Quotes & Sayings About What Is Love And To Love Someone

I'm not sure what I am. I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. I certainly don't talk about it, but it's there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he's driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don't fight him, I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even ... especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else ... someone. It's like the mask is slipping and things ... people ... who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me. — Jeff Lindsay

Uplift & Inspire, do not be envious of others success. You are given the same hours in a day. Make it worthwhile! Instead of focusing on what someone else is doing, pay attention to how you're living and make the best of life — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Someone sent me a letter that had one of the best quotes I've ever read. It said "What is to give light must endure burning." It's by a writer named Viktor Frankl. I've been turning that quote over and over in my head. The truth of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. In the end, I believe it's why we all suffer. It's the meaning we all look for behind the tragedies in our lives. The pain deepens us, burns away our impurities and petty selfishness. It makes us capable of empathy and sympathy. It makes us capable of love. The pain is the fire that allows us to rise from the ashes of what we were, and more fully realize what we can become. When you can step back and see the beauty of the process, it's amazing beyond words. — Damien Echols

Love is about giving, about caring for the other person's welfare. Love is treating someone, in the Kantian sense, never as a means but as an end in themselves. Love is sacrifice, love is something you work at, something you build like a house or tend like a plant, brick by brick, drop by drop, day by day. Nonsense. Old wives' tales, old husbands' tales. That is affection they are talking about, that is companionship, that is charity, that is tickets for the Cancer Research Ball. You must ask the young if you want to know what love is. Only they are deep enough in it to describe. We older ones have clues and simulacra, we base our judgement, like pathologists do, on the dents and scars and sediments of hearts long kept in formaldehyde. It is the pulsing heart you want to probe: the pulsing, beating, leaping, dipping, fluttering heart of a seventeen-year-old. — A.P.

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still? — Elliot Perlman

Each day, we feel more distant from each other, more alone, all while being surrounded by millions. Each day we watch as our city turns into a desert, one in which we are all lost, looking for that oasis we like to call "love". The more we wait, the more everything and everyone looks like a grain of sand escaping between our fingers before vanishing into the wind. How do we find something or someone we can no longer see, but which is right there before us? And how do we hold on to what is most precious in life? — Gabriel Ba

What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else? — Mary Gaitskill

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

If we could only make our hands move as actively as our tongues, what wonders we could accomplish! Almost everyone loves to hear his own voice. It is so easy, too! Yet if we could say less and do more for each other's good, not alone would every home be happier, but communities would be enriched thereby. Instead of criticism by speech, to show someone a better way to do a thing would be of much greater value. — John Wanamaker

Love is putting another person before yourself. Love means doing what's best for the other person, no matter what it means for you. Love is always there. Time can only strengthen love. You can only love someone else if they allow you to and it applies to yourself. To be loved, you must place trust in another person. — Lindsay Paige

I Don't Even Like Him - How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It's hard to pray for someone when you're angry or he's hurt you. But that's exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don't have to "pretty it up" for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we're willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He — Stormie O'martian

He didn't want her; he wanted me. Well, you know how it is.
Dalgliesh did know. This, after all, was the commonest, the most banal of personal tragedies. You loved someone. They didn't love you. Worse still, in defiance of their own best interests and to the destruction of your peace, they loved another. What would half the world's poets and novelists do without this universal tragicomedy? — P.D. James

I have seen conversations that I had three years ago, when I was young, in love, and naive. I've grown a lot since those days. I now know that love isn't just that abstract feeling, because there are so many other sides to it. Sometimes you learn that to truly love someone you have to just support them as a person, and step out of their view finder. Be their friend and nothing else. Sometimes you learn to walk away and find what you need. You learn you knew nothing and that's when you grow up and change your ways. There may be no fairy take endings, but that is okay, because love is much more real than that. So much less superficial. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

Do you really think Card's tell us future??
If they do,i raised my hand to the love of god and got you..!!!
someone;anyone could tell that what it is?? — Nikhil

The essence of true love is mutual recognition-two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behavior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes. All too often individuals feel, after the fact-when feelings are hurt and hearts are broken-that it was a case of mistaken identity, that the loved one is a stranger. They saw what they wanted to see rather than what was really there. — Bell Hooks

