“The capacity for solitude is a prerequisite for intimacy with another.  Otherwise, it may well be that the desperate search for a partner is merely the expression of personal emptiness, and if that is the case, any relationship will be founded on weak grounds and will not satisfy the yearning for connection.  The expression ‘soul mate’ can mean a partnership in which the soul is engaged, in which one’s own soul connects with another’s.  This is no small thing, and it reaches far deeper than the resolution of any superficial search for romance.  Part of what we long for in our wish for a soul mate is intimacy with and the expression of our own soul.”

Thomas Moore, Original Self | ★ Featured on this book list.