Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both partners run out of goods. But if the seed of a genuine disinterested love, which is often present, is ever to develop, it is essential that we pretend to ourselves and to others that it is stronger and more developed than it is, that we are less selfish than we are. Hence the social havoc wrought by the paranoid to whom the thought of indifference is so intolerable that he divides others into two classes, those who love him for himself alone and those who hate him for the same reason. Do a paranoid a favor, like paying his hotel bill in a foreign city when his monthly check has not yet arrived, and he will take this as an expression of personal affection — the thought that you might have done it from a general sense of duty towards a fellow countryman in distress will never occur to him. So back he comes for more until your patience is exhausted, there is a row, and he departs convinced that you are his personal enemy. In this he is right to the extent that it is difficult not to hate a person who reveals to you so clearly how little you love others. W.h. Auden
Some Similar Quotes
  1. When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable. - Jess C. Scott
  2. I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because... - Lisa Kleypas
  3. I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but... - Haruki Murakami
  4. A guy and a girl can be just friends, but at one point or another, they will fall for each other... Maybe temporarily, maybe at the wrong time, maybe too late, or maybe forever - Dave Matthews Band
  5. For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home. - Stephanie Perkins
More Quotes By W.h. Auden
  1. We must love one another or die
  2. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
  3. If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.
  4. I am sure it is everyone’s experience, as it has been mine, that any discovery we make about ourselves or the meaning of life is never, like a scientific discovery, a coming upon something entirely new and unsuspected; it is rather, the coming to conscious...
  5. Truth, like love and sleep, resents approaches that are too intense.
Related Topics