We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed - begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it - I only know how true it is; that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life. — Truman Capote

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep. — Gregory David Roberts

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

When I direct my own scripts, it's much easier as it's been in my head for a year already. What I love about this is having an idea and seeing it come to fruition onscreen. I would like to direct someone else's script one day, but I might not get round to it before I die - you can't legislate for being hit by a bus! — Ricky Gervais

Why is love so good ... ? You love someone and they leave. They come home one day and you say "What's happening?" and they say, "I got a better offer someplace else," and there they go, out of your life forever, and after that until you're dead you're carrying around this huge hunk of love with no one to give it to. And if you do find someone to give it to, the same thing happens all over. — Philip K. Dick

Love surprises us in unexpected ways, in ways that are beyond our comprehension. It's never the sweet words or the mushy gifts that matter. What matters more are little things like caring about someone and not being able to sleep till you're sure that the one you love is safe and sound. — Sudeep Nagarkar

I have felt alone all my life. I was always too smart, or working too hard, or too full of doubt to fit in with everyone else. But when I'm with you, I never feel alone, Will. Never. I feel seen, and I feel listened to, and I feel important and cared for. When I first met you, I told myself I had to be insane to think that someone like you would be interested in someone like me. But it didn't stop me from falling in love with you, because loving you is as easy and as natural as breathing for me. This may shock you, but my love doesn't come with conditions or requirements. It absolutely doesn't require physical exam, that is for sure. It just is, Will. And it's unstoppable, because, believe me, I've tried to stop it. So I guess what I'm trying to say in my usual inarticulate, rambly, too-wordy way, is that I'm not going anywhere. No matter what. — Sarah Mayberry

What is success? What does it mean that someone is successful?
Success can be different things to different people. For us being successful is a conscious choice to be oneself. Success does not have to be dependent on any external circumstances and rules dictated by the mainstream society.
It does not matter where we live and what we possess. When we love and support ourselves unconditionally choosing to be ourselves as much as we can, this is for us, Being Successful. — Raphael Zernoff

Feelings aren't good or bad. They're just weak or strong. Love, for example, is weak: someone loves you, you love them back, you're happy for a while, and then it fades away. But if one of those lovers betrays the other, then you have a real emotion - then you have something powerful, something that leaves a mark you'll never be rid of. Betrayal is the most delicious of all, but it takes a while to set it up, and fear can be just as intense if you know what you're doing. — Dan Wells

One day, while he was idly reciting his verses to a captive audience, a scrap of paper, borne by the wind, landed on his lap. On it were written two words: "Layla" and "Majnun." As the crowd watched, Majnun tore the paper in half. The half on which was written "Layla" he crumpled into a ball and threw over his shoulder; the half with his own name he kept for himself.
"What does this mean?" someone asked.
"Do you not realize that one name is better than two?" Majnun replied. "If only you knew the reality of love, you would see that when you scratch a lover, you find his beloved."
"But why throw away Layla's name and not your own?" asked another.
Majnun glowered at the man. "The name is a shell and nothing more. It is what the shell hides that counts. I am the shell and Layla is the pearl; I am the veil and she is the face beneath it."
The crowd, though they knew not the meaning of his words, were amazed by the sweetness of his tongue. — Reza Aslan

I truly believed, in that moment, that having a psychological illness was just as bad as being physically ill, maybe worse. When you're physically ill, people can see what's wrong; they can help you fix it. When something's wrong inside the mind, all doctors can do is guess, and people can't tell if you're sick. They don't believe you a lot of times, until they see the outward signs of your sickness. Maybe you're walking aimlessly on the street talking to yourself, or you hurt someone you love. That type of sickness is harder to define, harder to fix, and scary, because in the end, the sickness is you. — Rachel Van Dyken

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden. — Byron Katie

It's strange, isn't it, how you don't know how big a part of you someone is until they're threatened? And then you think you can't possibly go on if something happens to them, but the most frightening part is that, actually, you will go on, you'll have to go on, with them or without them. There's just no telling what you'll become — Robin Hobb

