Judith Butler Quotes

Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.

The prerequisite for making love is to like someone enormously.

The reason I love being a senator is that I can have whatever thoughts I have, say whatever I want about any subject at any time, and that is a wonderful feeling of freedom, and I cherish that.

Deeply versed in history, [John Adams] said over and over that America had no special providence, no special role in history, that Americans were no different from other peoples, that the United States was just as susceptible to viciousness and corruption as any other nation. In this regard, at least, Jefferson's vision has clearly won the day.

Love is an involuntary reaction to virtue.

When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other's feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves.

Love is like a batik created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.

Love is full of imagination.

I'm a man of history. My vision is guiding me, my clear vision. It is not by chance that the currents of peace are increasing daily inside Israel.

Every minute you spend with someone gives them a part of your life and takes part of theirs.

Love is the reward of love.

are you saying that the feeling of searching for a missing sock is like searching for love ?

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

The feeling of love is the highest frequency you can emit. The greater the love you feel and emit, the greater the power you are harnessing.

Love is only a feeling of curiousity more or less intense, grafted upon the inclination placed in us by nature that the species may be preserved.

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

Love is an action, never simply a feeling.

Young love is so ridiculous, as is middle-aged and old love. And it's also hilarious. When have you ever felt so vulnerable and wonderful and terrible at the same time?

Sudden love is latest cured.

At any given period in history the ideas of the common mind are found to antedate the facts. The facts of the twentieth century are approached with the ideas, feelings, prejudices of the tenth.

Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism.

Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil.

Now the same mystery which often veils from our eyes the reason for a catastrophe envelops just as frequently, when love is in question, the suddenness of certain happy solutions, such as had been brought to me by Gilberte's letter. Happy, or at least seemingly happy, for there are few that can really be happy when we are dealing with a sentiment of such a kind that any satisfaction we can give it does no more, as a rule, than dislodge some pain. And yet sometimes a respite is granted us, and we have for a little while the illusion of being healed.

Love is like moonlight or thunder, or rain on a tin roof in the middle of the night; it is one of those things in life that is truly worth knowing.

You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?