Quotes about Relationships

To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times — The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.

If you lose money you lose much, If you lose friends you lose more, If you lose faith you lose all.

Human relationships, like life itself, can never remain static. They grow or they diminish. But, in either case, they change. Our emotional interests, our intellectual pursuits, our personal preoccupations, all change. So do those of our friends. So the relationship that binds us together must change too; it must be flexible enough to meet the alterations of person and circumstance

Occasionally he took us on a picnic or a camping trip and taught us many valuable lessons. The chief one was to remember that camping was a good way to find out people's characters. Those who were selfish showed it very soon, in that they wanted the best bed or the best food and did not want to do their share of the work.

The hard part of loving is that one has to learn so often to let go of those we love, so they can do things, so they can grow, so they can return to us with an even richer, deeper love.

If you care enough about certain things and work for them, I think you are bound to find them in the people you are with.

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.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.

Our most meaningful relationships are based on a longing for expansion rather than a preoccupation with comfort and security. To live exuberantly—to fully know and be fully known by another—we must be prepared to illuminate the dark spots in our most intimate relationships and in our selves.

being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us—including ourselves.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.