Quotes About Intimacy

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.

Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.

Perhaps we had at last reached that stage of intimacy that destroys intimacy.

I think in the '80s, when I started making films, we were all suspicious of these technologies. We were all convinced they would filter out any emotion and sense of intimacy, and the films I made during that period reflected that. In fact, what has happened is the opposite. I think we're saturated with a degree of intimacy we would never have expected, and we're trying to sort through this idea of complete access to each other's lives on an ongoing basis. Our emotions aren't filtered out at all. They're actually accelerated.

True intimacy is a human constant. People of all types find it equally hard to achieve, equally precious to hold. Age, education, social status, make little difference here; even genius does not presuppose the talent to reveal one's self completely and completely absorb one's self in another personality. Intimacy is to love what concentration is to work: a simultaneous drawing together to attention and release of energy.

Fear is the great enemy of intimacy. Fear makes us run away from each other or cling to each other but does not create true intimacy.

The member of a culture ... purposely avoids the relationship of intimacy; he wants the object somehow depicted and fictionalized. ... He is embarrassed when this is taken out of its context of proper sentiments and presented bare, for he feels that this is a reintrusion of that world which his whole conscious effort has sought to banish. Forms and conventions are the ladder of ascent. And hence the speechlessness of the man of culture when he beholds the barbarian tearing aside some veil which is half adornment, half concealment.

Love can never really be a great base for marriage because love is fun and play. If you marry someone for love you will be frustrated, because soon the fun is gone, the newness is gone, and boredom sets in. Marriage is for deep friendship, deep intimacy. Love is implied in it, but it is not alone. So marriage is spiritual. It is spiritual. There are many things which you can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond, someone so intimate that you can open yourself totally to him or her.

The absence of words is the absence of intimacy. There are experiences that are starved for language.

I believe it was Shakespeare, or possibly Howard Cosell, who first observed that marriage is very much like a birthday candle, in that 'the flames of passion burn brightest when the wick of intimacy is first ignited by the disposable butane lighter of physical attraction, but sooner or later the heat of familiarity causes the wax of boredom to drip all over the vanilla frosting of novelty and the shredded coconut of romance.' I could not have phrased it better myself.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.

The key to intimacy is the commitment to honesty and to the radical forgiveness necessary in order for honesty to be safe.

When you're young, you think that sex is the culmination of intimacy. Later you discover that it's barely the beginning.

From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.

What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity for the closest possible intimacy with God.

Watersheds come in families; nested levels of intimacy... As you work upstream toward home, you're more closely related. The big river is like your nation, a little out of hand. The lake is your cousin. The creek is your sister. The pond is her child. And, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, you're married to your sink.

To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.

Royalty is my identity. Servanthood is my assignment. Intimacy with God is my life source.

Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.

Being in love makes me vulnerable. Intimacy on that level can be so exposing. Accepting that vulnerability and allowing myself to be completely transparent is an ongoing process for me.

Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.

Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom. But the personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the tasks of early adulthood-establishing independence and intimacy-burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.

When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.

The central significance of prayer is not in the things that happen as results, but in the deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God at His central throne of control in order to discover a sense of God's need in order to call on God's help to meet that need.

Our lack of intimacy is due to our refusal to unplug and shut off communication from all others so we can be alone with Him.

The fears that assault us are mostly simple anxieties about social skills, about intimacy, about likeableness, or about performance. We need not give emotional food or charge to these fears or become attached to them. We don’t even have to shame ourselves for having these fears. Simply ask your fears, “What are you trying to teach me?” Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real.” From Everything Belongs, p. 143

It's all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you're avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love?

... anything so delightful as Washington I have never seen elsewhere. There were a mingled simplicity and grandeur, a mingled state and quiet intimacy, a brilliancy of conversation--the proud prominence of intellect over material prosperity which does not exist in any other city of the Union.

Our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another.

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

We fly, but we have not 'conquered' the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and the use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick fall across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, startled by our ignorance.

Intimacy without commitment, like icing without cake, can be sweet, but it ends up making us sick.

Friendship requires a steady, constant, and unchangeable character, a person that is uniform in his intimacy.

All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

There is a great feeling in a small venue, with the closeness of the people and the intimacy.

Fear is an enemy that can be killed only at close range. The closest range of all is intimacy. The deeper the fear is embedded in one’s spirit, the more vulnerable it is.

Men are not given awards and promotions for bravery in intimacy.

Sex isn't hard, but intimacy is terrifying.

When two people respect each other, the ability to be vulnerable and to reveal hurt feelings can create a powerful emotional connection that is the source of real intimacy and friendship.

The world is not looking for Stepford-type Christians. People are tired of pretense. We struggle with failures; we long for intimacy. So why are we feigning perfection before God and one another.

Joint consumption doesn't create intimacy.

I try to make my music have the quiet spaces of folk, the intimacy, and the energy of rock.

There is this immediate connection, this intimacy when you're acting because there's no room to be polite or shy. Also, as an actor I get to connect with women I've never met before.

True intimacy with God always brings humility.

When you're doing stand-up, you achieve an intimacy with the audience you can't get on TV. There's not a better feeling in the entire world then when you look out and see the audience is identifying with you.