attachment Quotes

“But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”

“From the earliest age, we must learn to say good-bye to friends and family. . . But experience is less likely to teach us how to bid our dearest possessions adieu. And if it were to? We wouldn’t welcome the education. For eventually, we come to hold our dearest possessions more closely than we hold our friends.”

“For I, being pent in thee, Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.”

“You get attached to places, you know. Like people, I suppose.”

“The most amazing thing was the way that child held on. From the first moment I picked it up out of its nest of wet blanket, it attached itself to me by its little hands like roots sucking on dry dirt. I think it would have been easier to separate me from my hair.”

“I’ve lived in this room all my fifteen years, all my 5,530 days. I’ve laughed and cried and moaned and muttered in this room. I’ve loved people and things and hated them. It’s been a big part of my life, of me. Will we ever be the same when we’re closed in by other walls? Will we think other thoughts and have different emotions? Oh, Mother, Daddy, maybe we’re making a mistake, maybe we’ll be leaving too much of ourselves behind!”

“I lived in misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to lose them.”

“The sky held scattered clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth, clothed only in beauty—beauty that made Jubal’s heart ache, thinking that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, ‘Look at me. I am a son of man.‘”

“To achieve a lasting loving bond, we have to be able to tune in to our deepest needs and longings and translate them into clear signals that help our lovers respond to us. We have to be able to accept love and to reciprocate.”

“Most of the blaming (...) is a desperate attachment cry, a protest against disconnection. It can only be quieted by a lover moving emotionally close to hold and reassure. Nothing else will do.”

“As to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making.”

“Recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Adult attachments may be more reciprocal and less centered on physical contact, but the nature of the emotional bond is the same.”

“I’m bonded to Dominic.”

“She’s, and I’m still not free of her.”

“How do you let go of attachment to things? Don’t even try. It’s impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.”

“And you ask things about me, and I tell you about myself. I do not know why I tell you so much truth, but you are beautiful and I am tired—though I am attached, too, to my alone-ness.”

“The root of suffering is attachment.”

There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it’s so hard to keep from loving things, isn’t it?

“So long as you are not mine, Valentine, I shall always think I may lose you.”