Relations Quotes

“Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face?

That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course.’

No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.’

What are you trying to say?’

I’m saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“#1425: When you really like someone, tell them. Sometimes you only get one chance.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., The Complete Life's Little Instruction Book

“The aching in my chest
isn't because I miss you,
it's realizing that you have
become someone I no longer know,
your fears, your 4 am thoughts,
your achievements,
are things I no longer have an equivalent to.
Who we were and who we are
are four different people,
and the me from now
doesn't relate to the me from then,
let alone to the you from now.
-Tanzy Sayadi and Jarod Kintz”
― Tanzy Sayadi, liQUID PROse QUOtes

“I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.”
― Marcus Garvey

“I sincerely hope that they (relations between India and Pakistan) will be friendly and cordial. We have a great deal to do...and think that we can be of use to each other and to the world.”
― Muhammad Ali Jinnah

“Burning bridges behind you is understandable. It's the bridges before us that we burn, not realizing we may need to cross, that brings regret.”
― Anthony Liccione

“A mother gives you a life, a mother-in-law gives you her life.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The man was rude, crude, and inappropriate. I was taken with him the moment I walked in the door, and I knew the first moment I saw him that it was going to be raw, it was going to be ugly, and I was going to enjoy every damn minute of it.”
― C.M. Stunich, Losing Me, Finding You

“LOVE IS A FLOWER

Treat your relationship
As if you are growing
The most beautiful sacred flower.
Keep watering it,
Tend to the roots,
And always make sure
The petals are full of color
And are never curling.
Once you neglect your plant,
It will die,
As will your relationship.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly.
It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and cousins died and had funerals.
It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.”
― Arundhati Roy Choudhury

“You cannot connect with anyone except through reality.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Trolls have a longstanding animosity for goats--"Who's that trip-tapping across my bridge!?"--and this led me to think that perhaps trolls are related to goats, since it seems a lot more plausible to me that your relatives would make you insane than some random hooved mammal, however ecologically destructive it might be. What if trolls evolved from goats? Or, no, better yet, what if goats evolved from trolls? Or were domesticated from trolls by human shepherds? And the trolls despise their domesticated cousins as a disgrace to the once-proud troll race, (much as I assume wolves would despise Chihuahuas if they ever gave them much thought) and eat them at every opportunity.”
― Ursula Vernon

“There are moments in relationship when you didn't speak, you didn't have to; but you talked a lot.”
― Aman Jassal, Rainbow - the shades of love

“...when women survive an awful marriage or love affair, and all that shit, they generally avoid another relationship for quite some time. With men, however, it is just the opposite; the moment they finish a catastrophe they start looking for another one. Men are incapable of being alone.”
― Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul

“There is no such thing as a relationship without a contract. All relationships are governed by contracts, be they implied or explicit. Relationship contracts are not legal contracts, though sometimes societal expectations of relationships get worked into law (this can come into play in situations like divorce as well as the legal establishment and relinquishment of paternity).

The society in which you grew up provided you with a set of template contracts to which you implicitly agree whenever you enter a relationship, even a non-sexual one. For example, a common clause of many societal template contracts among friends involves agreeing to not sleep with a friend's recent ex. While you may never explicitly agree to not sleep with a friend's ex, your friend will absolutely feel violated if they discover that you shacked up with the person who dumped them just a week earlier.

Essentially, these social contracts tell an individual when they have “permission” to have specific emotional reactions. While this may not seem that impactful, these default standards can have a significant impact on one’s life. For example, in the above reaction, a friend who just got angry out of the blue at a member of their social group would be ostracized by others within the group while a friend who became angry while citing the “they slept with my ex” contract violation may receive social support from the friend group and internally feel more justified in their retaliatory action. To ferret out the contractual aspects of relationships in which you currently participate, think through something a member of that relationship might do that would have you feeling justifiably violated, even though they never explicitly agreed to never take such action.

This societal system of template contracts may have worked in a culturally and technologically homogenous world without frequent travel, but within the modern world, assumed template contracts cause copious problems.”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships

“It is the function of creative people to perceive relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expressions that seem utterly different, and to be able to Connect the seemingly Unconnected".”
― William Plomer

“Car si elle n'avait jamais agi ainsi consciemment, elle se rendait bien compte qu'une femme pouvait confondre amour et pitié, et s'attacher à un homme dans l'espoir de le sauver. Ou qu'elle pouvait y voir comme un défi, persuadée qu'elle et elle seule pourrait le secourir, le protéger et le rendre heureux.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Excessive praise arises from the same bigotry matrix as excessive criticism.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Relations were never good (how comfortable can you really be with a race that sees you as a nutritious part of a complete breakfast).”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Every family's its own trip to China.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

“The only relationship where you’ll never have your heart broken is the relationship between you and Allah.”
― little_adam

“For youth, sexual love is whim; for the aged, luxury. ”
― Bill Gaede, Why God Doesn't Exist

“Nuclear didn't describe families. How could it? Dry physics was not equal to that task. In the twentieth century we needed a biological metaphor, Darwinian in scope, to suggest the gnash and crash of carnivorous life in the family gene pool. But for the 21st century, the new century, I think the metaphors must be chemical. Molecular. In the molecular family people are connected without being bound. They spindle themselves around shared experiences and affections rather than splashing in the shared gene pool.”
― Laura Kalpakian, Steps and Exes: A Novel of Family

“C'est affreux ces rendez-vous annuels qui autorisent les gens à faire un bilan de votre vie, trois questions et leurs yeux vous disent "tu n'as pas avancé", au mieux avec inquiétude, au pire avec mépris.”
― Agathe Hochberg, Ce crétin de prince charmant

“soudain ! tu découvert que tous tes relations sont qu'un mirage et que tous les gens ont deux visages”
― Younes

“physics can be taught , love cant , learn it while you can , earn it when ever possible .”
― ganeshsaidheeraj

“Om jag inte kände det jag känner när jag ser dig skulle du vara någon annan. Det vore hemskt. Om jag inte mindes att jag älskar dig, menar jag. (190)”
― Siri Hustvedt, The Sorrows of an American

“Without feeling so close, so connected, so comfortable to a person for what I have sex.”
― Baris Gencel

“They were just like the relations from whom I had fled as a girl. I couldn't bear them and yet they held me tight, I had them all inside me.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Lost Daughter