Quotes & Sayings About Loving Herself

My smile faded as we reached Ellsberg and I realized I would see Farah within minutes. Suddenly, I was terrified.
"We've been apart for a month," I said after Judd called Cooper to say we were nearly there. "While Farah made a great life for herself, I was letting myself starve to death in a shit motel. I'll ruin everything for her and she'll stop loving me."
"Angel, your sister needs you too."
"No, she doesn't," I said, panicking now. "She's got Cooper. She's got school and friends. I'm not good at anything. I'll mess everything up."
"Farah sees what I do and that's why she needs you. — Bijou Hunter

He went on loving her," she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone else. "He didn't forget her." "Of course he didna forget her." She opened her eyes to see Ian's long face and kind brown eyes six inches away. A broad work-worn hand rested on hers, warm and hard, a hand even larger than her own. "Neither did we," he said. — Diana Gabaldon

As the sunlight raced across the brilliant Savannah sky, the day unfolded like a beautiful yet painfully wrapped gift. Momma had left this world and set herself free, and in doing so, she had set me free too. As much as I missed her and wished I could hear her laughter one more time, I believed she was out there in the big bright somewhere, watching me, cheering for me. Loving me. — Beth Hoffman

A woman, who considers herself to be mature, has every right to insist certain respectful expectations be met by a man, but not if her behavior is consistently childish, selfish, foolish or disrespectful. Man and woman should strive to bring values to the table that are worthy of mutual honor. Mature men won't tolerate nonsense, but baby-boys will. — T.F. Hodge

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me,
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,
Have put on black and loving mourners be,
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.
And truly not the morning sun of heaven
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,
Nor that full star that ushers in the even,
Doth half that glory to the sober west,
As those two mourning eyes become thy face:
O! let it then as well beseem thy heart
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,
And suit thy pity like in every part.
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,
And all they foul that thy complexion lack — William Shakespeare

The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others. When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other's truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love. — Bell Hooks

I doubt if Mrs. Wiggins ever appeared more truly heroic than at that moment. Ordinarily the most peace-loving of a peace-loving race, when she had pledged herself to a cause which she thought right she was capable of taking a firm stand even in the face of the most determined opposition. Few other cows, I am certain, would have cared to address that angry mob. Fortunately, she was able to address them and be heard, for Bertram was for the moment engaged with the four animals who had run upstairs to attack him. — Walter R. Brooks

Later, the talk turned to all the other guys/girls who were currently hot for the two of them. 'There's this total dweeb named Robert who's always calling me, and I feel bad because he's really nice, but I'm totally not interested,' Phoebe told Pablo.

'Believe me, I know what that's like,' Pablo told Phoebe. 'There's this girl at Hunter who's, like, obsessed with me. She's, like, this big fat girl. Ass like a truck. She's always writing me these love letters. Maybe I should fuck her. You know, just to be nice.' (Smile, smile.)

'You're so bad.' (Phoebe shaking her head; Pablo loving it; Phoebe loving it, too. What was more ego-enhancing than making dumb jokes at the expense of ugly women? Phoebe could never decide whom she hated more--other people or herself.) — Lucinda Rosenfeld

I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom. — Richard Brautigan

He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea - his last words - his distant bow to her as he reached the door - the sense that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train behind it - joy in the impression that it was really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from. They were parted all the same, but - Dorothea drew a deep breath and felt her strength return - she could think of him unrestrainedly. At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, — George Eliot

Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release ...
So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love
loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist. — Jonathan Safran Foer

How could I leave my loving, erratic, harebrained mother to fend for herself? — Stephenie Meyer

It was always the same; other people gave up loving before she did. They got spoilt, or else they went away; in any case, they were partly to blame. Why did it happen so? She herself never changed; when she loved anyone, it was for life. She could not understand desertion; it was something so huge, so monstrous that the notion of it made her little heart break. — Emile Zola

