service, and we become rich by giving ourselves away.
In fact, in gospel-centered living we follow Jesus in laying down our lives for those who hate us and hurt us. We spend our lives serving instead of being served, and seeking last place, not first. Gospel-centered people are those who love giving up their place for others, not guarding their place from others
because their value and worth is found in Christ, not their position. — Tullian Tchividjian

Harry has heard this before. Thelma's voice is dutiful and deliberately calm, issuing small family talk when both know that what she wants to discuss is her old issue, that flared up a minute ago, of whether he loves her or not, or why at least he doesn't need her as much as she does him. But their relationship at the start was established with her in pursuit of him, and all the years since, of hidden meetings, of wise decisions to end it and thrilling abject collapses back into sex, have not disrupted the fundamental pattern of her giving and his taking, of her fearing their end more than he, and clinging, and disliking herself for clinging, and wanting to punish him for her dislike, and him shrugging and continuing to bask in the sun of her love, that rises every day whether he is there or not. He can't believe it, quite, and has to keep testing her. — John Updike

During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was a hand, for others a femur, yet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations a new sense of fragility that fostered compassion. This period lasted a relatively short time in the history of love-about a century-until a doctor named Ignacio da Silva hit on the treatment of inviting people to recline on a couch and giving them a bracing smack on the body part in question, proving to them the truth. The anatomical illusion that had seemed so real slowly disappeared and-like so much we no longer need but can't give up-became vestigial. But from time to time, for reasons that can't always be understood, it surfaces again, suggesting that the Age of Glass, like the Age of Silence, never entirely ended. — Nicole Krauss

We have made some great strides in terms of treating various types of cancer with early detection. The success rate of recovery for many people today is better than it was a decade or two ago so we can't give up. Yes, we would all love a quick "cure all" but that is not reality. Until then, we all are in this together and we have to keep working towards more progress! — Eva LaRue

When I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
3. Admire themselves for living up to it
Brutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on. — John R. Perry

I do like shopping high street, but I do consider the long-term value of a specific piece and, also, one day giving it up for somebody else to love and enjoy. — Erin O'Connor

I cut off your hand. I have been living with your grief and your rage and your pain ever since. I don't think-I don't think I had felt anything for a long time before that, but those emotions at least were familiar to me. Love I am not familiar with. I didn't recognize that feeling until I thought I had lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give up anything to keep you-my lip service to other gods, but my pride, too, and my rage at all gods, everything for you. — Megan Whalen Turner

That's the one thing you wake up with every day: How long have I got left? And that's the saddest thing in the world, because you have this absolute realization that everything you love you're going to have to let go of and give up. I look at my daughter and I think, There's going to be a point where I'm not going to be around for her. Even the thought of that breaks my heart. — Moby

Love means giving up - yielding my preferences, comfort, goals, security, money, energy, or time for the benefit of someone else. — Rick Warren

I loved him.
I couldn't pinpoint what made me so certain, but I knew it then, as surely as I knew my name or the color of the sky or any fact written in a book.
Could he feel it, too?
Maxon broke the kiss and looked at me. "You're so pretty when you are a mess."
I laughed nervously. "Thank you. For that and for the rain and for not giving up."
He ran his fingers along my cheek and nose and chin. "You're worth it. I don't think that you get that. You're worth it to me. — Kiera Cass

May your hand be full for always if only with another hand. May your heart be empty only long enough to give you cause to fill it up again with love. May your soul be lost by you only to be found by God. — Rod McKuen

I'm not saying it will be perfect, it seldom ever is, BUT what's wrong with giving love another chance? I want to make new memories with you, Chase. I want you to show up at my house for a date. A real date. I want to stress over what to wear. I want to miss you when you're not with me. I want to get all giggly whenever you call saying you need to hear my voice one last time before you can go to sleep. I want get jealous because some girl realizes what I've got and tries to convince you ... you can do better. I want to smile when you tell her that she doesn't have a chance ... . -Chasing Memories — Adriana Law

And lying there, her hair in damp strands across her crumpled face, Harriet gave up the long, long struggle to love her father and her aunt.
It was for this loss above all that she wept. She had learned, during the long years of her childhood, to live without receiving love. To live without giving it seemed more than she could bear. — Eva Ibbotson

[Robin Stewart] was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader-don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?-And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up you privicies, your follies and your leasure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are led. — Dorothy Dunnett

