A Quote by John Friend
The more knowledge one person has of the other, the greater the intimacy within the relationship.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
Years later, my wife, Ilusion, woke me up to the realization that you can't just "dump" your whole species simply because you've had a few bad encounters with some of its members. ... Intimacy's a greater goal to seek. ...That true knowledge of intimacy within our own species will allow us to pass it along to interspecies relations.
... if you know a person really well, the truth is you can't guess how they'll act in an altogether new sort of crisis. ... intimacy creates a special environment for two people, and the deeper the intimacy, the more they both live within it, the closer its boundaries usually are, so that all that lies beyond them becomes with time not less but more and more of a mystery.
Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.
For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.
No other human relationship can approach the potential for intimacy and oneness than can be found within the context of a marriage commitment. And yet no other relationship can bring with it as many adjustments, difficulties and even hurts. There's no way you can avoid these difficulties; each couple's journey is unique. But there is much you can do to prepare for that journey. An engagement is not just a time of preparation for a wedding, but also preparation for a marriage.
Marriage is a way to avoid intimacy. It is a trick to create a formal relationship. Intimacy is informal. If a marriage arises out of intimacy it is beautiful but if you are hoping that intimacy will arise out of marriage, you are hoping in vain. Of course, I know that many people, millions of people, have settled for marriage rather than for intimacy - because intimacy is growth and it is painful.
They enveloped each other within the folds of their thoughts, holding each other with an intimacy no physical embrace could replicate, allowing their identities to merge once again. Their greatest comfort was a simple one: they were no longer alone. To know that you were with the one who cared for you, and who understood every fiber of your being, and who would not abandon you even in the most desperate of circumstances, that was the most precious relationship a person could have, and they both cherished it.
I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us.
I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!
One cannot really know an other without intimacy. Detached, objective observations alone leave a surface upon which it is too easy to project one's own image or fantasies. In intimacy, one respectfully interacts with the other, invites the penetration of the other, enters into a common effort, and then the strange and distinct contours of self and other become more apparent.
It's like there's this knowledge hanging in the air that one person has more power than the other, and we're supposed to pretend everything is nice and normal and equal, but in reality, luck or chance has showered benefits on one person that the other person couldn't dream of.
I do think that it's important to understand what each person has coming into the relationship, and what each person expects from the relationship. I find it so interesting that so many people rush into the commitment of marriage, which is a legal contract, without knowing anything about what the expectations of the other person are, and they've not explained or articulated their expectations of the other person.
Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is no basis for right thought and action.
I think you too recognize the important relationship between philosophy and art, and it is just this relationship that most painters deny. The great masters do grasp it, unconsciously; but I believe that a painter's conscious spiritual knowledge will have a much greater influence upon his art, and that it would be due only to a weakness in him, or lack of genius, should this spiritual knowledge be harmful to his art.
It is easier with the right person. A good test of a relationship is how well you both deal with challenges. If one person is more invested, it shows. If you're with the wrong person, it feels like too much work. But if you're unhappy more than you're happy, it's not the right relationship for you.
