Relationships are a vital part of life

• We cannot live for ourselves alone. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow man. Herman Melville
• We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop. Leo Buscaglia
• An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment. Jonathan Haidt
• The possibility for rich relationships exists all around you – you simply have to open your eyes, and most importantly, open your heart. Cheryl Richardson
• Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others. Harriet Goldhor Lerner
• I think what makes us human is our interconnectedness among people. It’s our ability to form and maintain relationships. It’s the barometer by which we call ourselves human. Thomas Jane
• We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. Dr. Albert Schweitzer
• If we don’t exercise our language skills through dialogue with others, large portions of the brain will not effectively interconnect with other neural structures. Dialogue requires social interaction, and the more social ties we have, the less our cognitive abilities will decline. Andrew Newberg
• It would not occur to anyone to question the statement that we “need” iodine or vitamin C. I remind you that the evidence that we “need” love is of exactly the same type. Abraham Maslow
• If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth. Mitsugi Saotome
• Loneliness is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings. Paulo Coelho
• From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. Albert Einstein    
• We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well- being our own happiness depends. Albert Einstein
• We will never be fully satisfied emotionally until we develop deep and loving relationships. James J. Jones
• The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. Pearl S. Buck
• No man is an island. John Donne
• The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent tolerance; to a friend your heart; to your child a good example; to a father deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself respect; and to all men charity. Frances Balfour
• I think the key indicator for wealth is not good grades, work ethic, or IQ. I believe it’s relationships. Ask yourself two questions: How many people do I know, and how much ransom money could I get for each one? Jarod Kintz
• We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everyhwere. Tim McGraw
• Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future – and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. Albert Camus
• Happiness is only real when shared. Jon Krakauer
• Anything, everything, little or big becomes an adventure when the right person shares it. Kathleen Norris
• If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all? Cassandra Clare
• Life is relationships… The rest is just details.
• Men exist for the sake of one another. Marcus Aurelius
• Man is a knot into which relationships are tied.   Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings. Miles Franklin
• Having someone wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night is a very old human need. Margaret Mead
• Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow.  Swedish Proverb
• Adults remain social animals; they continue to require a source of stabilization outside themselves. That open-loop design means that in some important ways, people cannot be stable on their own — not should or shouldn’t but can’t be … Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them. Thomas Lewis, M.D.
• Human needs

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Relationships help determine our happiness and how long we’ll live

• If you want to predict how happy someone is, or how long she will live (and if you are not allowed to ask about her genes or personality), you should find out about her social relationships. Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders. Jonathan Haidt
• Scherwitz taped the conversations of nearly six hundred men. He found that the more a man habitually talked about himself, the greater the chance he would actually have a heart attack. John Robbins
• Cultivating positive relationships is essential to overall psychological wealth. Although people differ in their need for social relationships, and in the types of social relationships they most enjoy, we all need to receive and give social support. We all need to be loved and to love others. Ed Diener & Robert Biswas- Diener
• Recent research shows that there are some things worth striving for; there are some external conditions of life that can make you lastingly happier. One of these conditions is relatedness—the bonds we form, and need to form, with others. Jonathan Haidt
• The happiness you feel is in direct proportion to the love you give. Oprah Winfrey
• Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved. George Sand
• Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Og Mandino
• One of the strongest findings in the literature is that happy people have better relationships than do their less happy peers. It’s no surprise, then, that investing in social relationships is a potent strategy on the path to becoming happier.  Sonja Lyubomirsky
• The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are we. Mimi Guarneri
• Happiness is only real when shared. Jon Krakauer
• Isolated people have vastly increased rate of premature death from all causes and are 3-5x likelier to die early than people with strong social ties. Dean Ornish
• Happiness,  Health

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The purpose of relationships is to express who you really are

