#erin

For I am in love. For the first time in my life, utterly and completely, I have fallen in love, and I can not believe it myself. ↗

— Philippa Gregory

#the-boleyn-inheritance #life

Most of our suffering comes from resisting what is already here, particularly our feelings. All any feeling wants is to be welcomed, touched, allowed. It wants attention. It wants kindness. If you treated your feelings with as much love as you treated your dog or your cat or your child, you'd feel as if you were living in heaven every day of your sweet life. ↗

— Geneen Roth

#suffering #women #life

A wise mother knows: It is her state of consciousness that matters. Her gentleness and clarity command respect. Her love creates security. ↗

— Vimala McClure

#love #mothering #respect #security #love

You are not broken. You are not a problem to be solved. Solving your “problem”, whatever you perceive your problem or problems to be, is not the key to happiness. ↗

— Golda Poretsky

#empowerment #self-help #self-knowledge #self-love #love

God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependence on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away. To live with your ‘thorn’ uncomplainingly — that is, sweet, patient, and free in heart to love and help others, even though every day you feel weak — is true sanctification. It is true healing for the spirit. It is a supreme victory of grace. ↗

— J.I. Packer

#love

...it was inevitable I loved you - we were soul mates - for the same reason, we were fated to suffer... ↗

— John Geddes

#soul-mates #suffering #love

Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine -- If he love with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years, as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough, as her whole affection be monopolized by him -- Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse -- It is not in him to be loved like me, how can she love in him what he has not? ↗

— Emily Brontë

#love

[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68) ↗

— Anne Lamott

#buddhism #desire #grief #love #suffering

That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. ↗

— Ted Hughes

#love #paradox #suffering #love

Everyone has their own idea of the perfect partner, but they usually do not consider what it is they have to offer one. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#law-of-attraction #love #mind-power #stephen-richards #love