“6/17/10 My dearest Ruth—You are the only person I have loved in my life, setting aside, a bit, parents and kids and their kids, and I have admired and loved you almost since the day we first met at Cornell some 56 years ago. What a treat it has been to watch you progress to the very top of the legal world!! I will be in JH Medical Center until Friday, June 25, I believe, and between then and now I shall think hard on my remaining health and life, and whether on balance the time has come for me to tough it out or to take leave of life because the loss of quality now simply overwhelms. I hope you will support where I come out, but I understand you may not. I will not love you a jot less.” — Handwritten letter from Marty [her husband] to Ruth”
Irin Carmon, Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Marty [her husband] was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always, well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, MSNBC
“If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it. I had a life partner who thought my work was as important as his, and I think that made all the difference for me.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Town & Country Magazine
Jiawei Han Quote on Expectations and How To Separate The Person From The Idea Of The Person
“You just like the idea of me. You like the person I present myself under circumstances that I can control. I choose what I say and how I say things. It’s like being attracted to a fictional character in a book. They are scripted and made up. If you think about it, through writings, we all script and make ourselves up. I don’t share the person I become when I am upset. I don’t show you how I look like when I sleep. I don’t tell you about all the times I’ve made someone cry. All the guilty things I’ve done and the bad thoughts I’ve had.”
Jiawei Han
Beyond the Quote (243/365)
And so is all too often the case in today’s world. Who are we really falling in love with? Who are we idolizing and emulating? Who are we really putting on a pedestal? Is it really the person or is it really just the idea of the person? More often than not, after careful introspection, you’ll find that many people in our lives are really just a product of ideas that represent idealistic and unrealistic images of the people we wished for them to be. We don’t see them for who they are, we see them as a projection from our mind—and perception is reality.
Read More »Jiawei Han Quote on Expectations and How To Separate The Person From The Idea Of The PersonHayao Miyazaki Quote on Relationships and Broadening Our Definition of Love
“I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live… if I’m able to, then perhaps I’ll be closer to portraying a true expression of love.”
Hayao Miyazaki
Beyond the Quote (222/365)
…Inspiring another person to live—what higher expression of love is there? And by live, of course, we mean really live—fulfill your life in a way that’s far beyond merely existing. Living is exploring; existing is hiding. Living is questioning; existing is tolerating. Living is risking; existing is comforting. Living is a rarity that few people embody to its full extent; existing is the commonplace for the rest. And what more can be said about love in its true expression?
Read More »Hayao Miyazaki Quote on Relationships and Broadening Our Definition of LoveJohn Joseph Powell Quote on Self-Worth and How Interactions Are A Mirror For What’s Within
“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
John Joseph Powell, The Secret of Staying in Love
Beyond the Quote (214/365)
Mirrors allow us to see our external self. Human interaction allows us to see our internal self. Without mirrors, we wouldn’t be able to truly know how we looked. We can get a sense of how we look and we might be able to guess, but it is only through the reflection of a mirror that we can ever be sure. Without human interaction, how might we ever truly grasp the content of our character?
Read More »John Joseph Powell Quote on Self-Worth and How Interactions Are A Mirror For What’s WithinBuddha Quote on Life and Understanding The Difference Between “I Like You” and “I Love You.”
“When you like a flower, you just pluck it. But, when you love a flower, you water it daily. One who understands this, understands life.”
Buddha
Beyond the Quote (202/365)
“Liking” is superficial. “Loving” is deep. “Liking” is occasional and when it’s convenient. “Loving” is regular and prioritized. “Liking” keeps you the same. “Loving” helps you grow. One who understands the difference between “liking” and “loving” in life understands the difference between “existing” and “living” in life.
Read More »Buddha Quote on Life and Understanding The Difference Between “I Like You” and “I Love You.”NF Quote from “Only” on Trust
“If you made a list of people that you trusted/
Would you put your name down?”
NF, Only
Beyond the Quote (187/365)
When I heard this line in NF’s song it stayed with me. It brilliantly orients an issue that so many of us confront on a regular basis—trust. Trust is the foundation of every relationship in our lives. Without trust there cannot be a stable relationship. Just like without a proper foundation there cannot be a stable building. Why is trust so important? Because trust is the key that unlocks and opens a person’s vulnerable side. And until a person is vulnerable and open to another—no true relationship can form.
Read More »NF Quote from “Only” on Trust“When you deny emotional pain, everything you do or think as well as your relationships become contaminated with it. You broadcast it, so to speak, as the energy you emanate, and others will pick it up subliminally. If they are unconscious, they may even feel compelled to attack or hurt you in some way, or you may hurt them in an unconscious projection of your pain. You attract and manifest whatever corresponds to your inner state.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 222)
Merle Shain Quote on How Loving Someone Should Help Them To Be More Themself
“Loving someone means helping them to be more themselves, which can be different from being what you’d like them to be, although often they turn out the same.”
Merle Shain, Some Men Are More Perfect Than Others
Beyond the Quote (174/365)
Never forget that who you want someone to be is none of your business. Love doesn’t manipulate. Love doesn’t control. Love doesn’t place expectations. Love doesn’t try to change people for who they are. Love is never selfish. Love is a pure manifestation of presence, compassion, gratitude, and joy that is shared with the world. Love is patient. Love is free. And love is always kind.
Read More »Merle Shain Quote on How Loving Someone Should Help Them To Be More ThemselfEckhart Tolle Quote on Love and How Love Isn’t Selective or Exclusive
“Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the ‘love’ of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 155)
Beyond the Quote (170/365)
This is an important distinction to make. One that many people in relationships fail to recognize. Love is not selective. Love is not an emotion that is rightly reserved for but one person. Love is a way of being. It is an overflowing. It is a contentment, a joy, an excitement, an appreciation, a curiosity, a gentleness, a passion, a presentness that is free of mind and is connected to all that is life.
Read More »Eckhart Tolle Quote on Love and How Love Isn’t Selective or Exclusive“The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused. This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else’s unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will either separate—in love—or move ever more deeply into the Now together—into Being. Can it be that simple? Yes, it is that simple.”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 154)
“You are ‘in love’ with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing—fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?”
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 149)