• When we lose sight of each other as sacred souls on a sacred journey, then we cannot see the purpose behind all relationships. The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of ourselves we would like to experience and express – not what part of another we can capture and hold. Not to have someone to complete us but to have another with whom to share our completeness. Neale Donald Walsch
• When I see others in need, I allow myself to use the illusion to express the part of myself that I choose to experience. But be clear that I never do anything for another. Everything I do I do for myself. That is because the self is all there is. In this way, there is no resentment. Neale Donald Walsch
• Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive and it is only by this meeting that this new world is born. Anaïs Nin
• We are that which we seek in another.
• I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. Roy Croft
• The superior man is not seeking fulfillment through work and woman, because he is already full. For him, work and intimacy are opportunities to give his gifts, and to be vanished in the bliss of giving. David Deida
• Perhaps God is in the space between people as they try to connect. Before Sunrise
• …the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy. Eckhart Tolle
• The most important thing we put into any relationship is not what we say or do, but what we are. Stephen Covey
• I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.
• Be who you are

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The purpose of relationships is to cherish and nurture the spirit in others

• See God in everyone and help everyone to see God in themselves. Neale Donald Walsch
• The art of life is to make another soul vibrate with a song of joy. Edwin Leibfreed
• To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground. Stephen Covey
• If you would learn the secret of right relations, look only for the divine in people and things, and leave all the rest to God. J. Allen Boone
• When you meet anyone, treat the event as a holy encounter. Wayne Dyer
• Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and we must set off that spark in one another. Kenny Ausubel
• I bow to the divine within you.
• At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. Albert Schweitzer
• To love is to commune with another person and to discover in him or her a divine spark. Paulo Coelho

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The purpose of relationships is to be a source of love

• Fill your life with love. Rather than waiting for other people to provide the love we desire, we must be a vision and a source of love. The starting point or foundation of a life filled with love is the desire and commitment to be a source of love. Richard Carlson
• All you have to do to have love is be love. Neale Donald Walsch
• In all relationships, there is only one question that has any importance to your soul: “What would love do now?” Neale Donald Walsch
• Spend a moment everyday thinking of someone to love. Who shall I send love to today? Gear your mind towards love. Even if it just to wish them a day filled with love. Richard Carlson
• The greatest gift that one human being can give another is unconditional love. It’s the only thing, ultimately, that really matters. Joy Gardner
• The way is not in the sky… The way is in the heart. Buddha
• Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. Paulo Coelho
• Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth… This is the real message of love. Thich Nhat Hanh
• It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way. Jeremy Aldana
• Love

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The purpose of relationships is to learn about yourself

• As we open our hearts to others, we begin to discover the truth of our own inner beauty, inner strength and inner light. Susan Jeffers
• One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. Stephen Covey
• To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Bruce Lee
• Try viewing everyone who comes into your life as a teacher. Wayne Dyer
• Be grateful for whoever comes, because each guest has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi
• I believe people are in our lives for a reason. We’re here to learn from each other. Gillian Anderson
• Everyone in your life is a ‘practice person.’ How you react to them allows you to see what you have to work on within yourself. Susan Jeffers
• If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. Pema Chodron
• Especially thank the annoying things and people who are teaching and challenging you to embody your highest self even when you don’t feel like it. Brian Johnson
• Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It’s the mirror of your consciousness: this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joys and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• If you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer your salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. Eckhart Tolle
• Learning,  Self-knowledge

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The purpose of relationships is to discover where re we have more learning and loving to do

• Our relationships are our sacred responsibilities, for they are the framework within which life is lived. They show us where we have more learning and loving to do.  Our interactions with others call up the disabling beliefs and negative patterns of behavior we need to release—the cynicism, anger, resentment, and jealousy that block love’s flow.  Our relationships are our mirrors; they reflect where we are in consciousness.  And if we are willing to face the truth about ourselves, our relationships offer the lessons that lead to our greatest transformation.  Susan L. Taylor
• Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict while staying connected. Bell Hooks
• Exploration,  Discovery

