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“And in the end, we were all just humans, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”
― Christopher Poindexter

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
― Fromm, Eric, The Art of Loving

“The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Love is an activity, not a feeling…True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one’s fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish.”
― Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.

[…]

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
― Erich Fromm

“[L]asting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term, we can call an act of will. . . . This isn't to say that a young man can't hope to be seized by love. . . . But whether the sheer fury of a man's feelings accurately gauges their likely endurance is another question. The ardor will surely fade, sooner or later, and the marriage will then live or die on respect, practical compatibility, simple affection, and (these days, especially) determination. With the help of these things, something worthy of the label 'love' can last until death. But it will be a different kind of love from the kind that began the marriage. Will it be a richer love, a deeper love, a more spiritual love? Opinions vary. But it's certainly a more impressive love.”
― Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

“We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones.”
― Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are - The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
― Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

“I fear others will discover that I am not only imperfect; I’m not even okay. I fear that I truly am not okay. But most people who meet me never know that I am struggling. On the outside I am smiling. I am juggling all the balls of okayness: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, existential. Underneath, I am suffocating.”
― Melissa Broder, So Sad Today: Personal Essays

“We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

“That which you most need to find will be found where you least wish to look.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“A certain amount of creativity and rebellion must be tolerated - or welcomed, depending on your point of view - to maintain the process of regeneration. Every rule was once a creative act, breaking other rules.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

“Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“With careful searching, with careful attention, you might tip the balance toward opportunity and against obstacle sufficiently so that life is clearly worth living, despite its fragility and suffering. If you truly wanted, perhaps you would receive, if you asked. If you truly sought, perhaps you would find what you seek. If you knocked, truly wanting to enter, perhaps the door would open. But there will be times in your life when it will take everything you have to face what is in front of you, instead of hiding away from a truth so terrible that the only thing worse is the falsehood you long to replace it with. Do not hide unwanted things in the fog.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Have they been educated to the level of their intellectual ability or ambition? Is their use of free time engaging, meaningful, and productive? Have they formulated solid and well-articulated plans for the future? Are they (and those they are close to) free of any serious physical health or economic problems? Do they have friends and a social life? A stable and satisfying intimate partnership? Close and functional familial relationships? A career—or, at least, a job—that is financially sufficient, stable and, if possible, a source of satisfaction and opportunity? If the answer to any three or more of these questions is no, I consider that my new client is insufficiently embedded in the interpersonal world and is in danger of spiraling downward psychologically because of that.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

“Whatever the times, suffering eventually touches every life. How we live with it, and help others to, is one of the great creative and ethical opportunities”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person

“How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God

“Pray to catch the bus, then run as fast as you can.”
― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

“Serious art is born from serious play.”
― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

“Art is born in attention.”
― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

“Anger is meant to be acted upon. It is not meant to be acted out.”
― Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”
― Sylvia Plath, Journals of Sylvia Plath

“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them.”
― Sylvia Plath, Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

“That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar