Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes

My theory is - we don’t really go that far into other people, even when we think we do. We hardly ever go in and bring them out. We just stand at the jaws of the cave, and strike a match, and ask quickly if anybody’s there.

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

The value of emotions comes from sharing them, not just having them.

May he die with no joy at his end, The man who won't be troubled To unlock the keys of his heart and make a friend.

Only parts of us will ever touch only parts of others.

On connecting: Where does one person end and another person begin?

It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.

The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.

We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.

... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.

I'm a little bit antisocial and I recently discovered that I'm introverted. But the love between people makes me alive.

As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.

I'm concerned about the unknowability of other people.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.

All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

I think that a lot of times, we all want to help each other and be a part of each other's lives. It's just - we don't allow ourselves into each other's lives.

I find it really hard to be close to anybody.

When I was young as a teenager, that was the biggest mystery in the world to me: Why don't people connect?

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

I said there are at least two kinds of satisfaction, however, and the other has nothing to do with skill. It comes from human connection. It comes from making others happy, understanding them, loving them.

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

one never knows really how things are with other people, they just do always seem more spirited than oneself somehow.

I feel the need of relations and friendship, of affection, of friendly intercourse.... I cannot miss these things without feeling, as does any other intelligent man, a void and a deep need.