Quotes & Sayings About Present Relationships

There were times when initial introductions were so vested with something other as to confuse and distract and entrance both parties, Cy would realize later. And only further into their relationships when you knew the person better, and their place in your life became clear, if there was love, if there was hate, if there was deepness of any kind, only then did you understand that the embers of meaning have been present all along and glowing since that first moment you laid eyes on them. As if you already knew them before you came to know them. As if some rift had bent time. — Sarah Hall

Before I proposed to my now-wife, I was understandably nervous. My father suggested that I take stock of all of my experiences and relationships with women, from my earliest memories to present day, and see if I had learned anything that might inform my decision. — Justin Halpern

Sexual exploitation within professional relationships sometimes has been referred to as "professional incest." (...) the consequences to victims are remarkably similar to the effects observed in incest survivors. Women who are abused by someone whom they know and trust demonstrate distinct symptoms which usually are not present in victims of violence who did not know the offenders. They usually view their own participation as voluntary and therefore are likely to experience feelings of shame and guilt about having consented to the sexual conduct. They may feel anger at the perpetrator, but the anger is also turned inward to themselves, often leading to self-doubt and depression. As a result, they frequently demonstrate severely lowered self-esteem, social isolation, and sometimes self-destructive behavior, including suicide. — Joel Friedman

A version of the golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you is present in every major religion for a reason. Relationships are the place where the mystical experience can become alive. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

Never forget,
Each day that we have together is a precious gift.
In the web of daily living, we are creating character.
Let's take the time to create memories, listen and observe.
Time flees, and it does not return.
If we lose today, it is gone forever.
Let's live for the present, and be prepared for the future.
Let's grow strong, let's grow bigger, let's grow TOGETHER! — Lina Cuartas

Unspoken words between you and I,
Present in the eyes of knowing,
Lost in the realm of unforeseen beauty,
I am yours. — Truth Devour

Energetic cords are unconscious - often sentimental or compulsive - emotional ties to past and present relationships, pre-conditioned by our wounds. They are made of toxic emotions such fear, guilt, blame, hatred, obligation, grasping need or pain. — Avril Carruthers

But if I lack respect for and enjoyment of who I am, I have very little to give - except my unfilled needs. In my emotional impoverishment, I tend to see other people essentially as sources of approval or disapproval. I do not appreciate them for who they are in their own right. I see only what they can or cannot do for me. I am not looking for people whom I can admire and with whom I can share the excitement and adventure of life. I am looking for people who will not condemn me - and perhaps will be impressed by my persona, the face I present to the world. My ability to love remains undeveloped. This is one of the reasons why attempts at relationships so often fail - not because the vision of passionate or romantic love is intrinsically irrational, but because the self-esteem needed to support it is absent. — Nathaniel Branden

The present moment is the definition of eternity. It has never not been the present moment. This isn't scriptural or unscriptural - it is merely a logical fact. — John Kuypers

We have such powerful technology at our fingertips. But we need to make sure our attachment to being online doesn't get in the way of our lives and relationships offline. We need to find balance between being connected to millions of people around the world and being present with the people we love, standing right next to us. It's complicated. Over — Randi Zuckerberg

My mother and I parting company at four years old is a recurring theme; although it's not symbolically necessarily present, it's present in all my relationships. — Billy Corgan

The fact that you made worse decisions in the past shouldn't be an excuse to make bad decisions in the present. — Sanhita Baruah

Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don't sense it. — Sharon Salzberg

our present relationships are both the laboratory in which we labor to perfect ourselves and the source of that enjoyment that will constitute our true heaven. — Terryl L. Givens

I had always liked staying the night with other families, having your own room with a freshly made bed, full of unfamiliar objects, with a towel and a washcloth nicely laid out, and from there straight into the heart of family life, despite there always being, no matter whom I visited, an uncomfortable side, because even though people always try to keep existing tensions in the background whenever guests are present, the tensions are still noticeable, and you can never know if it is your presence that has caused them or whether they are just there and indeed your presence is helping to suppress them. A third possibility is, of course, that all these tensions were just tensions that lived their own lives in my head. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Live in the present. Take care of the relationships in front of you now. Most friendships have a natural life, and when they've lived that out, you'll know. — Sara Zarr

