Thought Catalog Love Quotes

Those relationships didn’t actually hurt you, they showed you an unhealed part of yourself, a part that was preventing you from being truly loved.

Information wants to be free.' So goes the saying. Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, seems to have said it first. I say that information doesn't deserve to be free. Cybernetic totalists love to think of the stuff as if it were alive and had its own ideas and ambitions. But what if information is inanimate? What if it's even less than inanimate, a mere artifact of human thought? What if only humans are real, and information is not? ... Information is alienated experience.

Tell the people you love how much you appreciate them more than you think is necessary.

There are a thousand minute intricacies that make up the tapestry of who you are and not a single one has ceased to exist since the last time that somebody loved you. I

Someday someone’s going to love all of those tiny things about you. Someone’s going to love the way you cough. They’re going to laugh at the way you lose your keys while you’re actually holding them. Someday, someone is going to stare at you from across a crowded room and know exactly how you’re feeling based on the way your head is tilting or the type of wine you’ve used to fill your glass. Someone is going to appreciate all of your obscurities eventually but right now they are all only your own. And that’s okay. First and foremost, you will always belong to yourself.

Relationships with expiration dates teach us that love doesn’t have to last forever to be meaningful. That someone doesn’t have to stick around to make an impact. That the best things in life are not always measured by their longevity but by their intensity. Their complexity.

Any mode of thought that lays out complete and final answers to great existential questions is liable to dogmatism. A great attraction of care ethics, I think, is its refusal to encode or construct a catalog of principles and rules. One who cares must meet the cared-for just as he or she is, as a whole human being with individual needs and interests. [...] At most, it directs us to attend, to listen, and to respond as positively as possible. [...] it recognizes that virtually all human beings desire not to be hurt, and this gives us something close to an absolute: We should not inflict deliberate hurt or pain. Even when we must fight to save our children, we must not inflict unnecessary or deliberate pain.

Did dinosaurs sing? Was there a teeming, singing wilderness with all the species thumping around, tuning up for the next millennia? Of course, dinosaurs sang, I thought. They are the ancestors of the singing birds and cousins to the roaring crocodiles…turns out, no. Turns out the syrinx, the organ that produces birdsong and the larynx, the organ that produces operatic arias, didn’t evolve until after the dinosaur extinction event…Some dinosaurs blew air into their closed mouths and through nasal cavities into resonance chambers, which we see in fossils as bony crests. They made the forest echo with clear, ominous tones, eerily like a cello. I have heard it in recordings scientists made of the sound they produced when they blew air through crests constructed to mimic lambeosaurus’s. Some dinosaurs cooed to their mates like doves…turns out that even if dinosaurs didn’t sing, they danced. There is evidence in vigorous scrape marks found in 100-million year old Colorado sandstone. From the courting behavior of ostriches and grouse, scientists envision the dinosaur males coming together on courting grounds, bobbing and scratching, flaring their brilliant feathers and cooing. Imagine: huge animals, each weighing more than a dozen football teams, shaking the Earth for a chance at love. What the story of the dinosaurs tells me is that if the earth didn’t have music, it would waste no time inventing it. In birds, tantalizing evidence of birdsong is found in 67-million-year old fossils, marking the first know appearance of the syrinx. Now the whole Earth can chime, from deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere with the sounds of snapping shrimp, singing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears, clattering dragonflies, and a fish calling like a foghorn. Who could catalog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth? And more songs are being created every year.

You can gaze over the fence and covet another person’s life or tell yourself that God has blessed you in ways you never could have earned. Do you ever battle with envy? Have you ever wondered why someone else’s life seems easier than yours? Have you ever struggled to celebrate the blessings of someone else who had what you thought you needed? Have you ever wished you could just switch lives with someone? Perhaps there are ways in which envy haunts us all, so it’s worth examining the heart of envy. What things prepare the heart for envy? Envy is forgetful. In concentrating on what we don’t have that we think we should have, we fail to keep in mind the huge catalog of blessings that are ours simply because God has chosen to place his bountiful love on us. This forgetfulness causes us to do more comparing and complaining than praising and resting. Envy misunderstands blessing. So often envy is fueled by misunderstanding what God’s care looks like. It is not always the care of provision, relief, or release. Sometimes God’s blessing comes in the form of trials that are his means of giving us things we could get no other way. Envy is selfish. Envy tends to put us in the center of our own worlds. It tends to make everything about our comfort and ease, our wants, needs, and feelings, and not about the plan and the glory of the God we serve. Envy is self-righteous. Envy has an “I deserve _____ more than they do” posture to it. It forgets that we all deserve immediate and eternal punishment, and that any good thing we have is an undeserved gift of God’s amazing grace. Envy is shortsighted. Envy has a right here, right now aspect to it that overlooks the fact that this moment is not all there is. Envy cannot see that this moment isn’t meant to be a destination, but a preparation for a final destination that will be beautiful beyond our wildest imagination. Envy questions God’s wisdom. When you and I envy, we tend to buy into the thought that we are smarter than God. In envy, we tend to think we know more and better, and if our hands were on the joystick, we would be handling things a different way. Envy is impatient. Envy doesn’t like to wait. Envy complains quickly and tires easily. Envy doesn’t just cry for blessings; it cries for blessings now. What is devastating about envy is that it questions God’s goodness, and when you do that, you quit running to him for help. So cry out for rescue—that God would give you a thankful, humble, and patient heart. His transforming grace is your only defense against envy. For further study and encouragement: Psalm 34

But wanting things doesn’t mean you’ll get them. And loving people doesn’t mean they’ll love you back.

