Quote

When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.

Bell Hooks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bell Hooks
Relationship
Face
Rather
Sever
Faces
Bonds
Pain
Maintain
Often
Relationships
Firsts
Response
First
Commitment

More quotes by Bell Hooks

Image
... feminist solidarity rooted in a commitment to progressive politics must include a space for rigorous critique, for dissent, orwe are doomed to reproduce in progressive communities the very forms of domination we seek to oppose.
Bell Hooks
Image
The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.
Bell Hooks
Image
Of all the definitions of love that abound in our universe, a special favorite of mine is... “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”
Bell Hooks
Image
The word love is most often defined as a noun, yet al the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.
Bell Hooks
Image
The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.
Bell Hooks
Image
Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair.
Bell Hooks
Image
Love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.
Bell Hooks
Image
I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.
Bell Hooks
Image
Given the way universities work to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo, the way knowledge is offered as commodity, Women's Studies can easily become the place where revolutionary feminist thought and feminist activism are submerged or made secondary to the goals of academic careerism
Bell Hooks
Image
If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.
Bell Hooks
Image
I think this is often misunderstood in the West, where people feel that there can be no justice unless everything is the same. This is part of why I feel we have to relearn how we think about love, because we think about love so much in terms of the self.
Bell Hooks
Image
One of the most subversive institutions in the United States is the public library.
Bell Hooks
Image
Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.
Bell Hooks
Image
I feel that I have many real students whom I have not met. Many are in cloisters and they never get out. Others are in prison. But in many cases they practice the teachings much better than those who meet me every day.
Bell Hooks
Image
The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love which would guide our thoughts and action.
Bell Hooks
Image
as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves
Bell Hooks
Image
Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.
Bell Hooks
Image
Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.
Bell Hooks
Image
Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands.
Bell Hooks
Image
Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.
Bell Hooks