Quotes & Sayings About Withholding Love

Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. It is judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting. It is leadership. — M. Scott Peck

No matter what's happening in your life, you can change the trajectory of events by closing your eyes, reviewing your thought and behavior, and sending love wherever you've been withholding it. — Marianne Williamson

If there is no honesty, there is no relationship. The only degree to which there is a relationship is the degree to which you are honest. Expressing your clear desires does not make you a dictator and you telling what you think, feel, and what you want or don't want, is just called being honest. It doesn't control him at all.
You're trying to control others by withholding information by not getting involved and by not being honest. Withholding information is a form of manipulation. It is dishonest and it's destructive to a relationship. — Stefan Molyneux

The test of man then is not, 'How have I believed?' but 'How have I loved?'. The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love: not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life. Sins of commission in that awful indictment are not even referred to. By what we have not done, by sins of omission, we are judged. It could not be otherwise. For the withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ, the proof that we never knew Him, that for us He lived in vain.
Pastor Henry Drummond, 1890 — Paulo Coelho

For the Jesus Revolutionaries, the answer was clear: Jesus would not be out waging "preventative" wars. Jesus would not be withholding medicine from people who could not afford it. Jesus would not cast stones at people of races, sexual orientatons, or genders other than His own. Jesus would not condone the failing, viperous, scandalplagued hierarchy of some churches. Jesus would welcome everyone to his his table. He would love them, and he would find peace. — David Levithan

Julie crossed her arms. "I'm serious. Flat Finn can't possibly go to school with her, right?"
"He already went to Brandeis so, no, he doesn't need to repeat seventh grade. Although they did make him take a bunch of tests in order to qualify out. He barely passed the oral exams, though, because the instructors found him withholding and tight-lipped. It's a terribly biased system, but at least he passed and won't have to suffer through the school's annual reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. He has a pilgrim phobia."
"Funny. Really, what's the deal with Flat Finn?"
"After an unfortunate incident involving Wile E. Coyote and an anvil, Three Dimensional Finn had to change his name. — Jessica Park

Movie characters might chase each other through the fog or race down the stairs of burning buildings, but that's for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings. I wanted to say something to this effect, but my hand puppets were back home in their drawer. Instead, I pulled my chair a few inches closer, and we sat silently at our little table on the square, looking for all the world like two people in love. — David Sedaris

Last spring, David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest: ... "What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together- in misery, but happy to not be apart." Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration. The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to ... stop trying to eat his soul. — Elizabeth Gilbert

If you withhold love as a form of punishment, who is being punished? — Donald L. Hicks

There's a reason why one master teacher said, "Love your enemies." He wasn't preaching some touchy-feely mumbo jumbo. He was talking about a cosmic law. He knew there was only One of us here. That means that anything you withhold from another you're withholding from yourself. But it also means that anything you give to another, you're giving to yourself. — Derek Rydall

Love has been the ontological pattern for me. And also the withholding pattern. — Masha Tupitsyn

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings — David Sedaris

Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes. — Criss Jami

She knew from personal experience how hard loving was, how selfish and how easily sundered. Withholding sex or relying on it, ignoring children or devouring them, rerouting true feelings or locking them out. Youth being the excuse for that fortune-cookie love - until it wasn't, until it became pure adult stupidity. — Toni Morrison

When you've said all of the bad things and all of the good things you haven't been saying, you will find that what you've really been withholding is, "I love you." You don't have to go looking for love when it is where you come from. — Werner Erhard

The art of living is to fall in love over and over again.
It is no easy thing to walk through the world with an open heart, embracing everything, and also stand true, allowing no poison to infect us.
But be cracked open often.
Pour yourself into life withholding nothing. Heal and be healed. This is the way of living in full. — Jacob Nordby

But these men had become object lessons for me, men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. And if later I saw that the black men I knew - Frank or Ray or Will or Rafiq - fell short of such lofty standards; if I had learned to respect these men for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my own - my father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. — Barack Obama

