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Quote by Thich Nhat Hanh

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Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts

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Thich Nhat Hanh

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“What if love wasn’t a mysterious “thing” that capriciously attached itself to whomever it willed? Could it be instead a deliberate choice of action? Jesus had commanded His followers to “love one another.” Would He give such a commandment if people had no control over their ability to love? And does that mean that romantic love between a man and woman can be cultivated, just as Mrs. Kingston cultivates her roses? She recalled standing at a window facing the Anwyl and determining that, like Saint Paul, she would learn contentment. If contentment could be achieved through an act of will, then why couldn’t love? And it would seem that a love purposely cultivated for a man because of his kind nature and comforting ways would eventually grow stronger and deeper than one based on mere physical attraction.”

“Chloe's holiday story was dull, but its dullness was no longer a criterion of judgment. I'd ceased to consider it according to the secular logic of ordinary conversations. I was no longer concerned to locate within its syntax either intellectual insight or poetic truth. What mattered was not so much what she was saying , as the fact, she was saying it. And that I had decided to find perfection in everything she might choose to utter. I felt ready to follow her into every anecdote, I was ready to love every one of her jokes that had missed its punchline, every reflection that had lost its thread. (...) I felt ready to abandon self-absorption for the sake of total empathy, to follow Chloe into each of her possible selves, to catalog every one of her memories, to become a historian of her childhood, to learn of all her loves, fears and hatreds... everything that could possibly have played itself out within her mind and body had suddenly grown fascinating.”