My promise to you who pray and serve the Lord cannot be that you will have every blessing you may wish for yourself and your family. But I can promise you that the Savior will draw close to you and bless you and your family with what is best. You will have the comfort of His love and feel the answer of His drawing closer as you reach out your arms in giving service to others. As you bind up the wounds of those in need and offer the cleansing of His Atonement to those who sorrow in sin, the Lord's power will sustain you. His arms are outstretched with yours to succor and bless the children of our Heavenly Father, including those in your family. — Henry B. Eyring

I want to make people feel things when they hear my music I want to give a song to someone who is going through a break up, I want to give a song to someone who loves someone and can't tell them. A song for someone who has just fallen in love and a song for just people who are living their lives. — Taylor Swift

To share out your soul freely, that is what metanoia (a change of mind, or repentance)really refers to: a mental product of love. A change of mind, or love for the undemonstrable. And you throw off every conceptual cloak of self-defense, you give up the fleshly resistance of your ego. Repentance has nothing to do with self-regarding sorrow for legal transgressions. It is an ecstatic erotic self-emptying. A change of mind about the mode of thinking and being. — Christos Yannaras

Take a few minutes and come up with a personal list of what's most important to you. Consider the following: People like family, friends, role models, and mentors (animals count too) Places you've been and loved Places you dream of visiting Activities you love to do and look forward to Beliefs about what is good in life Moments that you've most treasured Values about how the world should be Goals, both for personal achievement and making the world a better place Now take this list and circle four or five items that mean the most to you in terms of giving you a feeling that your life has been and — Julian D. Ford

The acomodador or giving-up point: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress: a trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, a disappointment in love, even a victory that we did not quite understand, can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on. As part of the process of increasing his hidden powers, the shaman must first free himself from that giving-up point and, to do so, he must review his while life and find out where it occured. — Paulo Coelho

I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love. — Elizabeth Strout

Sometimes we tend to be in despair when the person we love leaves us, but the truth is, it's not our loss, but theirs, for they left the only person who wouldn't give up on them. — Melisa Cantiveros

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unkown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. — Luther Standing Bear

Isn't it interesting that emotionally abusive personalities always expect their victim to feel guilt for them so that they can feel sorry for themselves? They live in a constant torture by the demons of fear and regret, and the less they assume responsibility for their own behavior and words, the greater the legion that eventually possesses their soul and leads them to hell before they reach it. A normal communication is a luxury for such individuals, for their spirit is now a hostage to the torture of ignorance, the separation between their brain and their soul. The only thing they can do is manipulate and provoke, because they're being distracted by their new hosts towards pushing away the ones that could take them out of the water where they have chosen to drown themselves when giving up on trust, empathy, compassion and love. No one can save them because they have not clearly stated that they want to be saved. And each human is responsible for his own fate. — Robin Sacredfire

Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor little milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God? — Dylan Thomas

You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost
my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. I blinked, and he sneered at me. "Yeah, your highness. I know what loss is. I've loved that
girl since before she knew me. But I waited. I waited because I didn't want to lie about who I was. I wanted her to know the truth before anything else.
So I waited, and I did my job. For years, I protected her, biding my time, until the day she went into the Nevernever after her brother. And then you
came along. And I saw how she looked at you. And for the first time, I wanted to kill you as much as you wanted to kill me. — Julie Kagawa

Both love of mankind, and respect for their rights are duties; the former however is only a conditional, the latter an unconditional, purely imperative duty, which he must be perfectly certain not to have transgressed who would give himself up to the secret emotions arising from benevolence. — Immanuel Kant

One day I realized that I really needed to stop losing myself in my work and in my addictions. What happens is you just wake up one morning and feel absolutely dead. You can't even drag your soul back into your body. You feel you have negated everything that is wonderful about life. When you have fallen that far, it feels like a miracle when you regain your love of life. That's when you can begin really looking for a relationship. When you can appreciate the whole concept of giving to someone, not just taking. — David Bowie

the danger in loving is in giving someone the ability to destroy you. Because you cannot truly love without giving up some of yourself, and it is a leap of faith to hope that the person you give it to cares enough for it that you keep yourself all in one piece. — Colleen Vanderlinden

Love is important. I didn't have the energy to be giving it to somebody else in a way that they deserved, and I knew that. So I've always been scared to go too far with somebody I care for because I knew there would come a day when I'd need to pick up and finish a painting for the next three months. That day is inevitable. — Dan Colen