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The purpose of relationships is to learn to be authentically yourself

• How would your life be different if…You approached all relationships with authenticity and honesty? Let today be the day…You dedicate yourself to building relationships on the solid foundation of truth and authenticity. Steve Maraboli
• I express who I am by simply being it. Jason Nelson
• No matter what happens, always be yourself. Dale Carnegie
• Be sure it’s your real self you’re showing. Because it is your real self that needs to be loved. Daphne Rose Kingma
• Scholars, theologians, and even poets have yet to be able to truly describe and touch upon the beauty, romance, and magic of a relationship built on 100% authenticity. Steve Maraboli
• Be who you are

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The purpose of relationships is to teach you

• Try viewing everyone who comes into your life as a teacher. Wayne Dyer
• Be grateful for whoever comes, because each guest has been sent as a guide from beyond. Rumi
• Everyone and everything around you is your teacher. Ken Keyes
• I believe people are in our lives for a reason. We’re here to learn from each other. Gillian Anderson
• Who is wise? He who learns from all men. From all my teachers have I gotten understanding. Ben Zoma
• Imagine everyone you know is enlightened. The people who you meet are all here to teach you something. Perhaps the obnoxious driver or disrespectful teenager is here to teach you about patience, the punk rocker might be here to teach you to be less judgemental. Richard Carlson
• I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind. I should not be ungrateful to those teachers. Kahlil Gibran
• In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher. The Dalai Lama
• All God’s angels come to us disguised. James Russell Lowell
• Difficult people are, as usual, the greatest teachers. Pema Chodron
• If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. Pema Chodron
• Love those who offend, for they reveal you to yourself. Rain Bojangles

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The purpose of relationships is to get to know each other

• Funny how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie. Robert Bloch
• So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it. Paul Young
• We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. S. Eliot
• Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories. Haruki Murakami
• We know so little about one another. We embrace a shadow and love a dream. Hjalmar Söderberg
• There is no mystery– that’s the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is. Kamila Shamsie
• I do not like that man. I need to get to know him better. Abraham Lincoln
• I think it’s impossible to really know someone, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. Orson Scott Card
• You learn to like someone when you find out what makes them laugh, but you can never truly love someone until you find out what makes them cry.

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The purpose of relationships is to provide an opportunity to give and contribute

• Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take. Tony Robbins
• Relationship works best when you think of it as a vehicle of giving and contributing and as a secular spiritual practice, keeping your own interests present but not predominant in your choice processes. Paul Richards
• Giving,  Contribution

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The purpose of relationships is to help each other

• Instead one bends every effort to help life to fulfill its highest destiny. One strives to maintain, enhance, and assist life to make the most of itself. Wilferd A. Peterson
• Life to too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters. Eric Maisel
• Life’s most persistent and urgent question is what are you doing for others.  Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. The Dalai Lama
• The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all. Leo Rosten
• There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being – to help someone succeed. Alan Loy McGinnis
• We are here to help one another along life’s journey.  William J. Bennett
• What do we live for, if not to make the world less difficult for each other? George Eliot
• There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life. Booker T. Washington
• Every life is meant to help all lives; each man should live for all men’s betterment. Alice Cary
• In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can. William Barclay
• Helpfulness,  Service

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The purpose of relationships is to provide companions on the journey through life

• Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. Izaak Walton
• Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life. Pythagoras
• An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage. Publilius Syrus
• A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles. Tim Cahill
• It’s funny how, in this journey of life, even though we may begin at different times and places, our paths cross with others so that we may share our love, compassion, observations, and hope. Steve Maraboli
• Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.  Vera Nazarian
• It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way. Jeremy Aldana
• Cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey. Jack Layton
• Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand. Emily Kimbrough
• We are one big family of people, trying to make our way through the unfolding puzzle of life. Sara Paddison
• I have always looked at life as a voyage, mostly wonderful, sometimes frightening. In my family and friends I have discovered treasure more valuable than gold. Jimmy Buffet
• If life is a journey then let my soul travel and share your pain. Santosh Kalwar
• We’re all just walking each other home. Ram Dass
• It is in the shelter of each other that the people live. Irish Proverb
• No road is long with good company.  Turkish Proverb
• Life is a journey

