Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Possessiveness destroys love. And they should not be possessed, because that again destroys your love.

No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.

I wouldn't want to be in a relationship where I'm not even free to be myself.

No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.

That's how I believed relationships worked: You go into town, pick up the girl you want, then ride off into the mountains and the townsfolk can't get them back.

It isn't love when another person cannot give you the space to live your own life.

Loving someone meant letting them be who they were, not caging them

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

I like my life alone. I mean, I love being with friends, and I love kissing and loving someone to pieces. But it's hard to find someone who doesn't ultimately start judging you and your choices.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.

I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I'm nobody's possession.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

To be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. But later if anyone tried to possess me - oh boy, I was out of there.

My motto is, if you love something, don't set it free. No matter how hard it struggles. That would be stupid.

Love is authentic only when it gives freedom. Love is true only when it respects the other person's individuality, his privacy.

Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.

She needed him to be him. Even if he could not be hers.

Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” Yes. “Are you mine?” No. “No?” No. I loved being yours. But now I’m mine, which is all I ever was, in the end.

True love can exist only in freedom from possession.

A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.

We love purely when we release other people to be who they are.

I say if you love something, set it in a small cage and pester and smother it with love until it either loves you back or dies.