Ah! If you have a self-will in your hearts, pray to God to uproot it. Have you self-love? Beseech the Holy Spirit to turn it out; for if you will always will to do as God wills, you must be happy. I have heard of some good old woman in a cottage, who had nothing but a piece of bread and a little water, and lifting up her hands, she said, as a blessing, "What!? all this, and Christ too?" What is "all this," compared with what we deserve? And I have read of someone dying, who was asked if he wished to live or die; and he said, "I have no wish at all about it." "But if you might wish, which would you choose?" "I would not choose at all." "But if God bade you choose?" "I would beg God to choose for me, for I would not know which to take." Oh happy state! to be perfectly acquiescent, to lie passive in His hand, and know no will but His. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I think romance is maligned in large part because at first glance, love seems so pedestrian. It's all around us. It's in books and songs and movies and on billboards, so how could it really hold literary value? But what people tend to forget is that the search for love - for the simple idea that there is someone out there who will see us for who we are and accept us isn't trite. It's a huge part of our lives. And it's an enormous part of our dreams.
There are so many fabulous romances out there - there's something for everyone. I really believe that. And I believe that most of the people who look down their noses at the genre haven't ever read a romance novel. I think that if they did, they'd be really surprised by how good great romance can be. — Sarah MacLean

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

Eyuran," I addressed his Node. "What was in this one?"

He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.

"I don't know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model." Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.

"I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks."

"If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can't even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine." He looked around and frowned. "By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship. — Jeno Marz

Most girls take one look at you and swoon. You've never had to really work for someone's affection or put effort into maintaining it. In many ways, your natural gifts have done you a disservice
they've stunted your sensitivity and charm! You've never had to develop insight into what will make a girl laugh and come to love you for reasons that aren't handsome or heroic. That's why smees are experts on the subtle arts of courtship and seduction; nothing comes easy to us, but we do understand and live by the Lover's Maxim."
"And what on earth is the Lover's Maxim?" asked Maz, feeling very uninformed.
The smee cleared his throat. "If you can't be handsome, be rich. If you can't be rich, be strong. If you cant be strong, be witty."
"But what if you can't be witty?" Max wondered.
"Learn the guitar. — Henry H. Neff

That's not love. That's not how love is supposed to feel. But there is someone out there who will show me what real, honest love is. They will respect and accept me for me and won't make me feel less than. In order to find that person and truly let them in, first I must believe in myself and know my own value. It's not selfish to want these things nor is it selfish to think them. I deserve happiness. I deserve to be loved just as I love others. I deserve everything. — Lily Collins

For most people, a life lived alone, with passing strangers or passing
lovers, is incoherent and ultimately unbearable. Someone must be
there to know what we have done for those we love. — Frank Pittman

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? (Plato) The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration- how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? — Rebecca Solnit

Not exactly. I see a girl who wants to present someone special to the world. Someone beautiful. The pinnacle of beauty. But she has lost her hold on reality. Real beauty isn't thin. It isn't size two, unless you happen to be four foot ten. What the world sees when they look at you is someone who believes self-worth is all about how she looks, and that very often means that what she's missing is love. Not someone else's love. But love and respect for herself. — Ellen Hopkins

What they prefer to that is to find someone to have power over; someone to own and to bully, to smash and to waste. She wondered if she would ever be in love. — Gwendoline Riley

No relationship is without its difficulties and this is certainly true when one or both of the persons involved has an autistic spectrum disorder. Even so, I believe what is truly essential to the success of any relationship is not so much compatibility, but love. When you love someone, virtually anything is possible. — Daniel Tammet

And do you know what love is? It's when you try to picture your life without someone and you can't. — Aaron Starmer

I think of the love of God as a great river, pouring through us even as the waters pour through our ravine at floodtime. Nothing can keep this love from pouring through us, except of course our own blocking of the river. Do you sometimes feel that you have got to the end of your love for someone who refuses and repulses you? Such a thought is folly, for one cannot come to the end of what one has not got. We have no store of love at all. We are not jugs, we are riverbeds. — Amy Carmichael

