Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.
M. Scott PeckRead
When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love requires effort and actions to be meaningful and real.
This quote emphasizes that true love is not simply a feeling or an emotion but something that is made tangible through our actions and commitment. It suggests that love involves putting in effort, making sacrifices, and going out of our way to support and care for the people we love, reinforcing the idea that love is an active choice rather than a passive state.
Themes
LoveEffortRelationshipsCommitmentActions
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about relationships, you might say, 'As M. Scott Peck beautifully stated, love is effortful and requires us to take that extra step for one another.'
More from M. Scott Peck
All quotes →Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.
M. Scott PeckRead
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
M. Scott PeckRead
All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.
M. Scott PeckRead
An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.
M. Scott PeckRead
Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.
M. Scott PeckRead
Similar quotes
Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.
Margaret MitchellRead
Love prefers twilight to daylight.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Read
Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.
Miroslav VolfRead
A nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.
William ShakespeareRead
I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.
Edith WhartonRead
Love and the gentle heart are but the same thing.
Dante AlighieriRead