I don't think Roger Dodger is really about men. I think it is more about relationships and about how you present yourself, not only to the opposite sex, but to yourself. What lies are you going to tell yourself in order to get through the day? — Jennifer Beals

Mappo frowned. 'I have not heard that phrase before. Lost Elementals?'
'Scholars tend to acknowledge but four, generally: water, fire, earth and air; yet others exist. ( ... ) Life, death, dark, light, shadow ... possibly, but even that seems a truncated selection. What of, for example, time? Past, present, future? What of desire, and deed? Sound, silence? Or are the latter two but minor aspects of air? Does time belong to light? Or is it but a point somewhere between light and dark, yet distinct from shadow? What of faith and denial? Can you now understand, Mappo, the potential complexity of relationships?'
'Assuming they exist at all, beyond the notion of concepts.'
'Granted. Yet, maybe concepts are all that's needed, if the purpose of the elements is to give shape and meaning to all that surrounds us on the outside, and all that guides us from within. — Steven Erikson

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history. (243) — Norman Doidge

What I do is I take action because I value the position I have, the career I have, the life I live, the people I interact with, my fanbase, my friends, however you want to say that. I value those relationships and I use the opportunities they present to me. — Mike Vallely

The present moment is all that ever is, and in each new moment we die and are reborn. For example, people block love and close off their hearts out of fear of being hurt again. If they lived in the present moment, there would be no fear and they would walk forward in life with confidence and certainty that there is the joy of new experiences to be had. — Alaric Hutchinson

I need relationships, but sometimes when I am in one I feel claustrophobic. It is about feeling that I still have my freedom, that I have choices. I don't look back on the past because I like to live in the present. I know this makes some people think I probably never cared, but I need my freedom and I like to keep moving. — Juliette Binoche

There comes a moment in life when one must acknowledge that you just can't keep looking back into your past for reasons to keep someone in your present and future. Regardless of how much looking that cruel reality in the eye hurts ... memories can't be enough. — Eiry Nieves

The goal of using our voice is not just to be noticed, but with humility to gracefully be fully present in relationships. Deferring to another person does not require that we be ignored; allowing that is cowardice. Hiding, a form of dishonesty, prevents true community. — Rosalie De Rosset

To keep me happy he can't just buy me presents, he has to be present. I want love. Not Louis Vuitton. And that's one hell of a burden for any man to carry. — Amy Mowafi

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

During the campaign of 2016, we took a step toward totalitarianism without even noticing by accepting as normal the violation of electronic privacy. Whether it is done by American or Russian intelligence agencies, or for that matter by any institution, the theft, discussion, or publication of personal communications destroys a basic foundation of our rights. If we have no control over who reads what and when, we have no ability to act in the present or plan for the future. Whoever can pierce your privacy can humiliate you and disrupt your relationships at will. — Timothy Snyder

Partnerships can be very big. The relationships you cultivate can help. If you put together a business plan that makes sense and that you can present to other people, they may be able to help you out, especially if you're short of cash. Angel investors, perhaps, may help. You may not have to go through a traditional bank. If you're not able to secure funding, you can get up under someone who has experience, learn from that person, and work your way up. — Kamerion Wimbley

When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can. — Neil Postman

My love for you spans over the lines of my past, present, and future. You are what I love remembering, what I love experiencing, and what I love looking forward to. — Steve Maraboli

For me, the most painful thing is the thought of shelves without books. This is the problem with the digital thing. I do not want to see it on electronic. I do not want to see all of those indices on Kindle. I don't want this physical object to disappear, because when it's there and it's present, it's continually suggesting new relationships in a way that an electronic index couldn't. — Jeanette Winterson

[On what young husbands should say to their wives:] I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us ... I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you. — John Chrysostom

But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice. — Francis A. Schaeffer

But in fact Dostoevsky found and was capable of perceiving multi-leveledness and contradictoriness not in the spirit, but in the objective social world. In this social world, planes were not stages but opposing camps, and the contradictory relationships among them were not the rising or descending course of an individual personality, but the condition of society. The multi-leveledness and contradictoriness of social reality was present as an objective fact of the epoch. The — Mikhail Bakhtin