Shall I show you the half-dozen other rooms in this hospital where these scenes are repeated? And what of the other hospitals? Printing House Square is small and tame. Even in the private institutions uptown you can see a show just like this: there is nothing as disgusting as an obese cadaver in which all the futile pleasures of many years finally arise to fill it full-blown with stinking rotten gases. The city is burning and under siege. And we are in a war in which everyone is killed and no one is remembered."
"What am I supposed to do, then," Peter Lake asked, "if it's like you say?"
"Is there someone you love?"
"Yes."
"A woman?"
"Yes."
"Then go home to her."
"And who will remember her?"
"No one. That's just the point. You must take care of all that now. — Mark Helprin

Look around you and look at yourself: the world is swarming with assassins, that is, people who allow themselves to forget those they claimed to love. To forget someone: have you really thought about what that means? Forgetfulness is a gigantic ocean where only one ship sails, the ship of memory. For most human beings, that ship is no more than a miserable tub which takes on water at the slightest opportunity. — Amelie Nothomb

I think that to believe is to acknowledge that it's a choice in that present tense and that doubt is always an option. You're not dealing with a fact like one plus one equals two - I'm gonna choose to believe that. It's kind of one of those things where you are choosing to believe that someone loves you. That is always going to be your choice. So for me, I think that's what makes the faith that I have volatile and explosive and dangerous and troubling. That's what most of my songs are about. — Jon Foreman

There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone. It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone. It was because I thought if I loved someone and then it fell apart, I might not make it. It's easier to be alone. Because what if you learn that you need love and then you don't have it? What if you like it and lean on it? What if you shape your life around it and then it falls apart? Can you even survive that kind of pain? Losing love is like organ damage. It's like dying. The only difference is death ends. This? It could go on forever. — Shonda Rhimes

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

But love isn't just about feeling good. It's about doing what you don't want to do, over and over again, if it needs to be done, for the sake of someone else. Love is really about self-sacrifice. — Meg Meeker

It's a two-way street," Emma murmured, her words soft, but fierce at once. "Sometimes you have to take what you need and hope the other person can handle the invasion."
"Invasion?"
"That's what love is, isn't it? Families, friends, lovers. It's an invasion of each other's space, minds, hearts. Someone's always jockeying for control. For it to truly work, there has to be equality. Each side has to be strong enough to handle it."
Invasion. An oddly perfect way to describe it. "Yet again, I ask, who are you, Emma Strickland? — Kate Meader

On occasion when I am getting to know someone - when someone seeks to know me or, indeed, find in me the occasion for love - I am asked what my idea of love is, and I always founder. There are clearly those who have their ideas of love, who enter into their conversations, their letters, their initial encounters with an idea of love in mind. This is admirable in a way. And I am somewhat embarrassed by the fact that I have no answer, and that I cannot, in the moment of potential seduction, [have] an entrancing view of love to offer the one with whom I speak. ... One knows love somehow only when all one's ideas are destroyed, and this becoming unhinged from what one knows is the paradigmatic sign of love. — Judith Butler

There is a condition into which many young women fall. They attach themselves to violent men. They forgive any mistreatment. They think it love; it isn't. What they really want is to be punished for their sins, real and imagined - or for someone else's — Jed Rubenfeld

The first time you fall in love, it's like you've created the first love in the universe, and the first time someone you love dies, you grieve the universe's first death. What does it help to be told that what you feel is nothing new? — Leah Stewart

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

Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There's no rule book that says how to do this." She laughed, bitterly. "Wouldn't that be great? No decisions to make. Everything laid right out for us. But there's no such thing. You want facts, don't you? Rules. Proof. You're like your father that way. Just because a thing can't be logged, charted, and summarized doesn't mean it isn't real. Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it. But sometimes things don't turn out that way. You have to pay attentin to what's real, what's in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it's a choice we could make. — David Wroblewski

I'd do almost anything for you," Simon said quietly. "I'd die for you. You know that. But would I kill someone else, someone innocent? What about a lot of innocent lives? What about the whole world? Is it really love to tell someone that if it came down to picking between them and every other life on the planet, you'd pick them? Is that - I don't know, is that a moral sort of love at all? — Cassandra Clare