When we live with another person, we should help each other transform the internal formations that we have produced in each other. By practicing understanding and loving speech, we can help each other a great deal. Happiness is no longer an individual matter. If the other person is not happy, we will not be happy either. Therefore, to transform the internal formations in the other is to bring about our own happiness as well. A person can create internal formations in her partner, and her partner can do so for her, and if they continue to create knots in each other, one day they'll have no happiness left. A person needs to recognize quickly any newly formed knot inside herself. She should take the time to observe it and, with her partner's help, transform the internal formation. She might say, "Darling, I have an internal formation. Can you please help me?" This is easy when the states of mind of both partners are still light and not loaded with many internal formations. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.
Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? (140) — Toni Morrison

Louie's mother, Louise, took a different tack. Louie was a copy of herself, right down to the vivid blue eyes. When pushed, she shoved; sold a bad cut of meat, she'd march down to the butcher, frying pan in hand. Loving mischief, she spread icing over a cardboard box and presented it as a birthday cake to a neighbor, who promptly got the knife stuck. When Pete told her he'd drink his castor oil if she gave him an empty candy box. "You only asked for the box, honey," she said with a smile. "That's all I got." And she understood Louie's restiveness. One Halloween, she dressed as a boy and raced around town trick-or-treating with Louie and Pete. A gang of kids, thinking she was one of the local toughs, tackled her and tried to steal her pants. Little Louise Zamperini, mother of four, was deep in the melee when the cops picked her up for brawling. — Laura Hillenbrand

Esmerine go out briefly to relieve herself, then return and pull off her shift again, her breasts silvery raindrops spilling down her ribs in the moonlight, over Bahram's hands as he warmed them, in that somnolent world of second-watch sex that was one of the beautiful spaces of daily life, the salvation of sleep, the body's dream, so much warmer and more loving than any other part of the day that it was sometimes hard in the mornings to believe it had really happened, that he and Esmerine, so severe in dress and manner, Esmerine who ran the women at their work as hard as Khalid had at his most tryrannical, and who never spoke to Bahram or looked at him except in the most businesslike way, as was only fitting and proper, had in fact been transported together with him to whole other worlds of rapture, in the depths of the night in their bed. As he watched her work in the afternoons, Bahram thought: love changed everything. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. — John Berger

Madonna Kolbenschlag suggest that if an awakened woman forgoes innocence and denial, if she refuses to make compromises with herself and defect to patriarchy, then her only option becomes deviance. I chose deviance. I chose to be a loving dissident. To dance the dance of dissidence. This stance can be assumed from the inside or the outside. Whichever place we choose, the important thing is having the sustained will to be, act, and speak from the ground of our feminine souls. — Sue Monk Kidd

If you've been exiled, why don't you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don't believe that. It means you were exiled and died ... Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! ... ' Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: 'You are free ... am I holding you?' Then she objected to him: 'No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I'll be free ... — Mikhail Bulgakov

The very fact that they were naturally caring and loving would be the milestone that weighed them down. The formula is perfect. The nurse becomes willing to sacrifice herself in the patient. But the patient isn't suffering from an external illness, he's suffering from self-inflicted wounds. The nurse wants to prevent him from this pain. The patient wants her to feel the pain, too. — Anonymous

If they lived through this, she promised to herself she'd be different. More open. Less worried. More fun. Less angry. More loving. — J.A. Konrath

The place Joanne is building inside [herself] has rooms for all of this. Not just rooms. Beautiful ones. For Karl and Jerry and Karen and Nate in his cowboy hat and the hot-tub guy and movie directors and old-lady healers and people trying to love their asses and people who think they're stupid for it. In these rooms, each thing that looks crazy or stupid will be like a drawing you give your mother, regarded with complete acceptance and put on the wall. Not because it is good but because it is trying to understand something. In these rooms, there will be understanding. In these rooms, each madness and stupidity will be unfolded from its knot and smoothed with loving hands until the true thing inside lies revealed. — Mary Gaitskill