Given the complexity in strategy, governance and relationships involved in family business, one might marvel that a family ever emerges on the other side and wants to find a permanent way to continue together. But many families that have successfully accumulated significant wealth begin to search for a means to preserve it for present and future generations. One way to do so is to form a family office. Although definitions differ, a family office is generally organized to manage and leverage the family's collective wealth, with an emphasis on stewardship rather than growth. Stewardship implies a long-term view and looks at inherited wealth as something to be treasured and preserved, in real terms, for future generations of family. A sense of stewardship is a powerful motivator, in the first place, not to destroy the financial and philosophical legacy of the founder and, second and ideally, to extend the reach of these resources into the modern day. We are going to talk extensively — Joachim Schwass

Maybe relationships were a force of forward motion, creating something new out of the present and future, until eventually that became shared past. — Anonymous

The Flow in life is not a temporal displacement of moving objects, from a past into a future via a present. The
essential, ongoing Flow to this Reality is an emergence from the value set of your inner nature into the outer realm of events and relationships, where it is then experienced by you in a Now moment. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Active Love trains you to accept others as they are. Everyone in your life is imperfect, either because of something they've done in the past or something they can't change in the present. Fixating on these things destroys relationships. You need a tool that allows you to accept people despite their flaws. — Anonymous

It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I'm most grateful for my health. It's taken me a long time to get where I am, to feel as strong as I do in my mind and in my body. It's through that that I'm able to be present in all my relationships and not get overwhelmed by what could seem like a big task, going all around the world constantly. — Jason Mraz

I think that being a conscious parent opens your eyes to the fact that any adult relationships that you have, whenever children are present on a daily basis, that they're modeling how they get along with people by what they see how you get along. — Peter Krause

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body
not too little, not too much, just right. — Sherry Turkle

My father was a steel worker and Martin's [Schulz] grandfather was a miner in Saarland. In these occupations, there is a particular awareness of solidarity. That creates links that aren't present in other relationships. — Jean-Claude Juncker

Your closest relationships are often the ones that have the most effect on you, but they are frequently the ones most difficult to change. These relationships are complex and have long histories. Lifetime habits of avoiding being really present with each other may exist in many of them. Family members, for instance, might want to support you, but will not necessarily know how to genuinely listen or be present with you in a way that is enlivening ... Even with the best intentions, it can be very difficult to get beyond the past and into the Now. — Richard Moss

Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage in intimate violence with partners who respond to their acting out by trying harder to connect with them emotionally, hoping that the love offered in the present will heal the wounds of the past. If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle. — Bell Hooks

Recurring negative emotions do sometimes contain a message, as do illnesses. But any changes that you make, whether they have to do with your work, your relationships, or your surroundings, are ultimately only cosmetic unless they arise out of a change in your level of consciousness. And as far as that is concerned, it can only mean one thing: becoming more present. When you have reached a certain degree of presence, you don't need negativity anymore to tell you what is needed in your life situation. But as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as a kind of signal that reminds you to be more present. WHENEVER YOU FEEL NEGATIVITY ARISING WITHIN YOU, whether caused by an external factor, a thought, or even nothing in particular that you are aware of, look on it as a voice saying, Attention. Here and Now. Wake up. Get out of your mind. Be present. — Eckhart Tolle

The extraction of deep wisdom can be done at any age, and if we are to love the time of our life, it must be. Imbedded within us is the deeper story we came to live, and the core issue at every age for any awakened human being is the extent to which we are living that story in the present moment. — Carolyn Baker

She realized, when relationships failed to last, it was not because love was no longer present, but because people had stopped believing in themselves and in their partners. — Christina Westover

Relationships, like all human experiences, are transient; they change every day and are meant to be enjoyed in the present. When I hear people say you need to "work" at a relationship, what that often really means is just seeing through the day-to-day; listening to another person, listening to yourself, not getting stuck on hurts from the past, and not getting lost in what might come. To be in a relationship with someone you respect, care about and value is a gift, and when you take that in the day-to-day, you honor yourself and your partner each day. Eating is no different in that you can honor yourself at each meal. So much time in relationships is spent hashing the past, and arguing about things that haven't yet happened. A relationship cannot be "hoarded", just like a meal cannot be prolonged by taking home the leftovers. — Ramani Durvasula