Surround yourself with people who make your world brighter and your mind more excited and your heart bigger.

We focus so much of our attention on trying to get others to love us, to adore us, and to admire us that we forget to do those things to ourselves.

It took me until I walked away to realize real love wasn’t suppose to be this complicated. Real love was simple and he wasn’t.

Sometimes there’s just no pleasing people. But that’s the thing—this life isn’t about pleasing people. It’s about pleasing yourself.

You are a unique collection of cells and energy that will never again be recreated on this planet earth.

You are worthy of everything you have, and everything you dream of. Don’t let any person, any advertisement, any pessimistic thought tell you otherwise. You are whole, today. You are enough, today.

There are a thousand minute intricacies that make up the tapestry of who you are and not a single one has ceased to exist since the last time that somebody loved you.

You should aim to be kind. Aim to be compassionate. Aim to be understanding. Aim to allow and give love.

cradles. I like my men to be old enough to remember the joy of getting a new Trapper Keeper before each school year, someone who knows what a card catalog is, and most importantly, a guy who thought Punky Brewster was the fucking shit.

68. Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death. —Anonymous

DECEMBER 1 You have one place of hope, security, and rest. It is found in these words: “God is love.” It is something every human being does. It separates us from the rest of creation. It causes us much anxiety and much joy. It shapes the decisions and investments that we make. It calms our fears or leaves us scared and feeling alone. It turns all of us into theologians and philosophers. Where we land in this pursuit shapes the way we look at life and interpret the things that happen to us. It proves that we don’t live by instinct or by impersonal determinative forces. It exposes the fact that we are deeply spiritual beings. It is one of our most foundational quests. As different as we are one from another, in this way we are all the same. We all are looking for something in which to place our hope. We’re all in search of security. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but there are only two places to look for hope. You can search for it horizontally, thinking that something in creation will give you the security, peace, and inner sense of well-being that you seek, or you can seek it vertically, entrusting your life into the loving hands of your Creator. People put their hope in the creation all the time. They seek satisfaction of heart in the love of other human beings or in the success of their careers. They think their hearts will be satisfied by a certain set of achievements or by a certain catalog of possessions. But none of these things has the power to satisfy your heart. They are all meant to point you to the one place where you heart will find secure rest. You and I need to face this reality—creation will never be our savior! So where is hope to be found, hope that will never disappoint or shame you? It really is found in three of the most glorious words ever penned in human language. These words have the power to transform you and everything about you. These words can end your frantic search and give your weary heart rest. These words describe the One who alone is capable of carrying your hope: “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Because he is love and because he has placed his love on you, you have security and hope even in those scary moments when it feels as if you have neither. The One who is love sent his Son of love to be a sacrifice of love so you and I could be rescued by his love and rest in that love forever and ever. For further study and encouragement: 1 John 1:1–4

So if you knew, with indisputable certainty, that love was never going to be yours, how would you live your life differently?

The way your eyes light up when you’re talking about what you love is — and endlessly will be — attractive, regardless of who is there to listen to you speak.

There’s no downside to telling each other exactly why you love each other as often as possible.

I believe in you even if I haven’t met you, even if I never will. I believe that you’re out there—the person who will send me a text in the morning, share the last slice, and be my teammate. Somewhere, you’re out there taking your time and waiting for something meaningful to come into your life. And maybe we will never find that perfect thing, and maybe we’ll never meet, but that’s okay. Because I want to spend my whole life believing in something truly great—something truly spectacular and rare—even if I’m alone in my faith.

Do not let anyone make you feel like you’re unlovable; you may be difficult to love, you may have baggage, but you are not unloveable.

I don’t want to have to “win you over” as if you’re a prize; I just want to have you, with no games, strings, or fine print attached.

You shouldn’t measure your self-worth and value based on those who couldn’t love you or those who only took your love for granted.

Finding someone who will love you won’t make you love yourself more. If your source of happiness comes from someone you may lose, you’re corrupting the goodness of your mind and soul.

I know that this part—the exposition—brings with it newness and excitement. The anticipation of what’s to come. We’re still careful, feeling one another out and cautious of “messing up” this budding relationship. It carries a shyness with its fragility: a sneaking-into-the-bathroom-to-brush-your-teeth-at-dawn mindset. Our understanding of one another’s character is still developing.

Few things in life make me more zen than knowing that one can take notes on an almost infinite variety of colors, shapes, and sizes of sticky paper. Ever since I was a kid, the sheer possibilities for organization- the thought that no matter how unpredictable life gets, there are tools to neatly catalog it- have been massively appealing.