Now I'm told that this is life, that pain is just a simple comprimise so we can get what we want out of it. Would someone care to classify a broken heart and some twisted minds so I can find someone to rely on? — Hayley Williams

How did Ixtel become real for me? The world is full of Ixtels who I can help without hurting my father. Why this one? How was it her suffering that touched me? Father. I feel connected to her through my father's actions. I feel an obligation to right my father's wrong. But why? Shouldn't my father's welfare come first? His welfare is my welfare. How does one weigh love for a parent against the urge to help someone in need? I feel like what is right should be done no matter what. This lack of doubt makes me feel inhuman. But it is not a question of my head for once. I hear the right note. I recognize the wrong note. Maybe the right action is a lake like this one, green and quiet and deep. — Francisco X Stork

Being in love is a very strange thing. Your thoughts constantly drift towards this other person, no matter what you're doing. You could be reaching for a glass in the cupboard or brushing your teeth or listening to someone tell a story, and your mind will just start drifting towards their face, their hair, the way they smell, wondering what they'll wear, and what they'll say the next time they see you. And on top of the constant dream state you're in, your stomach feels like it's connected to a bungee cord, and it bounces and bounces around for hours until it finally lodges itself next to your heart. — Pittacus Lore

Closing my eyes, I breathe in the air around me.
When I slowly re-enter the world, I look into the most intense brown eyes I've ever seen. My breathing catches. I can't look away. Fuck, he's hot. I can literally feel my brain cells frying. Who's dumb as a rock now, Alexis?
I feel completely frozen and can't move. I don't even think I want to. Blink, Richards, blink."

-Alexis

What happens to someone who has everything figured out and doesn't let anyone rattle her?
To some love is exciting. To her, it's a nuisance. — Kristina Steiner

I read a book once - about love that was developed and love that just is," I paused. "And when I read the part about love that just is I scoffed. I knew better. I knew that it was merely words written by some shallow man that wanted to say what he had to say. And then I met you. And I now, Kelli, know what it is that books are written about. I know what people write poems about, I know what it feels like to know, and I do mean know what it feels like to be certain that someone loves you unconditionally. Love that just is, — Scott Hildreth

More than one thing is never true. People love to say the opposite, love to talk about inner conflict, nuances, levels of complication. But if this last year has taught her anything, it has taught her that people are clearer on what they want than they admit to themselves. They want something, or they don't. They decide to keep working at a relationship or they give up. They love someone or they love someone else. And if they love someone else, it is often the idea that they love most, especially when they haven't learned enough to figure out that this new person probably won't save them either. — Laura Dave

The tendency in our spiritual life but also our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on. And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't "feeling" Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, "Your happiness is all I want." — Brian Kolodiejchuk

Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it's supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful - something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that's not what love is all about. Loving behaviour doesn't grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn't hurt, it feels good. Loving behaviour nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace. — Susan Forward

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputation. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible. — Ilona Andrews

Dear Natasha,
It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep. Thoughts are creeping through my head like darkness slips around the bodies of sky scrapers in every city we've ever been to. From the bottom up, suffocating the life on the street first and then raising to the head and the brain, circling into smog and clouds until the black stretches up so high that nobody can even remember what the stars used to look like.
This is how I feel when I lie awake and think of you. I miss you. — Melodie Ramone

It's 11 am and I'm sitting in a restaurant
3 beers in. Believe me, even I'm surprised
I'm still alive sometimes.
I have been drinking about you for 2 days.
Lately you remind me of a wild thing
chewing through its foot. But you
are already free and I don't know what to do
except trace the rough line of your jaw
and try not to place blame.
Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love
with someone who is in love someone else.
I don't know how to turn that into poetry. — Clementine Von Radics

John Lewis said, You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. In the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say that in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don't have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being. From time to time, we would discuss that, if you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. Years ago that person was an innocent child, an innocent little baby. What happened? Did something go wrong? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? You try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don't give up. You never give up on anyone. — Krista Tippett

Will you destroy something in order to make it beautiful?
Will you avoid something in order to fall in love with it?
Will you sacrifice something just so that you get it?
Will you maintain distance from someone in order to get him close?
We often make these mistakes.
Life is short, every second counts, every moment is precious.
Live at, live for and live always in present, for thats what you have right now with you, who knows what will tomorrow bring. — Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya

This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here. — Cody McFadyen

Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him. "Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I changed the world today? — Robin Hobb

I know what it is like to live every day and every hour by the fruits of someone else's wretched bargain. To see people suffer and know that they suffer because I am loved.
I would not do that to the ones I love. Not for anything in the whole wide world. — Rosamund Hodge

You do know baby. You're just scared and that's okay. But don't throw away your
chance for happiness because you're afraid to take the leap or because you know someone ends up hurt. No matter what you choose, someone
was always going to end up heartbroken. But if there's a chance two hearts can be blissfully happy together in love, then that's worth the broken heart of one. They will mend. They will find love again and be happy. But if you do this, let them both walk away, the only heart that will break and
stay broken is yours baby. — Marie Coulson

Love never comes with a brochure of rules and regulations, a prospectus with guides of what is acceptable and what is abominable. It's a standard to follow your heart, and that's what I did and if doing that hurt you, then I'm sorry ... sorry for coming in your life and wasting your time, for causing you an anguish so great that you could not bear the sight of me. Today, I am proud to stand up and honour myself and proclaim to the world ... yes, I loved someone more than myself. I loved someone truly, madly, deeply! — Faraaz Kazi

That's the thing," Jo says. "You think you know what you're in for. I mean, you tell yourself that, of course, it's not going to be wine and roses and all of that bullshit for the rest of your life, but then, one day, you wake up, and your fucking husband has morphed into someone whom you barely recognize. And you sit there and you stare at him while he scratches his balls through his underwear at the kitchen table, and you think, 'This is totally not what I signed up for. I mean, who knows if I even love this ball-scratching, foul-breathed man?' And then you wonder if you love him more out of habit than out of anything else." She chews the inside of her lip and considers. "And I guess from there, all bets are off. — Allison Winn Scotch

There's a reason for the word heartbeat not be called beat of heart. The perfect woman only needs a good beat. The heart will follow. Emotions, when put in equilibrium with reason, create more miracles than any emotion, no matter how strong, deprived from reason. This is why it's much easier to love a woman that can play the drums or any other instrument with rhythm, than one that believes in unreasonable magic, simply because there's more magic in reason than in the lack of it. You see, loving someone that you truly want to love, someone you admire, someone you want to spend your time with, helping, sharing and growing together, makes much more sense than expecting someone to love you for no reason than your will, needs and desires. And when humans understand this, they will understand love, find it easily and never lose it again. — Robin Sacredfire

I would like people to see me as someone who is genuine and sincere and cares about the people who support me, and who doesn't forget how lucky I am to be doing what I love. — Steve Grand

That's one of the coolest things about being a racecar driver. Even if its one tweet a day, the platform allows me the opportunity to change someone's life. That's what we're here for. When we're struggling on the track, I try to take myself out of the situation and realize how small these earthly problems are. I love being able to spread the Word. That's my main purpose in life. Driving in NASCAR is icing on the cake. — Tanner Berryhill

And I'll know that this is what you live for - to hear someone say. "Let's go home," to hear someone you love call your name. — Leah Stewart

Accepting a religion, any, is a lot like someone in love. It doesn't matter what the beloved does or says, he or she will get a pass ... Forever. It's easier that way. It's too difficult to accept fault or to admit contradictions or falsehoods. Someone who is religious is in love, and there is no talking them out of it, regardless of what others would take as silly notions or irrational thinking. I no longer try. Life is brief, despite what those longing for an afterlife might really need to believe. Peace and acceptance is something, however, I'll always back, no matter what vehicle it rides in on. — Benjamin Kane Ethridge

The problem with the word "vagina" is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get "examined.".. No. Let's clear this up right now - I don't actually have a vagina. I never have. I, personally, have a cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word, and it doubles up as the most potent swear word in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say "cunt." Compared to this, the most powerful swear word men have got out of their privates is "dick," which is frankly vanilla. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone "a girl" - I love that "cunt" stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. — Caitlin Moran

If we were all looking for something 'easy come and easy go', then all of our lives would be easy. The problem is that we look for something real, don't we? And it is this longing for what is real, that makes finding the right person to be the most difficult task in the world. You can marry someone and promise the rest of your life to the person, only to find out later that this person makes you feel lonely. If we had no innate longing for true love and for true partnership, then none of us would have any problems! Therefore, the most frightening question to ponder upon, is, 'what if true love does not exist; what if the real stuff isn't real at all?' In such a case, life would be meaningless. I suppose I would rather believe in love relentlessly, than live in this world meaninglessly. — C. JoyBell C.