Once you begin to honor and respect the wisdom of your intuition, your life will never be the same. You move to the next level of the evolution of your soul, located fully in the present. You discover that life lived fully in the Now is filled with love, peace, joy, enthusiasm and vitality; that we really all are One, and that your increased exuberance permeates your relationships with others as well. — Susan Barbara Apollon

I was aware that we were both silently making those inevitable comparisons, putting our relationship in context. She is more this and less that. He is better or worse in these ways. It is human nature to do this
unless its your first relationship, which might be the very reason that your first relationship feels special and remains forever sacred. But the older you get, the more cynical you become, and the more complicated and convoluted the exercise is. You begin to realize that nothing is perfect, that there are trade-offs and sacrifices. The worst is when someone in your past trumps the person in the present, and you think to yourself: if I'd known this, then maybe I wouldn't have let him go. — Emily Giffin

Forgiveness is a gift to yourself. It frees you from the past, past experiences, and past relationships. It allows you to live in the present time. When you forgive yourself and forgive others, you are indeed free. — Louise Hay

A meaningful relationship between two people cannot sustain itself only in the present tense. — Joshua Foer

The festive season isn't just a time to teach children about Jesus and giving, it's also a time to teach your children about those less fortunate. This year, encourage your children to pick a present and give it to a child who has none, or take them to a charity drive. — Soraya Diase Coffelt

Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain. — Daniel Keyes

I have known both of you all your lives, have carried your Daddy in my arms and on my shoulders, kissed and spanked him and watched him learn to walk. I don't know if you've known anybody from that far back; if you've loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man, you gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort. Other people cannot see what I see whenever I look into your father's face, for behind your father's face as it is today are all those other faces which were his. Let him laugh and I see a cellar your father does not remember and a house he does not remember and I hear in his present laughter his laughter as a child. Let him curse and I remember him falling down the cellar steps, and howling, and I remember, with pain, his tears, which my hand or your grandmother's so easily wiped away. But no one's hand can wipe away those tears he sheds invisibly today, which one hears in his laughter and in his speech and in his songs. — James Baldwin

If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamicsthat present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become. — Shoshana Zuboff

But just as haste and restlessness are typical of our present-day life, so change also takes place more rapidly than before. This applies to change in the relationships between nations as it does to change within an individual nation. — Gustav Stresemann

But some relationships aren't meant to last.
They are worthy only till the time the two persons involved have time for each other.
They do not know eternity. They live for the present, the "now". And when distance plays it part, or life turns out to be busy, they fall apart.
And may be that's why they're never termed "LOVE". They simply remain what they were - mere RELATIONSHIPS. — Sanhita Baruah

As the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner proved in the laboratory, the human mind seeks relationships between events and often finds them even when they are not present. Slot-machines are based on Skinnerian principles of intermittent reinforcement. The dumb human, like the dumb rat, only needs an occasional payoff to keep pulling the handle. The mind will do the rest. — Michael Shermer

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you. — Luigi Pirandello

We all present versions of ourselves. The person you are at work is not the same person you are at home. The face we present in our most intimate relationships is not the face we present to the world. — Val McDermid

I knew it," she snapped. "You're no different from all men. You're just another jerk pretending to be single! I didn't wanna wrap a lie into a Christmas present anyway. — Maha Erwin

In order to change, however, you have to be willing to acknowledge the need for change - in other words, you have to come to terms with the fact that everything in your life isn't perfect. There is this concept - among not just Scientologists, but everyone - that we are all supposed to have it together. Whether it's our work, love lives, family relationships, or even feelings about ourselves, we need to present this idealized image to others. We are so conditioned when asked "How are you?" to say "Good" or "Great." But why not "I don't know. I hate everyone today." Why are we so scared to be judged imperfect or to talk about how we really feel? To be authentic? If we can just tell each other how and what we are really doing, step outside of what we believe others think we should be, the result can be therapeutic. — Leah Remini

