Viorst If I Were Quotes & Sayings

We grow because the clamorous, permanent presence of our children forces us to put their needs before ours. We grow because our love for our children urges us to change as nothing else in our lives has the power to do. We grow (if we're willing to grow, that is: not every parent is willing) because being a parent helps us stop being a child. — Judith Viorst

Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselves-and accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think we're okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to us-for various reasons, at various levels of intensity-they enrich the quality of our emotional life. — Judith Viorst

Adolescence involves our nutty-desperate-ecstatic-rash psychological efforts to come to terms with new bodies and outrageous urges. — Judith Viorst

Passionate investment leaves us vulnerable to loss. And sometimes, no matter how clever we are, we must lose. — Judith Viorst

We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it. — Judith Viorst

Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel. — Judith Viorst

Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love- and its partner, hate. Our father-our "second other"-elaborates on them. — Judith Viorst

Sun lighting a child's hair. A friend's embrace. Slow dancing in a safe and quiet place. The pleasures of an ordinary life. — Judith Viorst

Many of us are done with adolescence before we are done with adolescent love. — Judith Viorst

Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up. — Judith Viorst

It is the image in the mind that binds us to our lost treasures, but it is the loss that shapes the image. - Colette — Judith Viorst

Late birds get worms while early birds get tired. — Judith Viorst

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned. — Judith Viorst

We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies. — Judith Viorst

No-fault guilt: This is when, instead of trying to figure out who's to blame, everyone pays. — Judith Viorst

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. — Judith Viorst

For some it takes a lifetime to find true love, But for the lucky ones a lifetime is merely enough to share the love they've found. — Judith Viorst

Because we believe ourselves to be better parents than our parents, we expect to produce better children than they produced. — Judith Viorst

For many men the denial of dependency on their mother is repeated in their subsequent relationships, sometimes by an absence of any sexual interest in women, sometimes by a pattern of loving and leaving them. — Judith Viorst

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces, and then eat just one of the pieces. — Judith Viorst

Absence makes the heart grow frozen, not fonder. — Judith Viorst

I think I'll move to Australia. — Judith Viorst

Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it. — Judith Viorst

I had it together on Sunday.
By Monday at noon it had cracked.
On Tuesday debris
Was descending on me.
And by Wednesday no part was intact.
On Thursday I picked up some pieces.
On Friday I picked up the rest.
By Saturday, late,
It was almost set straight.
And on Sunday the world was impressed
With how well I had got it together. — Judith Viorst

There is a time in our life when we need to strut our stuff and groove on grandiosity, when we need to be viewed as remarkable and rare, when we need to exhibit ourself in front of a mirror that reflects our self-admiration, when we need a parent to function as that mirror. — Judith Viorst

When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead. — Judith Viorst

Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying I love you. — Judith Viorst

I didn't really notice that he had a funny nose.
And he certainly looked better all dressed up in fancy clothes.
He's not nearly as attractive as he seemed the other night.
So I think I'll just pretend that this glass slipper feels too tight. — Judith Viorst

Our daily existence requires both closeness and distance, the wholeness of self, the wholeness of intimacy. — Judith Viorst

We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy. — Judith Viorst