Relationship quotes
page 2

Ernest Hemingway photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Jacques Lacan photo
Bill Maher photo
Ayn Rand photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant: Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.

Bertrand Russell photo

“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Value

Sam Levenson photo
Bob Marley photo
Edward Thomas photo

“The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.”

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) Poet and journalist

Source: "The Unknown", line 16, cited from Collected Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1920), p. 116.

Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Jim Morrison photo
John Lennon photo
Greg Behrendt photo

“A man who wants to make a relationship work will move mountains to keep the
woman he loves”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

Thomas Merton photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Borís Pasternak photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
A.A. Milne photo

“You are stronger than you seem,
Braver than you believe,
and smarter than you think you are.”

Variant: You are braver than you believe,
Stronger than you seem,
And smarter than you think(:
Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Elizabeth Gilbert photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Helen Schucman photo

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Helen Schucman (1909–1981) Clinical Psychologist

Jesus' Course in Miracles (2000) by Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 162

Tennessee Williams photo

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Actually by the Chinese philosopher, educator and popular lecturer Dr. Tehyi Hsieh, Chinese epigrams inside out, and proverbs, 1948.
Misattributed
Variant: Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage

Sophocles photo
Florbela Espanca photo

“To live is to not know that one is living”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Diary (20 April, 1930), quoted in Afinado desconcerto (2002), p. 262
Context: Sometimes I start looking at the mirror and examining myself, feature by feature: eyes, mouth, shape of the forehead, eyelids curve, the face line... And this vulgar and hideous-looking, grotesque and miserable amalgam, would it know how to do verses? Oh, no! There is something else … but what? After all, why think? To live is to not know that one is living... Why don't I forget that I am living... to live?

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know.”

My Day (1935–1962)
Context: It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
Cornel West photo

“We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

Thomas Merton photo

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Variant: The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.
Source: The Way of Chuang Tzu

Paul McCartney photo

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

"The End"; The last full song track of Abbey Road (1969) the last Beatles album to be recorded before the band broke up. (Let It Be was the last album released, but had been recorded earlier.)
Lyrics, The Beatles
Source: The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics

Leo Tolstoy photo
Gloria Steinem photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Jane Austen photo

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Variant: In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will no longer be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Source: Pride And Prejudice

E.E. Cummings photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.”

Travis Parker, Chapter 13, p. 166
Variant: conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)
Context: Finding a woman with a sense of humor had been the one piece of advice his father had given him when he'd first begun to get serious about dating, and he finally understood why his dad had considered it important. If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.

George Eliot photo

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

Middlemarch (1871)
Context: What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.

Candace Bushnell photo
André Breton photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Maya Angelou photo
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. photo
Toni Morrison photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

Variant trans: Everybody sees what you seem, but few know what thou art.
Ch. 18
Variant: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are
Source: The Prince (1513)
Context: Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.

Anaïs Nin photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Lucille Ball photo

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Variant: Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox photo

“We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Variant: We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest;
And deal full many a thoughtless blow,
To those who love us best.

Leo Buscaglia photo

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

LOVE (1972)
Variant: Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest accomplishment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Jane Austen photo

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Variant: It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

James Baldwin photo

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Variant: Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
Source: To Love and Be Loved

William Goldman photo
Marilyn Monroe photo
A.A. Milne photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

March 1937
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Nicholas Sparks photo

“Long-term relationships--the ones that matter--are all about weathering the peaks and valleys.”

Jo, Chapter 33, p. 259
Source: 2009, Safe Haven (2010)

Anthony Robbins photo

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and let it come in”

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Source: Morrie: In His Own Words

Mitch Albom photo
Candace Bushnell photo
Arundhati Roy photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Jane Austen photo
William James photo
Wayne W. Dyer photo
Nick Hornby photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Pietro Aretino photo

“I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.”

Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist, and blackmailer

Source: The Works of Aretino: Biography: de Sanctis. The letters, 1926, p. 152