Human Relationships Quotes

For humans, honesty is a matter of degree. Engineers are always honest in
matters of technology and human relationships. That's why it's a good idea
to keep engineers away from customers, romantic interests, and other people
who can't handle the truth. ~ Scott Adams

Moreover, the mythology may be mucking things up even while your partnership is alive and thriving. It is not wise to relegate all the other important kinds of people - close friends, valued colleagues, mentors, and kin - to the dustbin of human relationships. Ironically, it is also unfair to the one relationship partner who is mythologized. No mere mortal should be expected to fulfill every need, wish, whim, and dream of another human. ~ Bella DePaulo

For sex to be wholly satisfying, we must have at least as much concern for a partner as for self - a requirement that doesn't live comfortably alongside the exhortation to 'do your own thing.' In the end, we are left with an extraordinarily heightened set of expectations about the possibilities in human relationships that lives side by side with disillusion that, for many, borders on despair. ~ Lillian B. Rubin

Let us consider the polarity of love and hate ... Now, clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularityaccompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in many circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate. ~ Sigmund Freud

Reading 'Blood Will Out,' one begins to understand how so many people were duped by Clark Rockefeller. All the imposter needs is some kind of initial agreement that he is who he says he is; thereafter, consensus builds via a network of human relationships. ~ Amity Gaige

No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships. ~ Pope Francis

I spend my life folded between pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived loss and loved trough stories threaded in history. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Edmund Clowney observes that prayer involves an honesty that has no real parallel in human relationships, because every human relation necessarily involves only a part of your personality. We relate differently to our spouse, our business partner, and a chance acquaintance on the street because each of our social roles expresses only a part of our personhood. Even our spouse sees only part of who we are. "In relation to God, however, we are 'naked and pinned down' (Heb 4:13). Our masks are gone, pretense is useless: the relationship is not partial, but total. All that we are stands related to our Maker and Redeemer."245 ~ Timothy J. Keller

In the context of loss, each child is an only to her or his parents. Human relationships do not fill in for, do not substitute for, do not replace each other. ~ Marcia Falk

According to the dictionary, knock has two definitions: "to strike something with a sharp blow," and "to find fault with, a harsh and often petty criticism." Perhaps in human relationships both of these meanings could apply. Almost all men will respond to sincere praise and rebel at harsh and cutting criticisms. ~ Marvin J. Ashton

Rafael?"
"Yeah?"
„Do we all have monsters?"
„Yes."
„Why does God give us so many monsters?"
„You want to know my theory?"
„Sure."
„I think it's other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn't have anything to do with it. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a bet which rolls on profits from the success of one of the horse to engross the stake on the next one.
5.5 So a) To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers?Plus and minus, self-evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes, division. But these sings are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total of zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically improbable and mathematically insoluble?
5.6 Thus how might you express an accumulation containing the integers b, b, a (to the first), a (to the second), s, v?
B = s - v (*/+) a (to the first)
Or
a (to the second) + v + a (to the first) x s = b
5.7 Or is that the wrong way to put the question and express the accumulation? Is the application of logic to the human condition in and of itself self-defeating? What becomes of a chain of argument when the links are made of different metals, each with a separate frangibility?
5.8 Or is "link" a false metaphor?
5.9 But allowing that is not, if a link breaks, wherein lies the responsibility for ~ Julian Barnes

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. ~ Jon Krakauer

Human relationships are the perfect tool for sanding away our rough edges and getting at the core of divinity within us. ~ Eknath Easwaran

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body
not too little, not too much, just right. ~ Sherry Turkle

The Constitution is a limitation of the government, not on private individuals--that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government--that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens' protection against the government.

Instead of being a protector of man's rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim--so that we are fast approaching the stage of ultimate inversion; the stage where the government is "free" to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may only act by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of humanity, the stage of rule by brute force. ~ Ayn Rand

Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

Human relationships were so complicated and always veering in the direction of the irrational. ~ Michael D. O'Brien

Perhaps that's what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? ~ Toni Morrison

I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isn't happening. ~ Sophie Hannah

How strange it is that murder has the sanction of law in one and only one of the human relationships, and that is the most important of all, that of nation to nation. ~ Paul Harris

But where was God now, with heaven full of astronauts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup.

