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Quotations about Relationships



It is hard to exist. Man is a knot into which relationships are tied... ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from the French by Lewis Galantière


Cling tight to the hearts that will not let you fall. ~Emily Dickinson


Sometimes, in a relationship, we fail to put two and two together because we want so much to keep one and one together. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Then clasp my hand with closer hold,
True hearts are never unconsoled,—
They fear not care, nor cloud, nor cold,
And smile at growing old!
~Elizabeth Chase Akers Allen (1832–1911), "November," c.1864


There are days when you need someone who just wants to be your sunshine and not the air you breathe. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


[I]f any one had asked what gifts she desired most, she would have answered with a look more pathetic than any shivering child had given her: "I want the sound of a loving voice; the touch of a friendly hand." ~Louisa May Alcott, "Seamstress," Work: A Story of Experience, 1873


To truly know someone is to know the silence that stands for the thing they never speak of. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


For lack of an occasional expression of love, a relationship strong at the seams can wear thin in the middle. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Those who need us give us a hold upon life. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882


Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


We need sympathy; hence we crave friendship and love. By the devotion of the other we feel our own power, our own value enhanced. Love tends to make man kinder and better through his complete identification with the existence of another. In the beauty of a loving attachment, man learns to comprehend all his fellowmen and to value and look at all the world by the glorious light of an inner community of emotions. ~Bernard S. Talmey, M.D., Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-Attraction, For the Use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence, 1915


It's not about finding fun things to do. It's about finding someone in whose company, it's all fun. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com, 2018


In the end, who among us does not choose to be a little less right to be a little less lonely. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


As important as shared memories is the silent agreement that certain things never happened. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1786


There is nothing that quite draws us to another human being like the discovery that we have the power to make them happy. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


They say the world is round, and yet
      I often think it square;
So many little hurts we get
      From corners here and there.
But one great truth in life I've found,
      While journeying to the West:
The only folks who really wound
      Are those we love the best...
The choicest garb, the sweetest grace
      Are oft to strangers shown;
The careless mien, the frowning face
      Are given to our own.
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, "Life's Scars," 1896


In the end there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


More important than how your day goes is having someone in your life to ask how it went. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


With half a laugh of hearty zest
      I strip me of my coat and vest.
Then heeding not the frigid air,
      I fling away my underwear.
So, having nothing else to doff,
      I rip my epidermis off.
More secrets to acquaint you with
      I pare my bones to strips of pith.
And when the exposé is done
      I hang, a cobweb skeleton.
While there you sit, aloof, remote,
      And will not shed your overcoat.
~Tom Prideaux (1908–1993), "We Meet Again," c.1924


In the best of relationships you have two people who cannot think of anything that was not part of the deal. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


...he caught her in his arms as if she were a spar and he a drowning sailor. They made up like young lovers and swore oaths that they would never quarrel again — oaths which, fortunately for the variety of their future existence, they found capable of infinite breaking and mending. ~Rupert Hughes, "Baby Talk," In a Little Town, 1917


Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything,
But silence breaks the heart.
~Phyllis McGinley, "A Choice of Weapons," 1950s


...the wounded souls of Bayard and Leila forgot discretion. They wrangled wildly well. ~Rupert Hughes, The Thirteenth Commandment, 1916


When something is missing in your life, it usually turns out to be someone. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Dear Friend,— I felt it shelter to speak to you. ~Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1878


You can be happy with someone who likes you despite your faults — until you meet someone who likes your faults. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Sooner or later we realize that we will only be offered imperfect people to love. ~Dr. SunWolf, @wordwhispers, tweet, 2016, professorsunwolf.com


The people in your life who don't need an invitation still like to get one. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


When God is thundering the last world into oblivion,
And quenching the farthest star,
And putting blackness around,
We two will cling to each other.
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "Love-songs," 1915


It is usually the case that people who know you better than you know yourself think you're a pretty good person. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


A lovers' quarrel is always about every quarrel you ever had. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame but something wild to run with. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Let us thank God... that we can love our friends, our brothers and our sisters, and weep when they are gone, and smile at their return. It is indeed a joy which we are blest to know. ~Emily Dickinson, letter to brother, 1854


Happiness is having a dream you cannot let go of and a partner who would never ask you to. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


The I that does not love you
      I have kept hidden away
      In the dark.
(I never dreamed
      There was a You
      That does not love me!)
Tonight they met.
I hear their words
      Falling like icicles
      Upon me…
      I am frozen in terror…
      Have they killed the You
      That Loves me?
Belovèd, can you hear me
      Through the bitter sound
      Of icicles falling?
      Can you see me from behind
      Your frozen eyes?
~Marjorie Allen Seiffert, "Winter Night," A Woman of Thirty, 1919


Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same. ~Flavia Marie Register Weedn (1929–2015), Forever, 1999, https://flavia.gallery


So often the end of a love affair is death by a thousand cuts, so often its survival is life by a thousand stitches. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Sometimes, we need a few people in our lives who will calmly call our bluff. ~Dr. SunWolf, professorsunwolf.com


Eventually, if you're lucky in life, you find someone with the same chemical imbalance you have. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There are times when two people need to step apart from one another, but there is no rule that says they have to turn and fire. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It is possible to live a simple, uncomplicated life, but we usually call it by a different name. We call it loneliness. ~Robert Brault, 2017, rbrault.blogspot.com


When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that's when I think life is over. ~Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993)


It is one of life's curious puzzles how two people walking arm-in-arm can end up in different places. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Today, befriend a stranger, or if you feel up to more of a challenge, befriend a loved one. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky! ~Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M. D. Herter Norton


Most often the person for whom you would climb any mountain and swim any sea would settle for a little conversation at dinner. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


There are couples a matchmaker would match every time — and couples who, for no rhyme or reason, rhyme. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


If God had intended us to be alone, there would be more pleasure in massaging our own shoulders. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Sometimes two people need to step apart
and make a space between
that each might see the other anew,
in a glance across a room
or silhouetted against the moon.
~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


We are, many of us, a planet orbiting somebody's sun, unconscious of a lonely moon, orbiting our planet. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


Once you find someone to share your ups and downs, downs are almost as good as ups. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com





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published 2003 Dec 8
revised 2021 Feb 21
last saved 2025 Jan 20
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