Abandoning civil society will leave the enemy in control, not by victory but by default.

— Mike Klepper

Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.

— Pablo Neruda

A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.

— bell hooks

And if we do speak out, we risk rejection and ridicule. I had a best friend once, the kind that you go shopping with and watch films with, the kind you go on holiday with and rescue when her car breaks down on the A1. Shortly after my diagnosis, I told her I had DID. I haven't seen her since. The stench and rankness of a socially unacceptable mental health disorder seems to have driven her away.

— Carolyn Spring

And so the spirits just gazed at us with eyes milked dry of care.

— NoViolet Bulawayo

Any work is always improvable, you cannot really finish the work, you can only abandon it out of tiredness or incompetence.

— Amit Kalantri

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gravest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me, I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanize fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it is not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist.

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks:1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one’s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, "They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourth-three?" Yes, these are tall orders, but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

— Henry Cloud

But Claire had long ago realized, even after those constant dreams of her mother leaving faded away, that when you are abandoned as a child, you are never able to forget that people are capable of leaving, even if they never do.

— Sarah Addison Allen

Do not conform to seek the seekers, but leave the leavers. Wisdom comes from facing what you do not yet understand.

— Shannon L. Alder