Life in God should be a daring adventure of love - a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."15 — Ilia Delio

Are you willing to give up what you love, for who you love? — Big Sean

At one time I was praying for the salvation of sinners, and the Saviour appeared on the cross by me, and talked with me; I laid my hand on his mangled body, and looked up in his smiling face. Another time I was meditating upon the love of God in giving his only Son to die for sinners, and of the beautiful home he was preparing for those who love him, and I seemed to float away, and was set down in the Beautiful City. Oh, the glorious sight that met my view can never be expressed by mortal tongue — Maria Woodworth-Etter

When we are depleted our giving is empty. Today I take a moment to recharge, fill up with love for my life and all of its character so that I may give from a place of overflowing. — Lisa Wimberger

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love - which is the definition of God. In pursuing that goal we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, 'How can I please God?' and, 'Why am I not better?' It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored, for all pleasures diminish with repetition. — Fulton J. Sheen

Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen. — Sarah Addison Allen

Why had I been so afraid? I had not loved enough. I'd been busy, busy, so busy, preparing for life, while life floated by me, quiet and swift as a regatta ... I had had all my time, all my chances. I could never do it again, never make it right. I had not loved enough ... I had not passed up all my chances to give love or receive it, and I had the future, at least, to try to do better. — Lorene Cary

If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be. — Willa Cather

Good, Star, because you may have felt you were the one needing saving, but it was me all along. You saved me. You taught me to love again. The ones you love may do things that upset you. Hell, they may give you a hundred reasons to give up. Thank you for not giving up on me. I may not be good enough. I know I am not the best for you, but you make me want to be the best I can be. I pray that is good enough. Thank you for loving me enough to hold on. - Stefan — Mel Ballew

When people are dying, they call their old enemies and try to forgive them and try to be forgiven by them. They call their old friends and affirm their love for them, as well as detach themselves from them, and they try to get into as free a space as they can so they're really ready to go. They give away all their possessions and are as generous as possible. They give up old hatreds and grudges, and that's a wise intuitive thing, because it's much freer to live like that. — Robert Thurman

If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense and memory left. — Charles Dickens

With emancipation comes the opening up of new possibilities for challenging assumptions over women's appearance and, more radically, the gender order itself. Ventura (She-Thing) comes not only to accept her new "intragender" status but to see it as advantageous -- for dealing with her misandry, for personal growth, and even for becoming a person capable of giving and accepting love. — Jose Alaniz

Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you — Sam Dunn

When you truly feel this equal love for all, when your heart has expanded so much that it embraces the whole of creation, you will certainly not feel like giving up this or that. You will simply drop off from secular life as a ripe fruit drops from the branch of a tree. You will feel that the whole world is your home. — Ramana Maharshi

Archie wasn't waiting for her at the attic. She didn't consider that. He was
probably giving her time to set and collect a trap, about a week or so as she guessed, a testing period. He couldn't trust her just yet, but she could tell that there was also more to it. He needed to distance himself, from her, because he was afraid to love her. That was it. Loving her was his flaw, weakness, and he could not have a weakness, not while at war. He wouldn't show up, not for some time. She knew that. The longer it would take for him to come back, the more he loved her. — Perie Wolford

Closeness to people may look like scary, mind-boggling business, but it doesn't have to be that scary. And it's not that difficult. It even feels good, when we relax and let it happen. It's okay to feel afraid of closeness and love, but it's also okay to allow ourselves to love and feel close to people. It's okay to give and receive love. We can make good decisions about who to love and when to do that. It's okay for us to be who we are around people. Take the risk of doing that. We can trust ourselves. We can go through the awkwardness and friction of initiating relationships. We can find people who are safe to trust. We can open up, become honest, and be who we are. We can even handle feeling hurt or rejected from time to time. We can love without losing ourselves or giving up our boundaries. We can love and think at the same time. We can take off our track shoes. — Melody Beattie

I'm being quite reasonable, Sophie. We love each other, and I'll be damned if I let you toss that away. You're right, we might not be youthful lovers, but by God, I don't want any other woman in my bed but you. We're not old yet, but I want to grow old with you. And while I'd be proud and delighted if you bore me an heir, it doesn't matter to me if that never happens. I'm not giving you up. Not for money, not for an heir, not for age, not for anything. — Monica Burns

When you want full color perception, you must give up preferring some colors and hating others, for you can only hate one aspect of a color, not a whole color, it seems, hate being blind, like 'love. — William Tapley Bennett Jr.

