Quotes About Connection

The speckled moth changes its wing coloring; bacteria develop drug resistance. Why should this count in favor of the thesis that whales are derived from ungulates, or men from fish?

Almost simultaneously their eyes alighted on a small opening in the twisted branches of the trees, affording them a direct line of sight to the majestic Verrazzano Bridge. Together the women gazed at the slate-gray metal towers soaring skyward, the steel cables delicately draped from one tower to the other, ascending and descending, the small squares and larger rectangles moving back and forth over the curved roadway.

At these moments sufferers desperately want to escape from their holes, the silence and loneliness, and return to the world we share with others… At these moments, language, the means of expression we are most comfortable with, becomes truly therapeutic – a form of medicine that has the power to relieve our suffering

The question is how our own meanings are related to those of the universe as a whole. We could say that our action toward the whole universe is a result of what it means to be us.

In a world where superficial relationships are the norm, real and authentic community is refreshing.

The universe speaks if you will learn to listen.

But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

I'll paint you moments of gold, I'll spin you Valentine evenings...

Some writers, no matter how good they are, can't speak to us. Something about the way they see the world, I think, string sentences together, alienates us as surely as the ramblings of a madman on a bus.

I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine... gentle yet courageous, possessed, has a cultivated as well as a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own to approve or amend my plans.' Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1819

Sometimes you can hear the wire, hear it reaching out across the miles; whining with its own weight, crying from the cold, panting at the distance, humming with the phantom sounds of someone else's conversation. You cannot always hear it - only sometimes; when the night is deep and the room is dark and the sound of the phone's ringing has come slicing through uneasy sleep.

And so he set about restoring them, using the tricks he had learned over the years. He went to them, speaking to each of them in tones so low that none of the others could hear, getting their names, gently touching them, asking about their pains, their fears, gently eliciting their stories, reminding them of why they had run in the first place.

Alas, that so much of my precious time is spent with so little of God.

The challenge for us is to realise our unity with all life, and even with the inanimate world around us. The seas with their currents, the atmosphere and the continents of the earth are all in motion, stirring with their own kinds of life. Our malaise as a civilised people comes in large measure from our ability to distance ourselves from nature and from one another. A real therapy is one with a vision, not only of the individual person, but also of how the whole planet is to be healed.

It isn't how much time you spend somewhere that makes it memorable; it's how you spend the time.

We cannot attain the presence of God. We're already totally in the presence of God. What's missing is awareness.

We aren't a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries . . . her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing. (556)

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Friends usually bring out better versions of each other. People feel unguarded and fluid with their close friends.

It is possible to have a complex human relationship without words

Online life is so delicious because it is socializing with almost no friction.

People tend to want to live up to their friends' high regard.

Deciding whom to love is an inherently emotional business.

William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self.