For me, the highest level of sexual excitement is in a monogamous relationship.
—Warren Beatty (b.1937) American Film Actor, Director, Producer
People who are having a love-sex relationship are continuously lying to each other because the very nature of the relationship demands that they do, because you have to make a love object of this person, which means that you editorialize about them. You cut out what you don’t want to see, you add this if it isn’t there. And so therefore you’re building a lie.
—Truman Capote (1924–84) American Novelist
In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
You must go to bed with friends or whores, where money makes up the difference in beauty or desire.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
All things need watching, working at, caring for and marriage is no exception. Marriage is not something to be treated indifferently, or abused or something that simply takes care of itself. Nothing neglected will remain as it was or is, or will fail to deteriorate. All things need attention care and concern and especially so in this most sensitive of all relationships of life.
—Richard L. Evans (1906–71) American Mormon Religions Leader
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.
—Wayne Dyer (b.1940) American Motivational Writer, Author, Motivational Speaker
There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west –
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
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 Poet, Journalist
I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.
—Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American Feminist Author, Lecturer
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
I think that when you invite people to your home, you invite them to yourself.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
If fame were based on kindness instead of popularity, on understanding and not on worldwide attention, you would be the biggest celebrity on earth. And to my heart, you already are.
—Anonymous
I like her because she smiles at me and means it.
—Anonymous
You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
—Barbara De Angelis (b.1951) American Lecturer, Author, TV Personality, Motivational Speaker
My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Present your family and friends with their eulogies now – they won’t be able to hear how much you love them and appreciate them from inside the coffin.
—Anonymous
When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The thing that’s between us is fascination, and the fascination resides in our being alike. Whether you’re a man or a woman, the fascination resides in finding out that we’re alike.
—Marguerite Duras (1914–96) French Novelist, Playwright
Surely there must be some way to find a husband or, for that matter, merely an escort, without sacrificing one’s privacy, self-respect, and interior decorating scheme. For example, men could be imported from the developing countries, many parts of which are suffering from a man excess, at least in relation to local food supply.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b.1941) American Social Critic, Essayist
There is no difference between robbing a Jew or robbing a Gentile; if any, to rob a Gentile is a greater sin than to rob a Jew.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
A long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
The “Inside-Out” approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self—with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
I felt it shelter to speak to you.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.
—Domenico Cieri (b.1954) Mexican Author, Aphorist
Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to in this world is each other.
—Linda Ellerbee (b.1944) American Journalist
How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
—A. A. Milne (1882–1956) British Humorist, Playwright, Children’s Writer
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
Good company upon the road is the shortest cut.
—Unknown
Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships… the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world, at peace.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer
Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.
—Wayne Dyer (b.1940) American Motivational Writer, Author, Motivational Speaker
It takes a lot of experience of life to see why some relationships last and others do not. But we do not have to wait for a crisis to get an idea of the future of a particular relationship. Our behavior in little every incidents tells us a great deal.
—Eknath Easwaran (1910–99) Indian Meditation Teacher, Spiritual Author
We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo
Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Basically, the only thing we need is a hand that rests on our own, that wishes it well, that sometimes guides us.
—Hector Bianciotti (1930–2012) French Novelist
Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you. They are not perfect but are always perfect for you.
—Unknown
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, nd we are never ever the same.
—Flavia Weedn
I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you.
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.
—Tony Robbins (b.1960) American Self-Help Author, Entrepreneur
Kindness and intelligence don’t always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer