Intimate Relationships quotes

Intimate Relationships

81 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

81 quotes

"Above all else, we seek connection - with parts of ourselves that we have repressed, with other people, and with the larger universe. We cannot experience life in its fullness unless we have an intimate relationship with another human being and, beyond that, a feeling of connection with the world around us."

Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks Author, Feminist, Social Activist

"Feminist effort to end patriarchal domination should be of primary concern precisely because it insists on the eradication of exploitation and oppression in the family context and in all other intimate relationships. It is that political movement which most radically addresses the person – the personal – citing the need for the transformation of self, of relationships, so that we might be better able to act in a revolutionary manner, challenging and resisting domination, transforming the world outside the self."

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Arianna Huffington Author, Businesswoman
Intimate Relationships

"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."

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Joyce Meyer Author, Speaker
Intimate Relationships

"People who don't know the true character of God - who don't believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger - can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him."

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Henri Nouwen Theologian, Author
Intimate Relationships

"Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love."

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Deepak Chopra Author, Speaker
Intimate Relationships

"The body and mind are one. When the intimate relationship between mind and body is disrupted, aging and entropy accelerate. Restoring mind/body integration brings about renewal. Through conscious breathing and movement techniques, you can renew the body/mind and reverse the aging process."

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Connie Zweig Author, Psychologist
Intimate Relationships

"If you can hold the tension of opposite points of view in your intimate relationships with people, instead of making somebody right and somebody wrong, you are really taking an evolutionary step."

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Intimate Relationships

"You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been."

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Henri Nouwen Theologian, Author
Intimate Relationships

"Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel. In this sense he also remains for nuclear man the way to liberation and freedom."

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May Sarton Poet
Intimate Relationships

"When we speak of being vulnerable, it suggests being especially vulnerable to pain. People for whom personal dignity and self-sufficiency are everything, do all they can to shut it out. Noli mi tangere. They are well aware that any intimate relationship has pain in it, forces a special kind of awareness, is costly, and so they try to keep themselves unencumbered by shutting pain out as far as it is possible to do so."

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Bell Hooks Author, Feminist, Social Activist
Intimate Relationships

"None of us, irrespective of our sexual preference and/or practice, imagine that we can have an intimate relationship with a partner and always have seamless harmony. Indeed, most of us assume that once the “honeymoon” period is over differences will emerge and conflicts will happen. Positively, we also assume that we will be “safe“ in those moments; that even if voices are raised and emotions expressed are intense, there will not be and should not be any abuse or any reason to be unsafe, and that the will to connect and communicate will prevail."

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Jo Brand Comedian, Writer
Intimate Relationships

"How do you conduct an intimate relationship where no one ever loses it? Where no one ever lashes out, where no one ever smacks anyone in the mouth?"

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Joyce Meyer Author, Speaker
Intimate Relationships

"What we need to understand is that when traditions become laws, rules, obligations and expectations others put on us that we don't want to fulfill, then they lose real meaning and steal the joy from our lives. And if we're too religious, we won't be able to be led by the Holy Spirit and enjoy an intimate relationship with Him."

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