Love Without Response Quotes & Sayings

Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus' response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control. — Richard Rohr

I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don't have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel's response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you. — Rachel Corrie

I love talking to all the kids, and have enjoyed the enthusiasm and response from their teachers as well. — Scott Cohen

God's truth!' one side shouts.
'More loving!' comes the response.
'God's truth!'
'More loving!'
'God's truth!'
'More loving!'
But there shouldn't be a clash between 'God's truth' and 'More loving.' In the Bible, Truth and Love are two sides of the same coin. You can't have one without the other. God's Truth is all about God's Love for us and the Love we ought to have for one another. We are being untrue to that Truth if we treat people unlovingly. And we are missing out on the full extent of that Love if we try to divorce it from Ultimate Truth. — Justin Lee

In two of your poems you called that central
Passage of womanhood a wound,
Instead of a curtain guarding a silken
Trail of sighs. How many men,
Upon regarding such beauty, helplessly
Touching it, recklessly needing
To enter its warmth again and again,
Have assumed it embodies their own ache
Of absence, the personal
Gash that has punished their lives.
So endowed of anatomy, any woman
Who has been loved
Knows that her tenderest blush
Of tissue is a luxe burden of have.
Although it bleeds, this is only to cleanse,
To prepare yet another nesting for love.
It is not a wound, friend.
It is a home for you.
It is a way into the world. — Michele Wolf

I went out to Bali, and I cast all of these supporting roles. I love that stuff. I just love actors. And then, Ryan Murphy asked me to direct second unit for him on Eat Pray Love. I was already booked on something else, but I joined them later. And then, I wrote him a thank you email and I got no response. I was like, "Okay, that's it." We didn't interact much on set either. — Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Life is full of painful events, and people who have lost their way and hurt others. Our pain is not lessened when we respond with hatred. In fact, the opposite occurs: When we hate people who hurt us, we come to resemble what we hate, or worse, and then we suffer all the more. What is evil is our response. We have choices, and love is the most powerful eliminator of all. — Bernie Siegel

I love the creative, whole-foods recipes in But I Could Never Go Vegan! Kristy Turner has heard all the excuses and has a response for each. It's true, no life is complete without the occasional calzone-but stuff 'em with Kristy's Buffalo Cauliflower and Cashew Blue Cheese and you can have calzones and be vegan too. Get ready for your taste buds to explode. — Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Machinations are divined. Response is by nature, nurture, experience and if sought peer pressure. You are the owner of free will. Choose. — Truth Devour

Your life experience is unfolding in the precise response to the vibrations that radiate as a result of your thoughts, whether you know it is or not. — Esther Hicks

Honesty does not always bring a response of love, but it is absolutely essential to it. — Ray Blanton

But there is a beauty even in loving without response because that kind of love is truly selfless. When we love with no expectation or promise of reciprocity, we know what it means to sacrifice and deny ourselves in ways we wouldn't otherwise. — Matt Chandler

Meg," he whispered. "It wouldn't be real love if there weren't the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn't choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That's why there's evil in this world, because there's free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Real love isn't a payment. It isn't a response to your accomplishments or anything else. It's a gift without strings. — Lisa Wingate

You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little," he had told Caroline, in response to her quandary over the riddles of life. "The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know. . . . Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough. . . . So questions and so answers your affectionate grandfather." Adams — David McCullough

Time seemed to stop; the world around them stilled. There was only her. His thumb caressed at her lips, the lips he wanted to kiss.
Katianna rolled her face in his palm - a caressing nuzzle and he stilled, his breath froze in his chest.
A response. A submissive one at that. His heart, stilled fractured by that single nuance, but his loins burst with a wave of warmth.
A response - it had been a response. Oh fuck he had to kiss her. His whole body was screaming for her now. — Talon P.S.

You're learning to be nourished by the love you give, not by the validation offered in response to your giving. — Matthew Kahn

Some psychologists argue that the idea of God is a response to our emotional needs, but this presumption is backwards. Our emotional fluctuations are a psychological response to our lack of love for God. If God is everything, what else could we possibily want? — Tarek Saab

Had Martha Foley returned William [James Sidis]'s passion as Margaret [Engemann] did Norbert [Wiener]'s, perhaps the two prodigies would have had more in common in the long run. ... In the life of a prodigy, perhaps more than in the average life, a marriage or a requited love is the greatest single factor that can heal the old childhood wounds. William and Norbert's response to their childhood and teenage rejections and humiliations was to retreat into the painless world of ideas, where successes and satisfactions abounded. A successful love affair could be the key to reentry into the world of feeling, bridging the gap between the cerebral and the emotional lives. — Amy Wallace

The swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no ... when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart ... and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape ... or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth - then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth. — Walt Whitman

When you accept somebody's offer for help, whether it's in the form of food, crash space, money, or love, you have to trust the help offered. You can't accept things halfway and walk through the door with your guard up. When you openly, radically trust people, they not only take care of you, they become your allies, your family. Sometimes people will prove themselves untrustworthy. When that happens, the correct response is not: Fuck! I knew I couldn't trust anybody! The correct response is: Some people just suck. Moving right along. — Amanda Palmer

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response. — Terry Gilliam

Gratitude goes beyond the 'mine' and 'thine' and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

(Later, Giddle's response when I told her I was in love: "Oh God, I'm so sorry. Love is awful. It ruins every normal thing, everything but itself. It makes you crazy and for nothing, because it's so disappointing. But good luck with that.") — Rachel Kushner

Falling apart is curling up into a fetal position and staying in bed for a week. What you were doing is having the emotional response an individual has to the loss of someone they love. We cry to give voice to our pain. — Anna Quindlen

I pray that Christian parents will heed the message of this parable and treat their children with that kind of love, even when they disagree on issues like homosexuality. If we can't get this right within our own families, how are we supposed to get it right on a larger scale? A loving response must start at home. — Justin Lee

You gotta promise to never leave me. I-I ... you just gotta."
Her response is, "You have to promise to try to love me back. What you're doing to me ... that's not how you treat a person you love, Twitch."
I've loved you since you were six.
Kissing her once more, I tell her without hesitation, "If you promise to never leave me, I will love you. And be good to you. I'll treat you like a queen."
My queen. I heard somewhere that a king only bows
down to his queen. And I'm bowing down to Lexi. My chest aches. I don't know if I like this love thing. — Belle Aurora

If the one thing was right, everything elses must surely be right; the thing was axiomatic. It was true that happiness had often to be wooed, pleaded for, struggled for; but he took it for grantetd that a woman was made like that - she did no come halway to meet desire, or if she did, there was something wrong with her. She shrank instinctively from passion, but her shrinking inflamed it in spite of herself; then, when she reluctantly yielded, here compassion prompted her response. No passion without compassion, no compassion without love, so that her passion was proof positive of her loev. Since every act of love was an act of compliance, it was right to be grateful for it - her surrender was so beautiful - an intoxicating compliment that filled one with a perpetual consciousness of achievement. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Charlus takes the narrator's chin and slides his magnetized fingers up to the ears "like a barber's fingers." This trivial gesture, which I begin, is continued by another part of myself; without anything interrupting it physically, it branches off, shifts from a simple function to a dazzling meaning, that of the demand for love. Meaning (destiny) electrifies my hand: I am about to tear open the other's opaque body, oblige the other (whether there is a response, a withdrawal, or mere acceptance) to enter into the interplay of meaning: I am about to make the other speak. In the lover's realm, there is no acting out: no propulsion, perhaps even no pleasure
nothing but signs, a frenzied activity of language: to institute, on each furtive occasion, the system (the paradigm) of demand and response. — Roland Barthes

As an author the question I get asked the most is, "why do you write?" My knee jerk response is, "Because I love it," which is true, but not the whole truth.
So here is my revised response to that question; "I write for the thirteen year old me who hated reading and craved something different than the boring literature I was forced to read for school. I write to see something I want to read exist in the world. I write because it becomes unbearable to hold so many stories in my head without a way to express them, but most importantly, I write to be true to myself. — Day Parker

To fear only God's power with trembling and dread without fearing (or respecting) His astonishing love is an incomplete response that diminishes our experience and enjoyment of Him. — David Jeremiah