If there's one thing I hate, it's not knowing what's wrong with someone and all you want to do is make them feel better. — Pleasefindthis

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can - and should - also be people who confront. What is not confessed can't be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: "I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols" (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn't discount someone who "has something against you," labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do. — Henry Cloud

What is love?

Love is trust. The belief that someone will not leave me for the world,will be there beside me in good and bad times, and will love me,when i would have nothing to offer him. — Sachin Garg

Maybe that's what love's all about. You share the good and the bad, and hope to God that in the end the person will still be waiting for you on the other side. Marriage is a complete and total leap of faith
I've always thought of myself as a risk taker. The greatest risk of all is pursuing someone with your entire heart, knowing that it's completely possible they won't want you back. — Rachel Van Dyken

And the thing about love," Wally said to Angel, "is that you can't force anyone. It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard," he added, "because you often feel like interfering - you want to be the one who makes the plans.
"It's hard to want to protect someone else, and not be able to," Angel pointed out.
"You can't protect people, kiddo," Wally said. "All you can do is love them. — John Irving

I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this is what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy you can't figure out.' — Brad Paisley

I pity the woman who will love you
when I am done. She will show up
to your first date with a dustpan
and broom, ready to pick up all the pieces
I left you in. She will hear my name so often
it will begin to dig holes in her. That
is where doubt will grow. She will look
at your neck, your thin hips, your mouth,
wondering at the way I touched you.
She will make you all the promises I did
and some I never could. She will hear only
the terrible stories. How I drank. How I lied.
She will wonder (as I have) how someone
as wonderful as you could love a monster
like the woman who came before her. Still,
she will compete with my ghost.
She will understand why you do not look
in the back of closets. Why you are afraid
of what's under the bed. She will know
every corner of you is haunted
by me. — Clementine Von Radics

Don't miss out on the love of a good women,son. No matter what that old man of yours tells you,love is real.I'd have never had the success in my life without the women right there.She's been my backbone.She's been my reason for everything I've ever done.One day your drive to make a name for yourself will begin to drift away. It won't be that important anymore.But when you're doing it for someone else, someone you would move heaven and earth for then you never lose the desire to succeed.I can't imagine this world without her in it.I don't ever want to. — Abbi Glines

And she thinks perhaps that is what love is: letting someone else see that part of you that shatters like glass...They will grow old together, broken together, and as long as they both don't completely shatter at the same time, they might find a way to pick each other off the ground. — Thomas Christopher Greene

And suddenly the miracle happens. I look across at the woman who has just made some coffee and is now reading the newspaper, whose eyes look tired and desperate, who is her usual silent self, who does not always show her affection in gestures, the woman who made me say yes when i wanted to say no, who forced me to fight for what she, quiet rightly, believed was my reason for living, who let me set off alone because her love for me was greater even than her love for herself, who made me go in serch of my dream,; and suddenly, seeing that small, quiet woman, whose eyes said more than words, who was often terrified inside, but always courageous in her actions, who could love someone without humbling herself and who never ever apologized for fighting for her man - suddenly. my fingers press down on the keys. — Paulo Coelho

He thought, in your most secret dreams you cut a niche for yourself, and it is finished early, and then you wait for someone to come along to fill it - but to fill it exactly, every cut, curve, hollow and plane of it. And people do come along, and one covers up the niche, and another rattles around inside it, and another is so surrounded by fog that for the longest time you don't know if she fits or not; but each of them hits you with a tremendous impact. And then one comes along and slips in so quietly that you don't know when it happened, and fits so well you almost can't feel anything at all. And that is it.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked him.
He told her, immediately and fully. She nodded as if he had been talking about cats or cathedrals or cam-shafts, or anything else beautiful and complex. She said, "That's right. It isn't all there, of course. It isn't even enough. But everything else isn't enough without it."
"What is 'everything else'? — Theodore Sturgeon

