bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
42 quotes
"All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm's way."
"The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control."
"But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
"schools for love do not exist. everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively.despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love.those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. however this love often eludes us."
"When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise. They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny."
"Those of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic, know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone."
"A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong."
"When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abusive cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care."
"We have power as consumers. We can exercise that power all the time by not choosing to invest time, energy or funds to support the production of mass media images that do not reflect life-enhancing values, that undermine a love ethic."
"Society's collective fear of love must be faced if we are to lay claim to a love ethic that can inspire us and give us the courage to make necessary changes."
"When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It's not what you do but how you do it."
"Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition."
"We spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply where we simply did not know what to do."
"We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments."
"Erotic attraction often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love. Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place between two people who do not even know each other. Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love. Led by their penis, seduced by erotic desire, they often end up in relationships with partners with whom they share no common interests of values."
"When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights - that we respect and uphold their rights."
"There can be no love without justice. Until we live in a culture that no only respects but also upholds basic civil rights for children, most children will not know love."
"Through the practice of compassion and forgiveness, I was able to sustain my appreciation for her work and cope with the grief and disappointment I felt about the loss of this relationship. Practicing compassion enabled me to understand why she might have acted as she did and to forgive her. Forgiving means that I am able to see her as a member of my community still, one who has a place in my heart should she wish to claim it."
"Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals."
"To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That fear can only be addressed by the love of living. We have a long history in this nation of believing that to be too celebratory is dangerous, that being optimistic is foolhardy, hence our difficulty in celebrating life, in teaching our children and ourselves how to love life."
"Ironically, the worship of of death as a strategy for coping with our underlying fear of death's power does not truly give us solace. It is deeply anxiety producing. The more we watch spectacles of death, of random violence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily lives."
"Like many liberal men in the age of feminism, he believed women should have equal access to jobs and be given equal pay, but when it came to matters of home and heart he still believed caregiving was the female role. Like many men, he wanted a woman to be 'just like his mama' so that he did not have to do the work of growing up."
"Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up. As we move toward our desired destination we chart the journey, creating a map. We need a map to guide us on our journey to love--starting with the place where we know what we mean when we speak of love."
"Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair."
"Those who choose to walk on love's path are well served if they have a guide. That guide can enable us to overcome fear if we trust that they will not lead us astray or abandon us along the way."