The King's hand shot out so fast the eye could barely track it, and somehow, even without sight, he got the trajectory right, clamping a hold on the throat of his fighter. He didn't even look in Vishous's direction, his focus remaining on Xcor.
In response, Vishous didn't defend himself, even as he was forced to gasp for breath, his goateed jaw dropping open.
"Don't you love it when people know their places," Wrath said to Xcor tightly. "When they understand those moments when they need to keep their fucking mouths shut."
Xcor had to smile. Wrath and he were kin in some ways, weren't they.
"Aye, my Lord," he murmured. — J.R. Ward

This is what we love in friends. We love to the point that human conscience feels guilty if we do not love the person who is loving us, and if that love is not returned - without demanding any physical response other than the marks of affectionate good will. — Augustine Of Hippo

Cancer is another forbidden or "whisper" topic. I read about a writer named Emily McDowell who said the worst part of being diagnosed with lymphoma wasn't feeling sick from chemo or losing her hair. "It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn't know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it." In response, Emily created "empathy cards." I love them all but these two are my favorites, making me want to laugh and cry simultaneously. — Sheryl Sandberg

Without emotional response, love is an act of self-deceiving self-satisfaction by an unsatisfied self. — Mohammed Ali Bapir

Saint Thomas Aquinas remarks that "love is born of an earnest consideration of the object loved." And: "Love follows knowledge."3 Love is an emotional response aroused in the will by visions of the good. Contrary to what is often said, love is never blind, though it may not see rightly. It cannot exist without some vision of the beloved. — Dallas Willard

When you consider someone without assumptions, your inner antenna picks up a new signal. Instead of tuning in to someone's personality, you tune in to his or her essence. This essence is spirit, and when you detect it, the natural response is love. — Deepak Chopra

Christ's incarnation was less a reaction or response than it was a proactive demonstration of love: — John S. Dickerson

If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you. — Marianne Williamson

Love is very much perceived as "I couldn't control myself; it's love." But you can. Everything you do in response is a choice. — Natalie Portman

Prayer is the human response to the perpetual outpouring of love by which God lays siege to every soul. — Richard J. Foster

Love always precedes repentance. Divine love is a catalyst for our turning, our healing. Where fear & threat may gain our compliance, love captures our heart. It changes the heavy burden of the "have-to's" of imposed obedience to the "get-to's", a joyful response to the genuine love of God. It is in the security of this love we find Sabbath (rest). — Michael M. Rose

Our job as mothers is to do the best we can to teach our children that life is better and friendships are richer when we treat others with kindness, when we remember to share, and when we use nice words. To remember that every person we come in contact with may have a few cracks in their hearts even if we can't see them and that love is always the best response. But — Melanie Shankle

What victims need are not self-produced positive statements but God's statements about his response to their pain. How can you be rid of these dysfunctional emotions and their effects? How can you be rid of your disgrace? God's grace to you dismantles the beliefs that give disgrace life. Grace re-creates what violence destroyed. Martin Luther writes that "the love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it." One-way love is the change agent you need. Grace transforms and heals; and healing comes by hearing God's statements to you, not speaking your own statements to yourself. — Justin S. Holcomb

As we love more genuinely and deeply, giving becomes the obvious and natural response. — Francis Chan

Love, friendship, respect, admiration are the emotional response of one man to the virtues of another, the spiritual payment given in exchange for the personal, selfish pleasure which one man derives from the virtues of another man's character. Only a brute or an altruist would claim that the appreciation of another person's virtues is an act of selflessness, that as far as one's own selfish interest and pleasure are concerned, it makes no difference whether one deals with a genius or a fool, whether one meets a hero or a thug, whether one marries an ideal woman or a slut. — Ayn Rand

The thing you have to remember about artists...is never to trust their immediate response. Whatever the news, their reaction will be self-protective. The mask goes on, and you see only what they let you see. These creatures carry their emotions around in a violin-case, reserving their only honest expression for the public stage. In private, they turn emotion on and off at will. Never believe an artist when he weeps or declares love. It's all a grand performance. Treat their upsets as you would a child's tantrums. Console, then instruct. Show compassion when it's called for, firmness when it runs out. Give them an illusion of your love for them - but never love itself, or they will devour you. — Norman Lebrecht

