Ted Dekker Quotes

The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.

D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you-then I'm asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.

The night below. We two. Crystal of pain. You wept over great distances. My ache was a clutch of agonies over your sickly heart of sand.

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.

Suffering itself is beloved: love and suffering are far closer to each other than love and pleasure.

From such a gentle thing, from such a fountain of all delight, my every pain is born.

In our lives, we have good things and bad things, happiness and pain.

Since love first made the breast an instrument Of fierce lamenting, by its flame my heart Was molten to a mirror, like a rose I pluck my breast apart, that I may hang This mirror in your sight.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Love always, in one way or another, means pain as well as joy.

Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.

How can you be in hell while you are in my heart?

Love and despair go hand in hand.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

At the heart of all romanticism is suffering.

[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right–that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve. (68)

We get divorce, we get conned, someone we love dies, or we can't find anybody to love us or somebody breaks our heart and we realize this fairy tale ain't fair. So we suffer.

I can approve of those only who seek in tears for happiness.

I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away--

Despair is part of love.

The human heart has a sigh lonelier than the cry of the bittern.

The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.

O heart! O heart! if she'd but turn her head You'd know the folly of being comforted.