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The purpose of relationships is to create trust

• Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships. Stephen Covey
• Quality relationships are built on principles – especially the principle of trust. And trust grows out of trustworthiness, out of the character to make and keep commitments, to share resources, to be caring and responsible, to belong, to love unconditionally. Stephen Covey
• Trust is the fruit of a relationship in which you know you are loved. Paul Young
• Trust,  Integrity

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The purpose of relationships is to give life meaning

• If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.  Mitsugi Saotome
• Meaning,  Purpose

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The purpose of relationships is to awaken and become conscious

• Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again.  If you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer your salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world.  Eckhart Tolle
• Relationship are part of the vast plan for our enlightenment. Marianne Williamson
• Awakening,  Consciousness

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The purpose of relationships is and to work together to achieve and create great things

• Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people.  Earl Nightingale
• Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.  Ben Stein
• In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. Charles Darwin
• People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.  Vince Lombardi
• Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success. Henry Ford
• No one person, no one alliance, no one nation, no one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together.  James Stavridis
• “We = power.” Lorii Myers
• The path to greatness is along with others. Baltasar Gracion
• Teamwork is the secret that make common people achieve uncommon result. Enoch Onuoha
• Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Meade
• Leaving a legacy,  Achievement

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We are all dependent on each other

• As Walker relates, His Holiness was talking about the myth of independence. If you are so independent, he asked, who grows your food? Who sews your clothes, builds your house, makes sure that water comes out of your showerhead? How were you even born? The fact is, he said, we have not done one single thing alone, without the help of a small army of others, and yet we walk around talking about the necessity and supremacy of independence. It’s completely irrational. Jean Twenge & Keith Campbell
• From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. Albert Einstein
• We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men. Herman Melville
• Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.  Gandhi
• Interdependence is the paradigm of “we”—we can do it; we can combine our talents and abilities to create something greater together. Despite independence being the avowed goal of many people and social movements, interdependence is a far more effective and advanced concept. Stephen Covey
• Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God. Aristotle
• Independence is a political concept, not a biological concept. Margaret Wheatley
• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.  John Donne
• In reality there is no such thing as a “self-made man.” We got where we are with the support and actions of others. In fact, we have an interconnectedness that is so pervasive it’s easy to overlook. Mary Rosendale
• Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else.  Nothing exists in isolation.  We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.  Margaret J. Wheatley
• Interdependence

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In relationships, interdependence is the ultimate ideal

• Interdependence is the paradigm of “we”—we can do it; we can combine our talents and abilities to create something greater together. Despite independence being the avowed goal of many people and social movements, interdependence is a far more effective and advanced concept. Stephen Covey
• Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts. Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success. Stephen Covey
• Effective interdependence can only be built on a foundation of true independence. Stephen Covey
• Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Stephen Covey
• The task that remains is to cope with our interdependence – to see ourselves reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our differences. Melba Pattillo Beals

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We draw to ourselves the people we need

• There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle. Deepak Chopra
• Whatever relationships I have attracted into my life at this moment are precisely the ones I need in my life at this moment. Deepak Chopra
• Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. Richard Bach

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Self actualisers nurture close relationships

• Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family. Abraham Maslow
• Self-actualizing individuals have a genuine desire to help the human race. Abraham Maslow
• Self-actualizing people have these especially deep ties with rather few individuals. Their circle of friends is rather small. The ones that they love profoundly are few in number. Abraham Maslow

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Make relationships one of your greatest priorities in life

• When we get too caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another- and ourselves. Jack Kornfield
• What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. Pericle
• The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.  Audrey Hepburn

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