In the case of an artistic practice that performs female narcissism..., the threat lies in its making superfluous the arbiters of artistic value. Already presuming her desirability, [she] obviates the modern critical system; loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her artistic 'value — Amelia Jones

When a man can listen to a woman's feelings without getting angry and frustrated, he gives her a wonderful gift.
He makes it safe for her to express herself.
The more she is able to express herself, the more she feels heard and understood, and the more she is able to give a man the loving trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement that he needs. — John Gray

Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.
Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me? — Toni Morrison

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Even so, she would go on loving him, because for the first time in her life, she knew freedom. She could love him, even if he never knew; she did not need his permission to miss him, to think of him every moment of the day, to await him for the evening meal, and to worry about the plots that people could be weaving against the foreigner.
This was freedom: to feel what the heart desired, with no thought to the opinion of the rest. She had fought with her neighbors and her friends about the stranger's presence in her house; there was no need to fight against herself. — Paulo Coelho

His mother's death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason. His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking. — George Orwell

The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.
[S]he wanted only her own strawberry farm, the fragrance of the fields and the cedar trees, and to live simply in this place forever.
[S]he had fallen into loving him long before she knew herself, though it occurred to her now that she might never know herself, that perhaps no one ever does, that such a thing might not be possible.
[Y]ou should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart
or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this
silence is better. — David Guterson

If the man be really the weaker vessel, and the rule is necessarily in the wife's hands, how is it then to be? To tell the truth, I believe that the really loving, good wife never finds it out. She keeps the glamor of love and loyalty between herself and her husband, and so infuses herself into him that the weakness never becomes apparent either to her or to him or to most lookers-on. — Charlotte Mary Yonge

But the church, like a tender, loving mother holds aloof from active punishment herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the civil law, and there must be at least someone to have pity on him. The church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment alone contains the truth ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She was my mother. Never before this had I looked at her and thought of her as someone separate, as someone else. Now, so near to her that I could smell the subtle scent of her perfume and see the clear, faint texture of her skin, I realized for the first time that I was looking at another human being who was complete within herself. She was my mother, but she was more than just a loving and convenient extension of me and my needs. — Florence Engel Randall

Many times a woman can find herself latching on to the wrong kind of man because she's never experienced a healthy loving relationship with a man before. The initial example should come from a father/daughter relationship. A father's love teaches a girl how a man's love should feel. A father's love, protects, provides security and let's her know she's valued. — Stephan Labossiere

Just like the sea, she was turbulent and wild, angry and loving. She felt every sensation, but it was only here, with water around her, that she dared let herself feel so strongly, so passionately. — Christine Feehan

There had been very little in Douglas Ashton's life that he ever wanted. Most of it he could obtain, the rest of it, a loving mother and father, his sister back from the dead, was unobtainable.
At that moment, he found himself wanting something.
And what he wanted was for Julia to lose herself with him.
He wanted this stubborn, tempestuous Julia Fairfax to disappear and an acquiescent, but still tempestuous, Julia Ashton to take her place. He wanted to brand her with his name and shackle her with his ring.
Did she not understand that was a good thing? — Kristen Ashley

You've always asked me to wait, as if we had time in abundance. But time is too precious, Perry. We've wasted years, when we could have been with each other. Don't you understand how much even one day of loving each other is worth? Some people are separated by distances they can never cross. All they can do is dream about each other for a lifetime, never having what they want most. How foolish, how wasteful to have love within your reach and not take it! She clamped her teeth on her trembling bottom lip to steady herself — Lisa Kleypas

If I could be anyone, I'd be Abigail Adams." "Because she did it all?" he asked. "Because she was glad to do it all and never complained, that's how committed she was to what John was doing. I know - as a woman, a feminist, I'm not supposed to admire a woman who'd do all that for a man, but she was doing it for herself. As if that was the contribution she could make to the founding of America. And they wrote each other letters - not just romantic, loving letters, but letters asking each other for advice. They were first good friends, two people who respected each other's brains, and then obviously lovers, since they had a slew of kids. True partners, long before true partners were fashionable. — Robyn Carr

