Wisdom on the Topic of love
Quotations
The cause which is blocking all progress
The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards.
The difference between construction and creation
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.
A diminishing sense of shared humanity
In grounded theory, researchers try to understand what we call ‘the main concern’ of study participants. When it comes to belonging, I asked: What are people trying to achieve? What are they worried about?
The answer was surprisingly complex. They want to be a part of something – to experience real connection with others – but not at the cost of their authenticity, freedom, or power. Participants further reported feeling surrounded by ‘us versus them’ cultures that create feelings of spiritual disconnection. When I dug deeper into what they meant by ‘spiritually disconnected,’ the research participants described a diminishing sense of shared humanity. Over and over, participants talked about their concern that the only thing that binds us together now is shared fear and disdain, not common humanity, shared trust, respect or love.
The Four-Fold Way
The following four principles, each based on an archetype, comprise what I call the Four-Fold Way:
Show up, or choose to be present. Being present allows us to access the human resources of power, presence, and communication. This is the way of the Warrior.
Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Paying attention opens us to the human resources of love, gratitude, acknowledgment, and validation. This is the way of the Healer.
Tell the truth without blame or judgment. Nonjudgmental truthfulness maintains our authenticity, and develops our inner vision and intuition. This is the way of the Visionary.
Be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. Openness and nonattachment help us to recover the human resources of wisdom and objectivity. This is the way of the Teacher.
The fundamental goodness of human nature
The fundamental goodness of human nature, like the mystery of the Trinity, Grace, and the Incarnation, is an essential element of Christian faith. This basic core of goodness is capable of unlimited development; indeed, becoming transformed into Christ and deified.
Our basic core of goodness is our true Self. Its center of gravity is God. The acceptance of our basic goodness is a quantum leap in the spiritual journey.
God and our true Self are not separate. Though we are not God, God and our true Self are the same thing…
The disintegrating and dying of our false self is our participation in the passion and death of Jesus. The building of our new self, based on the transforming power of divine love, is our participation in His risen life.
A Hundred Species of Love
She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.
Integrity and Conviction
The best jazz had always been the embodiment of integrity and conviction. Because the musicians’ skills and competence were so hard-earned, it was difficult to get them to compromise. Once jazzmen began making the decision to water down their artistry for notoriety, publicity, or money, our art began to face the same challenges that our government and many businesses face: dearth of leadership, lack of quality, loss of meaning, insensitivity to people–ultimately a wholesale loss of faith: ‘Well, what is jazz, anyway?’‘What difference does it make what I play?’
It's sports and it's all love
At the end of the day, it’s sports, and it’s all love. I feel for both sides.
– Commenting on stopping on the court after a game to console Devin Davis, an opponent who was sobbing on the court, despondent over missing two crucual free throws.
Love is the ultimate and the highest goal
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
The Love of What We are Doing
It’s a labor of love for all of us. It’s not contrived or fake and it’s not about money (it’s too much work to be about money). It’s about the love of what we are doing. That’s the center of what it is about, and that’s the center of what anything of great human value is always about. It’s about that love that you have for humanity in our commonality. And to experience all of the things that are in this music like heartbreak and joy and many other things – a certain type of striving and struggle – it’s a part of the life we all live together.
The moment we cease to hold each other
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
Only Connect
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
The original naiveté
You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
Our Reply to Violence
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Rocks don’t see it.
Bless and sit down.
Forgive and forget.
Practice kindness all day to everybody
and you will realize you’re already
in heaven now.
That’s the story.
That’s the message.
Nobody understands it,
nobody listens, they’re
all running around like chickens with heads cut
off. I will try to teach it but it will
be in vain, s’why I’ll
end up in a shack
praying and being
cool and singing
by my woodstove
making pancakes.
The productive orientation is expressed in love
In the realm of feeling, the productive orientation is expressed in love, which is the experience of union with another person, with all men, and with nature, under the condition of retaining one’s sense of integrity and independence. In the experience of love the paradox happens that two people become one, and remain two at the same time. Love in this sense is never restricted to one person. If I can love only one person, and nobody else, if my love for one person makes me more alienated and distant from my fellow man, I may be attached to this person in any number of ways, yet I do not love.
Public morality
Moral guidance about what is right or decent can be found both in religious teachings and in our contemporary understanding of what we owe one another as members of the same society. As I have suggested, they overlap. A public morality that protects our democratic institutions, cherishes the truth, accepts our differences, ensures equal rights and equal opportunity, and invites passionate enagement in our civic life gives our own lives deeper meaning. It enlarges our capacities for attachment and love. It informs our sense of honor and shame. It equips us to be virtuous citizens.
This dear fucked-up planet
What are we here for if not to enjoy life eternal, solve what problems we can, give light, peace and joy to our fellow-man, and leave this dear fucked-up planet a little healthier than when we were born?
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
— Jesus
tikkun olam
In Jewish teachings, ‘tikkun olam’ refers to any activity that improves the world, bringing it closer to the harmonious state for which it was created. All people, regardless of religious affiliation, are encouraged to contribute to the common good.
As a company founded by Jews, this healing (tikkun) of the world (olam) is at the core of the mission of The Gottman Institute. Although we are not a religious organization, for more than 20 years, tikkun olam has propelled us forward with a passion for helping people. It’s more than just our ‘why.’
It’s a shared sense of responsibility. If we believe we have information that is helpful to others, which we do, then it is our obligation to use this knowledge for good.
I didn’t always feel this way. As a scientist at the University of Washington, I was making a good living watching couples deteriorate in my research lab. It was my wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, a brilliant clinical psychologist, who encouraged me to use my research to help people. It was from a great love that the Gottman Method was born.
According to Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz, ‘At its most basic level, tikkun olam involves arranging our personal lives as well as our politics, culture, and economy on the basis of love.’
To see a world in a grain of sand
To see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.
Unarmed Truth and Unconditional Love
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
The World is a Wonderfully Weird Place
The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens – but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it’s love and love alone that really matters.