Helen Fisher > Quotes

“Personality is composed of two fundamentally different types of traits: those of 'character;' and those of 'temperament.' Your character traits stem from your experiences. Your childhood games; your family's interests and values; how people in your community express love and hate; what relatives and friends regard as courteous or perilous; how those around you worship; what they sing; when they laugh; how they make a living and relax: innumerable cultural forces build your unique set of character traits. The balance of your personality is your temperament, all the biologically based tendencies that contribute to your consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving. As Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset, put it, 'I am, plus my circumstances.' Temperament is the 'I am,' the foundation of who you are.”
― Helen Fisher

“Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“Falling in love was not really a choice; it just struck me.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“Take dopamine. Elevated levels of dopamine in the brain produce extremely focussed attention,2 as well as unwavering motivation and goal-directed behaviors.3 These are central characteristics of romantic love. Lovers intensely focus on the beloved, often to the exclusion of all around them. Indeed, they concentrate so relentlessly on the positive qualities of the adored one that they easily overlook his or her negative traits;4 they even dote on specific events and objects shared with this sweetheart.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“...if patterns of human love subtly change, all sorts of social and political atrocities can escalate.”
― Helen Fisher

“Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“We need food. We need water. We need warmth. And the lover feels he/she needs the beloved. Plato had it right over two thousand years ago. The god of love “lives in a state of need.”41”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“Commit. Listen “actively” to your partner. Ask questions. Give answers. Appreciate. Stay attractive. Keep growing intellectually. Include her. Give him privacy. Be honest and trustworthy. Tell your mate what you need. Accept his/her shortcomings. Mind your manners. Exercise your sense of humor. Respect him. Respect her. Compromise. Argue constructively. Never threaten to depart. Forget the past. Say “no” to adultery. Don’t assume the relationship will last forever; build it one day at a time. And never give up.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“each is associated with different neurochemicals. Lust is associated primarily with the hormone testosterone in both men and women. Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin. And feelings of male-female attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Moreover,”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“The reverse can also happen: as a man becomes more and more attached to his family, levels of testosterone can decline. In fact, at the birth of a child, expectant fathers experience a significant decline in levels of testosterone.66 Even when a man holds a baby, levels of testosterone decrease. This”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“...I pondered this dual speed of time: the years that sometimes seem to stretch impossibly ahead of us, especially when we're young. When we're children, the time for us to learn to drive, get a job, marry, and have children seems unfathomably far away. And yet inevitably comes the time when we say we may have well have clicked our fingers, it happened that fast. The feeling that things are over when they haven't even started yet was the one I couldn't shake, and I have never been able to.”
― Helen Fisher, Faye, Faraway

“some psychiatrists believe that exercise (aerobic or anaerobic) can be as effective in healing depression as psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs.14”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“Scientists are beginning to pinpoint the brain regions that become active when one feels fusion with a “higher power,” such as God.36 Perhaps this brain region is also involved in love.”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“I am large, I contain multitudes. —WALT WHITMAN”
― Helen Fisher, Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love

“Joe realized that a life is lived differently when there is someone there to witness it.”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life

“You have to choose between the past and the present, and there really is no choice, Faye, it's a no-brainer. You can't live in both, and if you don't choose between the past and the present, then one day that choice may be made for you, and you may not like the way it goes.”
― Helen Fisher, Faye, Faraway

“Instead of fearing a thing, try to understand it. Because understanding can change everything about the way that you feel.”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life

“Assumptions were a way of connecting the dots to give you a picture that worked, but not necessarily the right picture. Not necessarily the truth.”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life

“Because Explorers are so spontaneous, they can be unpredictable and unreliable. And their curiosity can override their sense of responsibility.”
― Helen Fisher, Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love

“El clima del amor es tan agradable. En efecto, cuando estamos enamorados, resplandecemos. También sentimos la angustia de la agonía y de la espera. El amor romántico es un ímpetu, un deseo, una necesidad, un impulso primigenio del apareamiento que a veces puede ser más poderoso que el hambre.”
― Helen Fisher, Por que amamos - a natureza e a química do amor romântico

“What about your past? How often would you travel there, given the chance? Often? Never? And when you got there, would you think about staying forever?”
― Helen Fisher, Faye, Faraway

“Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often. As a man’s marriage becomes less stable, his levels of testosterone rise. With divorce, his testosterone levels rise even more. And single men tend to have higher levels of testosterone than married men.65 The”
― Helen Fisher, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love

“I think there's more to God than the big beardy feller in the sky. I know that God is on earth, in people, in good deeds. God is in the big things, and the small things. He's under the fingernails of our daughters, and he's in all the kindnesses we show people. I know that what people call 'God's work' can be called 'lightening the burden' for another human being. My kind of God might be a bit different from yours, maybe that's all.”
― helen fisher, Faye, Faraway

“We keep stuff in order to hang on to what's important, but it's an illusion ... These objects are not bridges to the past, they're bridges to memories of the past. But they are not the past.”
― Helen Fisher

“A universal pattern of female flirting emerged. Women from places as different as the jungles of Amazonia, the salons of Paris, and the highlands of New Guinea apparently flirt with the same sequence of expressions. First, the woman smiles at her admirer and lifts her eyebrows in a swift, jerky motion as she opens her eyes wide to gaze at him. Then she drops her eyelids, tilts her head down and to the side, and looks away. Frequently she also covers her face with her hands, giggling nervously as she retreats behind her palms. This sequential flirting gesture is so distinctive that Eibl-Eibesfeldt is convinced it is innate, a human female courtship ploy that evolved eons ago to signal sexual and/or romantic interest.”
― Helen Fisher, Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray

“Joe didn't often look ahead. If he was comfortable in what he was doing in the moment, and knew what came next, then life felt like a series of stepping stones: good steady ones, not the kind that were slippery or too small or too far apart. Joe was at ease with the comfort of known world: understanding the now, understanding the next.”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life

“Are you using your swear box?” Joe asked. “Yeah, but it’s not fucking big enough,”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life

“Para contrarrestar este modo de pensar convencional, los terapeutas aconsejan seguir varias prácticas establecidas: Comprometerse. Escuchar "activamente" a nuestra pareja. Hacer preguntas. Dar respuestas. Valorar. Permanecer atractivo. Seguir creciendo intelectualmente. Contar con ella. Dejarle intimidad a él. Ser sincero y digno de confianza. Contar a nuestra pareja lo que necesitamos. Aceptar sus defectos. Cuidar los modales. Practicar el sentido del humor. Respetarse. Llegar a acuerdos. Discutir constructivamente. No amenazar nunca con abandonarle. Olvidar el pasado. Decir "no" al adulterio. No dar por hecho que la relación durará para siempre, vivir cada día. Y no rendirse nunca.”
― Helen Fisher, Por que amamos - a natureza e a química do amor romântico

“The place a person belongs might be in their future; they might not have found it yet. … Sometimes the place we belong is just about the people in our lives, not the actual place. Sometimes, the place we belong is just the place where the people who love us hang out.”
― Helen Fisher, Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life