Listen," she said taking my hand. "Tell me: you wouldn't have behaved like this, would you? You would not have abandoned a girl who had come to you of herself, you would not have thrown into her face a shameless taunt at her weak foolish heart? You would have taken care of her? You would have realized that she was alone, that she did not know how to look after herself, that she could not guard herself from loving you, that it was not her fault, not her fault-that she had done nothing ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's about waking up. A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she's living. She dreams along, loving the exuberant life
of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious to herself
and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive. She notices her own awareness. And she notices that she is set down here, mysteriously, in a going world.
— Annie Dillard

To commit herself to becoming "an apostle of Joy" when humanly speaking she might have felt at the brink of despair, was heroic indeed. She could do so because her joy was rooted in the certitude of the ultimate goodness of God's loving plan for her. And though her faith in this truth did not touch her soul with consolation, she ventured to meet the challenges of life with a smile. Her one lever was her blind trust in God. — Brian Kolodiejchuk

Sigmund Freud was once asked to describe the characteristics of maturity, and he replied: lieben un arbeiten ("loving and working"). The mature adult is one who can love and allow himself or herself to be loved and who can work productively, meaningfully, and with satisfaction. — David Elkind

You think you'll be ok because in the end your mother will still be your mother. You don't know that she'll be changed. Loving you still, of course, but what you find out later is that her love now tastes different from all that time spent training to withstand distance, containing herself in order to live with impotence so strong, the phrase "so near and yet so far" was made for it. You think if you'd known all this you'd be able to live with the results of your choices, never again wondering what would've happened if you'd never left. — Anjanette Delgado

Tremendous happiness and peace of mind are the results of loving service to others. Nobody can live fully and happily who lives only unto himself or herself. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester, too, would rather have been alone than accept anyone else. — Anne Perry

Kay was showing this, exaggerating her whims- loving herself through Leila, really. — Anais Nin

Finding Will, loving Will, had been a revelation. Like finding the other half of herself. Having his grounded wisdom to draw on when she needed it, knowing that no matter what, she had him to come home to, that his laughter was part of her world and that the passion and courage and joy he ignited in her were here to stay, had transformed her perception of herself. — Sarah Mayberry

She guarded herself against it, she supposed, the way she guarded herself against everything difficult or painful - by being loving, by being solicitous. — Sue Miller

A woman is soft, kind, and loving. When you are in danger, she is always ready to sacrifice herself to save you. So never forget to respect her. — Debasish Mridha

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day
I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing
it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.)
But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and
the catch-22
I craved Andie to make me feel better,
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. — Gillian Flynn

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

Seeing a black transgender woman embracing and loving everything about herself might be inspiring to some other folks. — Laverne Cox

Is she the only one at fault? For though she's spoiled, and dreadfully so, A girl can't spoil herself, you know. Who spoiled her, then? Ah, who indeed? Who pandered to her every need? Who turned her into such a brat? Who are the culprits? Who did that? Alas! You needn't look so far To find out who these sinners are. They are (and this is very sad) Her loving parents, MUM and DAD. And that is why we're glad they fell Into the garbage chute as well. — Roald Dahl

She held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely. I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay. — H. Raven Rose

She surrendered then to the pleasure, giving herself over to the power of his touch. Dragging him with her into a sensual haze, reveling in the desire, hiding the strength of her reaction from the man loving her body. Because the truth was that she was no longer in control. Somehow, Evan had wormed his way past her defenses. He'd snuck in and nestled near her heart. And that scared the hell out of her. — Jessica Scott

And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.
As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.
The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.
Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head. — Victoria Kahler