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I ha ~ Jeanette Winterson

One realizes that even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour's household, and, underneath, another – secret and passionate and intense – which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him. One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day . . . ~ Willa Cather

Business, after all, is nothing more than a bunch of human relationships. ~ Lee Iacocca

So what you are doing, be aware, observe it, and then go on meditating. Soon you will begin to feel the change. Now there is no possessiveness in relationship. By and by, possessiveness disappears. And when possessiveness is not there, relationship has a beauty of its own. When possessiveness is there, everything becomes dirty, ugly, inhuman. ~ Rajneesh

I think if you write about human relationships, you're always exploring the psyche and the soul. I don't separate certain - perhaps more extreme - things that people do from others. ~ Sadie Jones

The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control. ~ William Safire

Such manifestations I account as representing the creative leadership of the new forces of thought and appreciation which attend changes in technological pattern and therefore of the pattern of human relationships in society. ~ John Grierson

I do not see class as a 'structure', nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships ... the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship ... And class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs ~ E.P. Thompson

Cause and effect are never divided between two people. ~ Max Frisch

Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world. ~ Stefan Collini

Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

An email cannot be ignored. You may wish an email was not sent to you, because you learned what you did not want to know, but it must be acted upon because there is now a permanent record linking you to that information. ~ Kent Alan Robinson

Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up? ~ Jonathan Haidt

Our dream life allows us to have a look at these subliminal perceptions and shows us that they have an effect upon us. After having an agreeable dream about somebody, even without interpreting the dream, I shall involuntarily look at that person with more interest. The dream image may have deluded me, because of my projections; or it may have given me objective information. To find out which is the correct interpretation requires an honest, attentive attitude and careful thought. But, as is the case with all inner processes, it is ultimately the Self that orders and regulates one's human relationships, so long as the conscious ego takes the trouble to detect the delusive projections and deals with these inside himself instead of outside. It is in this way that spiritually attuned and similarly oriented people find their way to one another, to create a group that cuts across all the usual social and organizational affiliations of people. Such a group is not in conflict with others; it is merely different and independent. The consciously realized process of individuation thus changes a person's relationships. The familiar bonds such as kinship or common interests are replaced by a different type of unity-a bond through the Self. ~ C.G. Jung

The famous carry about with them a great weight of patriarchal baggage-the footnotes of their lives. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships. ~ Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

I think Raymond is very honest about human relationships. ~ Patricia Heaton

So a)To what extent might human relationships be expressed in a mathematical or logical formula? And b) If so, what signs might be placed between the integers? Plus and minus, self- evidently; sometimes multiplication, and yes. division. But these signs are limited. Thus an entirely failed relationship might be expressed in terms of both loss/minus and division/ reduction, showing a total zero; whereas an entirely successful one can be represented by both addition and multiplication. But what of most relationships? Do they not require to be expressed in notations which are logically insoluble? ~ Julian Barnes

I loved that it was about human relationships and then it was a mystery without falling into the trap of a thriller per se, because it pulled you in through people rather than through events or effects. ~ Barbara Hershey

[L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up. ~ Walter Benjamin

Human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. ~ Willa Cather

I'm no quitter, unless it comes to human relationships or math and science. ~ Dov Davidoff

All my human relationships have to do with a mask of me, and I must perpetually be the victim of living a completely hidden life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To us the family is the cornerstone of civilization and must ever be. It is the foundation of proper human relationships. ~ Mark E. Petersen

At the end of the day, what I cherish most are the human relationships. With the unfailing support of my wife and partner I have lived my life to the fullest. It is the friendships I made and the close family ties I nurtured that have provided me with that sense of satisfaction at a life well lived, and have made me what I am. ~ Lee Kuan Yew

..I marvelled at the intense beauty of this human relationship that was born out of so much love and was destined, perhaps inevitably, to end in a tragedy of such terrible proportions. ~ Arun Joshi

The relationship between God and his people was always the one having absolute primacy, the one that had basically to determine all human relationships, whether those within the covenanted community itself or those between the covenanted community and the outside world. ~ David Novak

Carnivalization is not an external and immobile schema which is imposed upon ready-made content; it is, rather, an extraordinarily flexible form of artistic visualization, a peculiar sort of heuristic principle making possible the discovery of new and as yet unseen things. By relativizing all that was externally stable, set and ready-made, carnivalization with its pathos of change and renewal permitted Dostoevsky to penetrate into the deepest layers of man and human relationships. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin

I have come to know the mutability of all human relationships and have learned to insulate myself against both heat and cold so that a temperature balance is fairly well assured. ~ Albert Einstein

'Twisted' is similar to 'Pretty Little Liars' in that it's about trying to find out who did it, but it's more about the human relationships between characters and the strain that things can put on them. It's also a little bit of a social commentary piece, because it covers very timely issues. ~ Avan Jogia

Trust is to human relationships what faith is to gospel living. It is the beginning place, the foundation upon which more can be built. Where trust is, love can flourish. ~ Barbara Smith

Civilization is human rights, it is the path of setting man free from men, phobia, to survive it, we must cultivate the science of human relationships. ~ Audrey Hepburn

Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath. ~ Albert Camus

The future of human relationships will be directly related to the cerebral functions. For this reason it is already a fundamental thing. In the past, and well until today, some South American countries have had a great neuropharmacological history, since the natives' times. It is necessary that we remind ourselves of the many licit and illicit drugs that were generated in our continent and that act on the brain. ~ Rodolfo Llinas

Don't misunderstand me," I said. "Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain. "When I was retarded I had lots of friends. Now I have no one. Oh, I know lots of people. Lots and lots of people. But I don't have any real friends. Not like I used to have in the bakery. Not a friend in the world who means anything to me, and no one I mean anything to. ~ Daniel Keyes

Manual control, please."
"Are you sure, Frank?"
"Quite sure, 'Falcon' ... Thank you."
Illogical though it seemed, most of the human race had found it impossible not to be polite to its artificial children, however simpleminded they might be. Whole volumes of psychology, as well as popular guides ('How Not to Hurt Your Computer's Feelings'; 'Artificial Intelligence
Real Irritation' were some of the best-known titles) had been written on the subject of Man-Machine etiquette. Long ago it had been decided that, however inconsequential rudeness to robots might appear to be, it should be discouraged. All too easily, it could spread to human relationships as well. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Often children who survive extremely adverse childhoods have learned a particular survival strategy. I call it 'strategic detachment.' This is not the withdrawal from reality that leads to psychological disturbance, but an intuitively calibrated disengagement from noxious aspects of their family life or other aspects of their world. They some how know, This is not all there is. They hold the belief that a better alternative exists somewhere and that someday they will find their way to it. They persevere in that idea. They somehow know Mother is not all women, Father is not all men, this family does not exhaust the possibilities of human relationships-there is life beyond this neighborhood. This does not spare them suffering in the present, but it allows them not to be destroyed by it. Their strategic detachment does not guarantee that they will never know feelings of powerlessness, but it helps them not to be stuck there. ~ Nathaniel Branden

Human relationships are vast as deserts: they demand all daring, she seemed to suggest. ~ Patrick White

She had done the usual trick-been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere. ~ Virginia Woolf

One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works. ~ Willa Cather

Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the "grasping capitalists." In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a "projection." Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships. ~ C. G. Jung

You can see that I have become so candid that I can endure only human relationships which are absolutely genuine. I avoid half-friendships. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Companies in the East put a lot more emphasis on human relationships, while those from the West focus on the product, the bottom line. Westerners appear to have more of a need for achievement, while in the East there's more need for affiliation. ~ Daniel Goleman

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories. ~ Jeffery Deaver

There is a rule in sailing where the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft. I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well. ~ Joyce Brothers

It makes perfect sense that if human beings are raised in warm, loving households; if they are brought up to believe that the world is a secure and decent place, then they will grow up with a healthy relationship toward themselves and other people. - able to give love freely and receive it in return. Conversely, if a person is severely mistreated from his earliest years, subjected to constant psychological and physical abuse, he or she will grow up with a malignant view of life. To such a person, the world is a hateful place where all human relationships are based, not on love and respect, but on power, suffering, and humiliation. ~ Harold Schechter

If you want to be a little bit solitary and work very hard, you can do it more easily in New York than in a town like Paris or London. Because you depend so much for human relationships here on the phone. If you don't answer your phone, you are quite a lonely couple. ~ Arman

[S]elf-assurance, motivation, and a good method play a much more important role in language learning than the vague concept of innate ability, and that dealing with languages is not only an effective and joyful means of developing human relationships, but also of preserving one's mental capacity and spiritual balance. ~ Kato Lomb

Human relationships were a chain of an incalculable number of factors. One should apply patience, not passion, to solve what often seemed unsolvable. ~ Jacob G. Rosenberg

Human relationships simply aren't
durable.
I think back to the women in
my life.
they seem non-existent. ~ Charles Bukowski

The ability to break a loved one's heart is the essential contradiction in human relationships. ~ Amy Dickinson

The greatest problem of human life is fear. It is fear that robs us of
happiness. It is fear that causes us to settle for far less than we are
capable of. It is fear that is the root cause of negative emotions,
unhappiness and problems in human relationships. ~ Brian Tracy

Human relationships are strange. I mean, you are with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stops. ~ Charles Bukowski

You can't have success without trust. The word trust embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same thing is true about business, especially businesses that deal with people. ~ Jim Burke