That the Father and Son would love sinners that much is beyond our comprehension
but it ought to awaken a response of love and gratitude within our hearts that will change our lives forever! — Dave Hunt

When I was a kid, I used to love it when one of my friends would jump out from behind a door and try to scare me. I always did the same thing in response. — Patrick Carman

God's grace comes first. His love is prevenient to our response;his forgiveness awakens our repentance. — James Runcie

I am no wise man. Every day shows me how little I know about life, and how wrong I can be. But there are things I know to be true. I know I will die. And I know that the only sane response to such a horror is to love. — Nando Parrado

The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god ... And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love's bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother's initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile ... A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response. — Huston Smith

Night after night, through years of performing and directing, I've stood in awe of the audience, of its capacity for response. As if by magic, masks fall away, faces become vulnerable, receptive. Filmgoers do not defend their emotions, rather they open to the storyteller in ways even their lovers never know, welcoming laughter, tears, terror, rage, compassion, passion, love, hate
the ritual often exhausts them. — Robert McKee

Never in the known history of man has a people or nation stockpiled weapons and in the end not used them. But if we use the weapons we have stockpiled it will be the end of nations and peoples if not the end of the whole race. Never has the human family so urgently needed a transformation of consciousness. Those who devote themselves to contemplative meditation are performing a most basic and loving service. It is a very real response to the call to love and to act. — M. Basil Pennington

Why are we here? We, all of us, are here because of the Creator's love, who seeks both our flourishing and our response of love and gratitude. "Find out what pleases the Lord," Paul told the Ephesians. We are here to please God. It brings God pleasure to see us thrive, and we thrive by living as God intended. — Philip Yancey

Simon Lewis, are you forgetting that you were a mundane when I started dating you? A rather scrawny mundane with terrible fashion sense, I should point out. And then you were a vampire, and I still dated you. Then you were a mundane again, but this time with freaking amnesia. And still, inexplicably, I fell in love with you all over again. What could possibly make you think I have any standards left when it comes to you?"
"Uh, thank you, I think?"
"'Thank you' is the correct response. And also 'I love you, too, Isabelle — Cassandra Clare

The mature response to the problem of existence is love. — Erich Fromm

If I am able to look at the world with the eyes of God's love and discover that God's vision is not that of a stereotypical landowner or patriarch but rather that of an all-giving and forgiving father who does not measure out his love to his children according to how well they behave, then I quickly see that my only true response can be deep gratitude. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

There was still one response, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To find a feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the purpose of all the things she loved on earth ... To find a consciousness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she would be of his ... No, not Francisco d'Anconia, not Hank Rearden, not any man she had ever met or admired ... A man who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never felt, but would have given her life to experience. — Ayn Rand

Love is our response to our highest values. The noblest love is born out of admiration of another's values. — Ayn Rand

I always work directly from life, partly because I really enjoy having an interaction with the person in front of me but also because I love having a direct response to shape and color. — Mary Beth McKenzie

When you love what's deeper, your response is direct. There won't be a fear in dropping directly into the deeper. — John De Ruiter

The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living. — David O. McKay

The study of theology is not merely a theoretical exercise of the intellect. It is a study of the living God, and of the wonders of all his works in creation and redemption. We cannot study this subject dispassionately! We must love all that God is, all that he says, and all that he does. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" (Deut. 6:5). Our response to the study of the theology of Scripture should be that of the psalmist who said, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!" (Ps. 139:17). In the study of the teachings of God's Word, it should not surprise us if we often find our hearts spontaneously breaking forth in expressions of praise and delight like those of the psalmist. — Wayne A. Grudem

And more than that, Bodee left me with hope. For love. For wanting someone to touch me again and to lie with me without fear as my first response. Because Bodee slept in his sneakers, because Bodee asked for a kiss instead of just taking it, and because he kept space between us. He danced with two fingers until I asked for three or four ... and his hand on my hip.
I know we're both still broken. Both of us. But Bodee's got the glue to make us whole.
He is love. — Courtney C. Stevens

Love is an involuntary response to virtue. — Stefan Molyneux