I find three basic characteristics that fundamentally distinguish the novel in principle from other genres: (i) its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness realized in the novel; (2) the radical change it effects in the temporal coordinates of the literary image; (3) the new zone opened by the novel for structuring literary images, namely, the zone of maximal contact with the present (with contemporary reality) in all its openendedness.
These three characteristics of the novel are all organically interrelated and have all been powerfully affected by a very specific rupture in the history of European civilization: its emergence from a socially isolated and culturally deaf semipatriarchal society, and its entrance into international and interlingual contacts and relationships. — Mikhail Bakhtin

Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job. — Ann Patchett

In rare moments of deep play, we can lay aside our sense of self, shed time's continuum, ignore pain, and sit quietly in the absolute present, watching the world's ordinary miracles. No mind or heart hobbles. No analyzing or explaining. No questing for logic. No promises. No goals. No relationships. No worry. One is completely open to whatever drama may unfold. — Diane Ackerman

At the end of the day, your relationships with the people in your life will be greater assets than any material things. Take time. Be present. You'll thank yourself for it later. — Vironika Tugaleva

Today's partners can be your competitors tomorrow. And today's competitors can be your partners tomorrow. — Suzy Kassem

Finding specialty food items was a bit of a challenge in Asia in the early days of getting the Mozza's up and running. Everything is built on relationships, and when you start somewhere new, it takes time to develop that. Staffing can also present challenges. — Joe Bastianich

Relationships take time and energy, and your job kind of sucks that all out of you. It takes an extra effort to stay present in a relationship when you are working so many hours. — America Ferrera

I believe in being fully present," Morrie said. "That means you should be with the person you're with. When I'm talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what's coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I'm taking. I am talking to you. I am thinking about you. — Mitch Albom

Being present here and now is the highest compliment you can pay to a woman in your life. — Lada Ray

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed. — Wilhelm Reich

Chasing your tale? Sometimes we relive past accomplishments, failures and or past relationships to the point of exhaustion. When we do this, I liken it to a dog chasing its tail, just spinning round and round and going nowhere fast. Constantly chasing our own tales has the same effect on us. It leaves us in a state of dizzying immobility. When we wrap our arms so firmly around our past we leave little room to embrace our present future and that, my friends, is a sad tale to tell. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

This is the key to understanding the difference between indigenous and civilized warfare: Even in warfare the indigenous maintain relationships with their honored enemy. This is the key to understanding the difference between indigenous and civilized ways of living. This is only one of many things those we enslave could tell us, if only we asked: They, too, are alive, and present another way of living, a way of living that is not - in contradistinction to our God and our Science and our Capitalism and everything else in our lives - jealous. It is an inclusive way of living. They could tell us that things don't have to be the way they are. — Derrick Jensen

I'd often slip and fall on the ice after last call, which explained the ever-present welts. If I were with a woman, I'd usually execute a precautionary vomit in the men's room in an effort avoid any ugly incidents once I got her back to her place. And they say chivalry is dead. — Dan Dunn

Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships. — Stephen Covey

It is not enough for the Church to be engaged with the State in healing social ills, though this is important at times. But when the world can turn around and see a group of God's people exhibiting substantial healing in the area of human relationships in their present life, then the world will take notice. Each group of Christians is, as it were, a pilot plant, showing that something can be done in the present situation, if only we begin in the right way. — Francis Schaeffer

To me, the simplest gift that a husband or a wife can do for their partner is to remind them of their precious visions, goals and dreams. What a gift that is to have a voice of reason right in your corner when you sometimes need a little nudge to get back on track. To have a team player to cheer you on and to support your efforts is indeed a massive present from the universe. Whomever has such a gift should surely treasure and protect it for all its worth. It's worth is invaluable to the world. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

We the caregivers, have the power to do things proactively to benefit our present and future generations. — Betsy L. Stone

Moving on has allowed me to know who I am and to be present in all that I do. I take this forward in my work and in my personal relationships. It is a powerful program and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to move on with their life. — Lou Reed

You can't move beyond your past if you keep talking about it like it's your present. — Kemi Sogunle