We come into this world through women: a woman who is spent, broken open, in awe. No wonder women have been worshiped ever since men first saw the crowning of a head, here, legs spread, a brushstroke of light. We are fire. We are water. We are earth. We are air. We are all things elemental. The world begins with "Yes,"
Changing women: we begin again like the moon. We can no longer deny the destiny that is ours by becoming women who wait: waiting to love, waiting to speak, waiting to act. This is not patience, but pathology. We are sensual, sexual beings, intrinsically bound to both heaven and earth, our bodies a hologram. In our withholding of power, we abrogate power, and that creates war. The Australian poet Judith Wright says,
"Our dream was the wrong dream,
our strength was the wrong strength. Wounded, we cross the desert's emptiness
and must be false to what would make us whole. — Terry Tempest Williams

Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others we are withholding from ourselves. — Marianne Williamson

N our perfection-obsessed, air-brushed society, it can be tempting to measure our self-worth against its set of impossible standards. However, organic beauty is in the flaws that make us vulnerable, human and fallible. We are here to learn, evolve and grow. We do not need to become perfect to be worthy of love, there is no such thing. We can not love others when we are withholding love and acceptance from ourselves. We can not criticize ourselves and then reach with open arms to give and receive love from others. It has to start from within, radiating outward. We need to learn how to be unconditionally loving, accepting and forgiving of ourselves, first, if we wish to forge healthy and loving relationships with others. — Jaeda DeWalt

When we give freely, we feel full and complete; when we withhold, we feel small, petty, impotent, and lacking. We are meant to learn this great truth, that giving fulfills us, while withholding and trying to get causes us to feel empty and even more needy. This truth runs counter to our programming, which drives us to try to get something from others to fulfill our neediness, only to end up even more needy, grasping, lacking, and unfulfilled. — Gina Lake

Sometimes the path to a more beautiful relationship with people we love requires a willingness to accede to non-evil requests that we do not consider to be wise. Why? Since we have authority to grant the request, a withholding of the request can be misinterpreted and damage the relationship irreparably. The decision to put aside our misgivings and grant the non-evil request can, however, enable the other person come to a realization of the wisdom of our opinion and our love for them, resulting in the most beautiful relationships we can imagine. — Oghenovo Obrimah

You are either withholding your love in fear or giving your deepest gifts. — David Deida

It's a rare opportunity when a person removes all the layers and allows you to see who they are at the core. Sometimes we don't even get that chance with our own family or friends, and maybe it's easier to let someone you don't have any emotional connection with see that side of you. There's no fear of rejection, ridicule, or withholding love. We had nothing to lose. — Dannika Dark

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, "I know how to add two numbers, but I'm not going to tell you." And they laugh and shout, "No!" That's so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?
Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing
what does that remind you of?
Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world,
and is based not on gain and fame, but on love. — Margaret Edson

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim "You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made clear sense. And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself. — Bell Hooks

But one of the saddest, most deprecating misuses of power is the withholding of love, affirmation, and delight from other people. Few things keep people in line with our wishes more than an attitude of reserve or aloofness. It is paradoxical that in the power struggle of relationships, the one who loves and encourages the least, gains the most power. This puts people on edge, keeps them guessing, and plays on their need for assurance about their worth. — Lloyd John Ogilvie

Start living now. Stop saving the good china for that special occasion. Stop withholding your love until that special person materializes. Every day you are alive is a special occasion. Every minute, every breath, is a gift from God. — Mary Manin Morrissey

And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a "no," and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.

You: "K — Caroline Kepnes

All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power. — Bell Hooks

I love the combination of smartness, pain, and what one might call conscious postmodern trashiness in this book: a version of the erotic full of nervous tension which animates the sensuality, and also Zimroth's feeling for words, compressed, ironic, withholding, but also 'asking for it ... the siege, the thrill, the battle fatigue.' A profoundly urban book, of harsh memory and fantasy, set in harsher reality. — Alicia Ostriker

Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves quite unexpectedly in a new expansive location in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love. — Greg Boyle

If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect. And I wonder if we're not all a lot better for each other than we previously thought. I know we're not perfect, but I wonder how many people are withholding the love they could provide because they secretly believe they have fatal flaws. — Donald Miller