Love teaches you to care for others. It also gives you your best chance to grow up. — Stephanie Dowrick

At any moment I could give up, but I haven't because love for me is an indispensable structure for being. — Masha Tupitsyn

If we could throw away the hate and make love last another day, don't give up just for today, life would be so simple — Demi Lovato

Love is not running away or giving up, it is standing and fighting for every moment. — M.F. Moonzajer

How can he love me then not? He went,he ran. And I cannot bring him back. Yet I left the door metaphorically wide open, hoping he'd come back and bang on it proclaiming, "I want to be here with you. Always." Soon I'm going to have to shutit. For my safety and my sanity. Let go. I don't want to. Won't letting go be just that - letting go? Giving up? Admitting failure? Admitting that it is really, truly over? — Freya North

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it's not owing like a debt to one person
it's really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant
so each person that keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up
and each expression of friendship or love may be the one that makes all the difference. — Will Schwalbe

I still love you," he says, "but I have to go my own way." "So you want to break up?" I ask, trembling. "I guess so," he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. "You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken." I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. — Lena Dunham

Thus it was up to God, to Him alone
in His own ways - by one or both, I say -
to give man back his whole life and perfection.
But since a deed done is more prized the more
it manifests within itself the mark
of the loving heart and goodness of the doer,
the Everlasting Love, whose seal is plain
on all the wax of the world was pleased to move
in all His ways to raise you up again.
There was not, nor will be, from the first day
to the last night, an act so glorious
and so magnificent, on either way.
For God, in giving Himself that man might be
able to raise himself, gave even more
than if he had forgiven him in mercy.
All other means would have been short, I say,
of perfect justice, but that God's own Son
humbled Himself to take on mortal clay.
-Paradiso, Canto VII — Dante Alighieri

The first duty of a Christian, of a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, is to deny himself. To deny oneself means to give up one's bad habits, to root out of the heart all that ties us to the world; not to cherish bad desires and thoughts; to quench and suppress bad thoughts; to avoid occasions of sin; not to do or desire anything from self-love but to do everything out of love for God. To deny oneself means, according to the Apostle Paul, to be dead to sin and the world, but alive to God. — Innocent Of Alaska

Ugh. Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyone exhausting themselves, miserably haemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: no longer tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. [...] What is the point of entire nation rushing round for six weeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation then fails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted merchandise as fallout? If gifts and cards were completely eradicated, then Christmas as pagan-style twinkly festival to distract from lengthy winter gloom would be lovely. But if government, religious bodies, parents, tradition, etc. insist on Christmas Gift Tax to ruin everything why not make it that everyone must go out and spend £500 on themselves then distribute the items among their relatives and friends to wrap up and give to them instead of this psychic-failure torment? — Helen Fielding

Thank you, Ocean," I said to the sea. "Thank you for rolling relentlessly around the world and showing us how everything's connected. Thank you, Stars," I said looking up. "For shining down from such a distance. You show us how small we are and yet how magnificent it is to be alive. Thank you, Earth, for holding everything all together and giving us a place to walk, and sleep, and love." I squeezed Josh's hand. "And thank you, Josh, for being earth and water and stardust and for coming to me in the uniqueness of yourself. — Catou Martine

Her shift in thinking was clearly conflicted. It must have been difficult to disavow something for which she had a deep love and in which she had been immersed so much of her life. — Karen Swallow Prior

Give me faith to step aside and let You work, especially in those times when I desire to influence, to persuade, to make my opinion known. Help me to be silent, trusting Your Holy Spirit to be at work in the hearts of those I love. Thank You for never giving up on prodigals, for loving them even more than we as mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters can love them. — Shelly Beach

Is there any chance the tutor is, you know, gay?" I held my breath, waiting for his answer.

"What, like I hand out a survey?" He laughed when I blinked, worried I'd just offended him. "I'm just messing with ya. I'm pretty sure he doesn't play for my team. Though if he did, he'd be a little out of my league." He sucked in and patted his stomach, which was made somewhat flat by his efforts. "Nothing a couple of weeks at the gym and giving up bread for the weekend wouldn't take care of."

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up."

He sighed. "I love being a guy. Need to lose five pounds? Go without ketchup for a couple of weeks. Problem. Solved."

We shouldered our backpacks and trudged up the stairs. "I really hate you right now. — Tammara Webber