Bernhard Schlink Quotes

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.

I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are the same to me

‎When you meet anyone, treat the event as a holy encounter. It's through others that we either find or love our self. For you see, nothing is accomplished without others. When you eliminate the concept of separation from your thoughts and your behavior, you begin to feel your connection to everything and everyone.

so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I'm no different than you.

Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity... but there's a feeling that life is interconnected, that there's life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.

In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.

You are the land. The land is you.

Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.

You can either see yourself as a wave in the ocean or you can see yourself as the ocean.

Being human means there's a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we're all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.

Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is.

I forget that he is another person; instead it feels like he is another part of me, just as essential as a heart or an eye or an arm.

The biggest nuts and guess what? He is I and I am him.

We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.

Union is as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in; it enters in different places but it all becomes one.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

Love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both.

When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn't fully human until I saw myself in your eyes." And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it's my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes.

Because Man is God, and God is Man, the world is nothing but the world of Man - or Woman.

In our opposed forms of loneliness and self-recognition and recognition of the other, we touched each other often as we spoke; and on shore in explorations of the past, we strolled with our arms linked.

For the first time, I saw what was in his heart, and I wondered if he might ever want to look deep enough to see mine.

Sometimes we meet people and are so symbiotic with them, it's as if we are one person, with one mind, one destiny

Love is a time-honored way to transcend the separate-self sense and leap into the sublime; Treya and I held hands, closed our eyes, and jumped.