Home is where I take up such a tiny portion of the memory foam; home is a splintered word. His pillow is a sweat-stained map of an escape plot, also a map of love's dear abandon. (When did he give way, at which breath?) Forgiveness may mean retrospectively abandoning the pillow and abandoning the photograph of someone with curious eyes, kissing my toes, poolside. I paint my toes Big Apple Red. I don't know what to do about the shock of red nails on clean, white tiles except get used to it. (And when he gave way, was there room for feelings or the words for feeling?) While I brush my teeth, I can see him in my periphery at the other sink. The outline of him lulls and stings. (And when he gave way, was it the end of the beginning of suffering?) I draw his profile near, I make him brush his teeth with me, he spits and makes a mess. I could love another face, but why? — Karen Green

The mistakes of my youth have allowed me to see what true love is through the experience of its absence. They have allowed me to see that love is not a feeling but an action. It is the laying down of one's life for the beloved. It is not the laying down of someone else's life or body for our own gratification. Ultimately, as a Christian, I have come to see that love is not merely an action but a commandment. We are commanded to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbor - and our enemy. Clearly true love has nothing to do with selfishness in any — Joseph Pearce

If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God. But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ. And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself.
Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and is the debt I owe them ... My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed. Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners ...
It is with all these qualities that we must stand before God and intervene on behalf of those who do not have them, as though clothed with someone else's garment ... But even before men we must, with the same love, render them service against their detractors and those who are violent toward them; for this is what Christ did for us. — Martin Luther

Even though people are shallow and lots of people prefer scripted fictional heroes to real human beings, they can still be shaken out of it in the presence of someone who is REAL. Your problem is not that you haven't mastered the conversational skills necessary to maintain someone's interest. Your problem is that you've never forced yourself to define exactly who you are and what you love and how you want to live. You've never had to talk about these things passionately. You've never dared to lay yourself bare, without apology. Once you can look someone in the eyes and say, "Here's what really matters to me"? That's what people find attractive, trust me. They want to be with someone who knows himself and gives a shit. That's what's alluring and attractive and irreplaceable, even in this age of smooth make-believe. — Heather Havrilesky

What has that to do with love?"
"A great deal. It takes care of its continuance. Otherwise we would love once only and reject everything else later. But as it is, the remnant of desire for the man one leaves behind, or by whom one is left behind, becomes the halo around the head of the new one. To have lost someone before in itself gives the new one a certain romantic glamour. The hallowed old illusion. — Erich Maria Remarque

Whoever's reading this out there - you deserve to have someone's hands be glued to you, for their eyes to be stuck on you. You deserve for their face to catch on fire when they look at you, for them to lay eyes on you and devote the rest of their day to you. Don't ever let yourself settle for anything less than magic from Dumbledore's freakin' wand. That feeling - you know, that crazy, irrational, my-brain-won't-work-without-you, I'd-make-you-eggs-every-morning-for-the-rest-of-my-life - that feeling is the most important thing you will ever find. No matter what happens in this life, that feeling - that love - will keep you warm, and carry you through. So find that magic feeling and never let anythng take it away from you. — Seth King

I'd die for you. You know that. But would I kill someone innocent? What about a lot of innocent lives? What about the whole world? Is it really love to tell someone that if it came down to picking between them and every other life on the planet, you'd pick them? — Cassandra Clare

Sometimes the strongest thing you will ever do will be to let go of someone. It will be painful, you will suffer guilt, and you will second-guess yourself, but for your own sanity and quality of life, there will come a time where you hand them to God, with your love, and trust Him to be who and what He is. May our Lord comfort you. — Lee Goff

Being in love isn't always the fairytale we want it to be, but guess what? Fairytales aren't real. Love is, or it can be, if you meet its challenges head on. And being less than honest with someone you love is the worst possible thing you can do. — Carol Lynne