Emotional Bondage Quotes

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

You are a slave of what you need in your soul.

Serving one's own passions is the greatest slavery.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.

Misery comes the moment you become clinging, attached. The moment you put conditions on life.

I believe I was a codependent out of the womb and have been struggling to free myself from its vice-like grip for many, many years.

She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.

I march in the parade of liberty But as long as I love you I’m not free How long must I suffer such abuse Won’t you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?

If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

Envy may justly be called "the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity;" it is the most acid fruit that grows on the stock of sin, a fluid so subtle that nothing but the fire of divine love can purge it from the soul.

To the soul's desires The body listens What the flesh requires Keeps the heart imprisoned

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.

Her absence had felt like torture--almost a form of personal punishment. He had nobody to discuss his feelings with, and for the first time he realised with appalling clarity what a destructive hold she had over him.

Identification with the body, with the mind, with our possessions, with our families, with our friends - any kind of identification takes you outwards. All your possessions will be outwards: your wife, your husband, your children, your body - your body is outside you; your mind - your mind is outside you. The only thing that is not outside you is the witnessing. Just the watchfulness - that is your buddha. Identification means losing witnessing, falling into the trap of attachment. That is our misery, that is our slavery.

Just seeing the fact that this is an attachment, that attachment is a bondage - a beautiful word for bondage - that attachment is not love... just seeing the ugliness of attachment - it drops; then arises love. The same energy that was becoming attachment, released from attachment becomes a totally different energy; it becomes love.

Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.

Sure, on a larger scale, it was healthy to have people out there you cared about more than yourself. She knew that. But then there was the abject fear you would lose it. They say possessions own you. Not so. Loved ones own you. You are forever held hostage once you care so much.

Many of us are in are in our own prisons that aren't made of iron bars.

Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.

Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow.

as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves

Shackled heart, free spirit.--Whoever binds his heart tightly and imprisons it may indulge his spirit in many liberties: I have already said that once. But no one believes me unless he already knows.

Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.