Albert Schweitzer Quotes

They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

I like, though, that people have a hunger to connect with other people. They're desperate to know that you're not lying to them or misleading them.

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.

You have to make a space in your heart, in your mind and in your life itself for authentic human connection.

I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.

I love being free enough that I can be so intimate with people, and that people are free enough that we can all be intimate with each other!

Unless we know people well, we sit around with our words and our minds starched, afraid of being ourselves for fear of wrinkling them.

I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. Oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly.You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it.

That many-faceted thing called love succeeds in building bridges from the loneliness on this shore to the loneliness on the other one. These bridges can be of great beauty, but they are rarely built for eternity, and frequently they cannot tolerate too heavy a burden without collapsing.

Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

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

It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself at this date, when it has become second nature.

I wonder men dare trust themselves with men.

No, I won't try to escape myself by losing myself in artificial chatter 'Did you have a nice vacation?' 'Oh, yes, and you?' I'll stay here and try to pin that loneliness down.

By instinct and tradition, I don't like the thing. I like to look someone in the eye.

If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.

Nine times out of ten, when you extend your arms to someone, they will step in, because basically they need precisely what you need.

In these last few days, we were close because we were both mortal men. We saw the same sun and the same twilight, we felt the same pull of the earth beneath our feet. We drank together and broke bread together. We might have made love together, if you had only allowed such a thing. But that’s all changed. You have your youth, yes, and all the dizzying wonder that accompanies the miracle. But I still see death when I look at you. I know now I cannot be your companion, and you cannot be mine

It seems we need someone to know us as we are - with all we have done - and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone's sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please.

What is the thing you want most from me? What can I do to make you love me?' Be yourself,' said Ipek.

There is so much crap in the world, both in show and other businesses, that I try to be vulnerable myself, in the hopes that there is some truth I can get to, that makes people feel less alone in the world.

Honesty. And I just really think there's a fundamental friendship that needs to exist, whether it's a lover, whether it's a sister...there's just this connection both people need to be effortlessly themselves.

Really love him, I mean," Geilie persisted. "Not just to bed him; I know you want that, and he does too. They all do. But do you love him?" Did I love him? Beyond the urges of the flesh? The hole had the dark anonymity of the confessional, and a soul on the verge of death had no time for lies. "Yes," I said, and laid my head back on my knees. It was silent in the hole for some time, and I hovered once more on the verge of sleep, when I heard her speak once more, as though to herself. "So it's possible," she said thoughtfully.

Since we are mortal, friendships are best kept to a moderate level, rather than sharing the very depths of our souls.