Using technology, we have redefined ourselves in such a way that our immediate surroundings and relationships, our immediate sensory perceptions of the world, are much diminished in relevance. We have trained ourselves not to be present. We have extended our bodies, created enhanced selves that might be called our "techno-selves." Our techno-selves are both bigger and smaller than our former selves. Bigger in that we have tremendous powers to communicate with the invisible world. Smaller in that we have sacrificed some of our contact and experience with the visible, immediate world. We have marginalized our direct sensory experience. — Alan Lightman

My Mom and Dad and brother have grown through the years into my closest friends, the people who tell me the most searing truth, who give me soft places to rest and present to me a bright future when the only one I can see from my vantage point is dim and breaking before my eyes. — Shauna Niequist

Everyone in prison has an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath all relationships between prisoners is the ever-present fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship among ourselves. — Jack Henry Abbott

The present moment has always been available to spiritual seekers, but as long as you are seeking you are not available to the present moment. "Seeking" implies that you are looking to the future for some answer, or for some achievement, spiritual or otherwise. Everybody is in the seeking mode, seeking to add something to who they are, whether it be money, relationships, possessions, knowledge, status.. or spiritual attainment. — Eckhart Tolle

Relationship Time to Aloneness. Having a companion fixes you in time and that of the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present. — John Steinbeck

The emergent properties of my computer have existence not because they inhere in the component parts that compose them. They do so because those component materials are related to one another by careful design to work together as a single system in order to produce those properties. The visual, informational, and computational abilities of my computer are new realities, yet not present in the sum total of the inputs of which my computer is constituted. It is only through their systemic relationships that those amazing abilities have being. The novel reality takes existence not through the parts but through their relationships and interactions. Reality is thus significantly constituted through relationality, not merely composition. — Christian Smith

The most evident difference between man and animals is this: the beast, in as much as it is largely motivated by the senses and with little perception of the past or future, lives only for the present. But man, because he is endowed with reason by which he is able to perceive relationships, sees the causes of things, understands the reciprocal nature of cause and effect, makes analogies, easily surveys the whole course of his life, and makes the necessary preparations for its conduct. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Commitments present themselves in delineations of black and white. You either honor your commitments or you don't. Success is the result of making and keeping commitments to your self and others, while all failed or unfinished goals, projects and relationships are the direct result of broken commitments. It's that simple, that profound, and that important. — Gary Ryan

When man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others: the family has priority in love over "strangers," the husband lays exclusive claim to the love of his wife - facts altogether understandable and "natural" for the biological hypostasis. For a man to love someone who is not a member of his family more than his own relations constitutes a transcendence of the exclusiveness which is present in the biological hypostasis. Thus a characteristic of the ecclesial hypostasis is the capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of conformity with a moral commandment ("Love thy neighbor," etc.), but out of his "hypostatic constitution," out of the fact that his new birth from the womb of the Church has made him part of a network of relationships which transcends every exclusiveness. — John D. Zizioulas

Are you letting culture, not scripture, determine your sexuality, how you date, how you present yourself, how you engage in certain relationships with members of the opposite sex? We need to be very clear that the way we do life is different than the rest of the world. — Mark Driscoll

My only regret is that no one told me at the beginning of my journey what I'm telling you now: there will be an end to your pain. And once you've released all those pent-up emotions, you will experience a lightness and buoyancy you haven't felt since you were a very young child. The past will no longer feel like a lode of radioactive ore contaminating the present, and you will be able to respond appropriately to present-day events. You will feel angry when someone infringes on your territory, but you won't overreact. You will feel sad when something bad happens to you, but you won't sink into despair. You will feel joy when you have a good day, and your happiness won't be clouded with guilt. You, too, will have succeeded in making history, history. — Patricia Love

As soon as we ask whether or not a story is true in the present moment, we empower ourselves to re-frame it. — Sharon Salzberg

A post-petroleum world will necessitate walking long distances and exerting much more physical energy to accomplish even routine tasks than we are now accustomed to. Most of our bodies in current time are not up to the task. Yet preparing the body for living in a collapsing world is one of the most fundamental of preparations. Although we may not be able to store vast quantities of food or water, may not have our homes or property equipped as much as we would prefer in preparation for collapse, and may not have learned all the skills we would like to master, becoming present in our bodies and keeping them healthy and fit are factors over which we have control. — Carolyn Baker