It takes as much time to be happy as it does to be depressed or resentful.
Happiness requires no extra time. In fact, it requires no time at all. As I’ve already stated, happiness waits on welcome, not on time.
— Robert Holden, PhD, Happiness Now! p. 91
Merely making our relationships last is just not good enough. Our relationships can change us. Our relationships should change us. Our relationships will change us for the better — if we are willing to take the risk.
— Mark O’Connell, PhD, The Marriage Benefit, p. 199
Fantasy instead teaches us that there is something worthwhile you can do on the way to the grave: you can dream. And that maybe that dreaming is not only intrinsically valuable, for its own sake, but that sometimes the dream can take on a life of its own, a life that persists, and that shapes and sometimes even ennobles the lives of others that it touches, sometimes long after the original dreamer is gone from this earth.
— Gardner Dozois, Preface, Modern Classics of Fantasy
The right two people can be better together than alone, helping to keep each other sane, well-loved, and secure. Nevertheless, here’s where we’ve got it backward. A loving relationship can never make us whole. Rather, it allows us to better experience our own wholeness. Only from this perspective can we realize ourselves emotionally.
— Judith Orloff, MD, Emotional Freedom, p. 207