It is like an illness: the desire to see someone, the strong, deep yearning. No, I have not explained it. I was working today, writing. My head was busy: my mind was filled with the work. Yet all the while I was conscious of a physical pain–a gnawing–as if a piece of me had been cut off. And the mind could do nothing about it. It was physical: it was in the veins, in the blood, in the skin. That is why human relationships are dangerous–because the mind has no power over them. ~ Anais Nin

There can be only two questions that are asked with regard to human relationships: Where am I going? Who is going with me? Do not invert the order of the questions. Do not - under any circumstances - invert the order of the questions. Is that clear? ~ Neale Donald Walsch

The notion that economic life is a distinct realm, governed by immutable laws of narrow self-interest, is giving way to a much older notion: economic life is only one strand in the rich web of human relationships. ~ Frances Moore Lappe

Men's bodies are our women's works of art. Given to us power of control, we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human relationships made by international ambitions and greeds ... War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the governance of modern national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not be delayed much longer. ~ Olive Schreiner

The persistence or failure of human relationships cannot be predicted by any set of objective or universal criteria. We are all limited, highly imperfect beings, worthy in some dimensions, deficient in others, and if we would understand how any of our connections survive, we would do well to look first to what is good in each of us. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

A little-recognized value of listening and inquiring relates to the realization that in human relationships, it is frequently not what the I've learned ... that it is best to give advice in only two circumstances: when it is requested and when it is a life-threatening situation. ~ Andy Rooney

I am a woman. My life is a long, strong, twisted rope, made up of a number of human relationships, nothing more. ~ Mary Borden

It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion -- whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government -- at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty. ~ Frederic Bastiat

The kinds of roles dogs fill can be hard to come by in human relationships. We touch the dog or the pet at whim. There is a lack of self-consciousness and a fluidity to it that is absent from most human relationships. If someone acted that way to you, you'd feel claustrophobic pretty quickly. It's a boundary violation. ~ Caroline Knapp

For, as I have suggested, disruption of the unity of the self is not limited to the cases that come to physicians and institutions for treatment. They accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation. Emotional responses are so total as compared with the partial nature of intellectual responses, of ideas and abstract conceptions, that their consequences are more pervasive and enduring. I can, accordingly, think of nothing of greater practical importance than the psychic effects of human relationships, normal and abnormal, should be the object of continues study, including among the consequences the indirect somatic effects." – The unity of the human being ~ John Dewey

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.
Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for God. And every good thing we experience is meant to be a metaphor of what we can only find in Him ... We settle for the satisfaction of human relationships when they were meant to point us to the perfect relational satisfaction found only with God. ~ Paul David Tripp

Trust is the core of human relationships, of gregariousness among men. Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person's qualities but on trust. It is not critical knowledge but a risk of the heart which initiates affection and preserves loyalty in our fellow men. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Human relationships are not rocket science
the are far, far more complicated ~ James W. Pennebaker

People think fame and money will bring you happiness. Fame actually makes life, especially human relationships, much more complicated. ~ Adrien Brody

Prabhakar was waiting for me at the bus station, smiling happily through the rain. He led me through the people gathered at the bus station, past shops selling cheap household items and eating places where pakoras were being fried in bubbling oil. The brands and consumerism of urban India had disappeared, and although I felt an acute sense of displacement, I was oddly comforted by the rough utilitarianism of the place, which reminded me of the India I had grown up in.

There were no cafes where I could hide my loneliness behind a cup of coffee and an open laptop, no shopping aisles where I could wander, picking out items that momentarily created an image of a better life. There was no escape here except through human relationships, and for that I was utterly dependent on Prabhakar speeding through the rain on his motorcycle. ~ Siddhartha Deb

Control is an unavoidable feature of human relationships; all that actually varies is the subtlety of the system of reinforcement. ~ Alfie Kohn

The novels that attract me most ... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible. ~ Italo Calvino

To cherish someone means to have the resolve to hurt then ~ Wataru Watari

The inherent preferences of organizations are clarity, certainty and perfection. The inherent nature of human relationships involves ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection. How one honors, balances, and integrates the needs of both is the real trick of feedback. ~ Richard Pascale

Human relationships are chemical reactions. If you have a reaction then you can never return back to your previous state of being. ~ Sui Ishida

Don't be surprised when you see people you thought you knew act weirdly. People change. We change. Even the world change. ~ Sylvia L'Namira

Love is the fundamental building block of all human relationships. It will greatly impact our values and morals. Love is the important ingredient in one's search for meaning. ~ Gary Chapman

Most permaculturists are expert at understanding the relationships between landforms and water harvesting or between soil microorganisms and plant health. But when it comes to our human relationships, we often founder. Nurturing the vegetables in the garden is a lot easier than nurturing our connections to the people who decide where to plant the vegetables and who will water them. ~ Juliana Birnbaum Fox