A Quote by J. R. Ackerley

Unable to love each other, the English turn naturally to dogs — © J. R. Ackerley
Unable to love each other, the English turn naturally to dogs
And so let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love, and once we begin to love each other naturally we want to do something.
There's a beautifully simple sketch in the first episode of 'Smack the Pony:' two women approach each other walking their dogs and as they pass the women bark at each other, the dogs remaining perfectly calm. It kills me every time.
I am struck by the way people behave on the Tube. They look at each other beadily and inquisitively, and something goes on in their thoughts which must be equivalent to the way dogs and other animals, when they meet, sniff each other's arses and nuzzle each other's fur.
Can it really be love if we don't talk that much, don't see each other? Isn't love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other's faults and take care of each other?...In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love.
People are perfectly glad to accept the idea that dogs love us, so they must be able to love each other.
An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters' contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their native languages. The French head of the committee, who had insisted on speaking only in French throughout the week suddenly demonstrated the ability to speak excellent English with English-speaking delegates.
Micromessaging -- communicating with other human beings through visual, audible, sublingual means, no doubt predates our ability to speak. We actually read micromessages quite naturally without thinking about them. You might say human beings read each other's micromessages subconsciously, in the same way that one dog understands another dog is unfriendly simply because the dog's fur is standing on end. The dogs read each other perfectly. It's not all that different for people.
I think people are naturally good, I see it every day. Look at this restaurant. No one's causing anybody any trouble in here. We're all sitting, respecting each other's space, we're keeping our voices down, we're saying "please" and "thank you" - those are acts of generosity that we commit on a second by second basis that we don't give ourselves enough credit for. There's a lot of kindness in this world, we're just such vain creatures; our vanity can be used against us so easily. We're like dogs, hairless dogs.
Sober Thoughts' is a song about an unhealthy relationship I was in with a girl, where we would continue to mistreat each other, to spite each other. We were bad for each other, yet we always came back together, because we thought we 'loved each other.' It was a young love, not a forever love.
But they love each other. Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?
Deep inside you know / when trouble comes / and there's no one else to turn to / you can call on each other / and count on each other ... / because each other / is all you have.
Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It's light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you've hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you've seen the worst and the best-- well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.
All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
If anything, 'Friday Night Dinner' is quite mean. All these pranks that we play on each other, there's a lot of hitting and slapping and jumping at each other trying to scare each other. But underneath it all it is a family, so we all love each other.
Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.
Love naturally reverses the idea of obedience, and causes the struggle between any two who truly love each other to be, not who shall command, but who shall yield.
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