Growing up, we may have been taught by movies and society that love is a neat and tidy thing, easy to categorize and identify. We find the one person in the world who’s right for us, we instantly click, and if it’s real love, it’s easy sailing from there on out. No fights, no hurt, just bliss.
But as we all eventually learn, that idealized version of love doesn’t align with reality. Not only that, but that narrow concept of love totally undersells it. As we’ve written in the past, there are many glorious forms of love, and they all weave colorful threads into the tapestries of our lives.
There may be much more to learn (and unlearn) about love than any of us realize. If we’re lucky, we’ll spend our whole lives getting to know the heights and depths of this complicated human feeling.
To help you along in your journey, we’ve assembled 14 quotes that might just completely change the way you look at love.
Nobody is right for anyone. Actually, what makes somebody right is commitment. Then when you’re committed to each other and you have true dialogue, [you] allow the other to impact upon you and they allow you to impact on them … It’s like two stones rubbing together until suddenly they fit.Philippa Perry
Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.J.D. McClatchy
[Love is] not just about who you find, it’s also about who you’re going to be. Love is not a state of enthusiasm. It’s a verb. It implies action, demonstration, ritual, practices, communication, expression.Esther Perel
The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.Cheryl Strayed
Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.Vernon Howard
The best frame of mind to be in — for anything you want — is an ability to walk away from it, were it not to come right … The capacity to say, “I could be alone,” is strangely one of the most important guarantees of one day being with somebody else in a happy way.Alain de Botton
Expecting someone to fill in a hole that’s within you? That’s expecting too much of any one person. That’s not your friend’s job or your partner’s job. That’s your job.Ayisha Malik
The love of a partnership can be an incredibly important and transforming experience, but only one of many important and transforming experiences.Sarah Hepola
True, solid love [can] withstand difficulty. It can withstand you being human and being flawed and being unhappy or having a problem with your partner. I wish I had known that love doesn’t disappear when you aren’t quiet and perfect.Roxane Gay
Love is not possession. Love is letting your loved ones follow their own paths, even if those paths lead them away from you.Cloris Kylie
The lack of love in my life was not a reality but a poverty of imagination and a carelessly narrow use of an essential word.Krista Tippett
If you tell me, “I care about my partner,” then my second question is, “How do you show it?” The fact that you feel it isn’t enough.Esther Perel
The people we love are a constellation. In loving them, it is our privilege to see and bring out all the different worlds and colours and depths within them, just as they have the potential to do the same for us.Natasha Lunn
Love is not the answer / But the line that marks the start.Laura Marling
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