Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.
M. Scott PeckRead
Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Falling in love temporarily breaks down personal boundaries, allowing for deeper connections.
In this quote, M. Scott Peck suggests that falling in love involves a momentary relaxation of one's emotional limitations and defenses. Rather than extending one's edges, love requires a vulnerability where personal boundaries soften, leading to profound intimacy with another person, though this state may not be permanent.
Themes
LoveBoundariesIntimacyVulnerabilityConnection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared at a wedding to emphasize the significance of vulnerability in love.
More from M. Scott Peck
All quotes βIf your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
M. Scott PeckRead
All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.
M. Scott PeckRead
When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.
M. Scott PeckRead
An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.
M. Scott PeckRead
Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.
M. Scott PeckRead
Similar quotes
Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.
Louis De BernieresRead
Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.
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As we grow in our consciousness.. there will be more compassion and more love. And then... the barriers between people.. between religions.. and between nations will begin to fall.
Ram DassRead
Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.
Anthony De MelloRead
Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.
Andrew SolomonRead
Human love serves to love those dear to us but to love one's enemies we need divine love.
Leo TolstoyRead