I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from "Splittings
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of using one's intellect in the experience of love.
In this quote, Adrienne Rich expresses a desire to approach love with both emotional depth and intellectual awareness. By stating she will 'choose to love' with 'all my intelligence,' Rich suggests that love should not be merely a matter of feeling, but also a rational choice informed by understanding, insight, and wisdom. This reflects an intentionality in relationships, encouraging one to engage deeply and thoughtfully in the act of loving.
In practice
In a greeting card for an anniversary, you might include this quote to express a thoughtful approach to your relationship.
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'β
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... It's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself.
Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair.
Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
It seems to me that love, if it is fine, is essentially a discipline.
Wouldn't it be a beautiful world if just 10 percent of the people who believe in the power of love would compete with one another to see who could do the most good for the most people?
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