Adieu," he said, "this is goodbye. I'll never forget you, never."
She stood silent. He looked at her and saw her eyes full of tears. He turned away.
At this moment she wasn't ashamed of loving him, because her physical desire had gone and all she felt towards him now was pity and a profound, almost maternal tenderness. She forced herself to smile. "Like the Chinese mother who sent her son off to war telling him to be careful 'because war has its dangers,' I'm asking you, if you have any feelings for me, to be as careful as possible with your life."
Because it is precious to you?" he asked nervously.
Yes. Because it is precious to me. — Irene Nemirovsky

What does a woman do as she waits for her man? She may wash her hair, put on makeup, choose the kind of outfit any woman would be eager to try on, spray on perfume, and look at herself one last time in the mirror. If she does these things, it's when she and the man she's waiting for are in love. It's different when a woman waits for a man she still loves but who has broken up with her, because the pure joy of it is missing. Loving someone is like carving words into the back of your hand. Even if the others can't see the words, they, like glowing letters, stand out in the eyes of the person who's left you. Right now, that's enough for me. — Kyung-ran Jo

From that evening, Swann understood that the feeling which Odette had once had for him would never revive, that his hopes of happiness would not be realised now. And the days on which, by a lucky chance, she had once more shewn herself kind and loving to him, or if she had paid him any attention, he recorded those apparent and misleading signs of a slight movement on her part towards him with the same tender and sceptical solicitude, the desperate joy that people reveal who, when they are nursing a friend in the last days of an incurable malady, relate, as significant facts of infinite value: "Yesterday he went through his accounts himself, and actually corrected a mistake that we had made in adding them up; he ate an egg to-day and seemed quite to enjoy it, if he digests it properly we shall try him with a cutlet to-morrow,"
although they themselves know that these things are meaningless on the eve of an inevitable death. — Marcel Proust

For years she had had her back against the stone wall of Rhett's love and had taken it as much for granted as she had taken Melanie's love, flattering herself that she drew her strength from herself alone. And even as she had realized earlier in the evening that Melanie had been beside her in her bitter campaigns against life, now she knew that silent in the background, Rhett had stood, loving her, understanding her, ready to help. Rhett at the bazaar, reading her impatience in her eyes and leading her out in the reel, Rhett helping her out of the bondage of mourning, Rhett convoying her through the fire and explosion the night Atlanta fell, Rhett lending her the money that gave her her start, Rhett who comforted her when she woke in the nights crying with fright from her dreams-why, no man did such things without loving a woman to distraction! — Margaret Mitchell

She spent the next hour dividing her time between the phone and the computer; scaring the ever-loving shit out of herself while waiting on hold by investiGoogling type 2 diabetes on her laptop. She found one nut who claimed diabetes was a governmental plot to extract billions of dollars from the unsuspecting public in order to wage the war for oil. — Karin Slaughter

She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twisted every thoughtful, considerate act into an assault. Everyone who was nice to her, who was compassionate and loving, she rebuffed.
Because she'd loved them. Loved them with all her heart, and wouldn't see them hurt. Because she'd known all her life that the surest way to hurt someone, to maim and cripple them, was to be kind. If people were exposed, they die. Best to teach them to be armored, even if it meant she herself was forever alone. Sealed off from human touch. — Louise Penny

The middle-aged woman she would have become, so sure of herself and her place in the world, bossy and loving, condescending and impatient with her dear old mum, — Liane Moriarty

Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. — Lewis Carroll

You're not trying to protect me. You're trying to protect yourself." She hugged herself to him tightly. "But you can force yourself to take the risk of loving someone, can't you?"
"No," he whispered.
"Yes. You must." Evie closed her eyes and pressed her face against his. "Because I love you, Sebastian ... and I need you to love me back. And not in h-half measures. — Lisa Kleypas

There was something so natural and winning to Clara's resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out,
and something so confiding, loving and innocent, in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert's embracing arm
and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection. — Charles Dickens