Judith Viorst Quotes

Quotes about:

• We lost not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety -- and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal.

  Judith Viorst

  Letting Go, Dream, Moving

  23 Copy quote

• Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain.

  Judith Viorst

  Loss, Growth, Pay

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.325, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.

  Judith Viorst

  Inspirational, Strength, Food

  60 Copy quote

• One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.

  Judith Viorst

  Love, Marriage, Funny Valentines Day

  Judith Viorst (1987). “Love and Guilt and the Meaning of Life, Etc.”, Fireside

  55 Copy quote

• Recognize joy when it arrives in the plain brown wrappings of everyday life.

  Judith Viorst

  Life, Joy, Everyday

  18 Copy quote

• Lust is what keeps you wanting to do it even when you have no desire to be with each other. Love is what makes you want to be with each other even when you have no desire to do it.

  Judith Viorst

  Love, Relationship, Lust

  31 Copy quote

• Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

  Judith Viorst

  Happiness, Friends, Laughter

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.181, Simon and Schuster

  29 Copy quote

• Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they can't be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and the skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by reality - a reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections.

  Judith Viorst

  Letting Go, Dream, Growing Up

  18 Copy quote

• We can glut ourselves with how-to-raise children information . . . strive to become more mature and aware but none of this will spare us from the . . . inevitability that some of the time we are going to fail our children. Because there is a big gap between knowing and doing. Because mature, aware people are imperfect too. Or because some current event in our life may so absorb or depress us that when our children need us we cannot come through.

  Judith Viorst

  Depressing, Children, Knowing

  4 Copy quote

• For we lose not only by death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on.

  Judith Viorst

  Letting Go, Moving, Leaving

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• READ! Books can be as delicious as hot-fudge sundaes, as funny as clowns, as exciting as a baseball game that's tied in the 9th inning, and as beautiful as the best sunset you ever saw.

  Judith Viorst

  Beautiful, Baseball, Book

  20 Copy quote

• Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates - more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts - an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.

  Judith Viorst

  Marriage, Caring, Atmosphere

  4 Copy quote

• the lives we lead are determined, for better and worse, by our loss experiences.

  Judith Viorst

  Loss, Determined

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• I had it together on Sunday. By Monday at noon it had cracked. On Tuesday debris Was descending on me. And by Wednesday no part was intact. On Thursday I picked up some pieces. On Friday I picked up the rest. By Saturday, late, It was almost set straight. And on Sunday the world was impressed With how well I had got it together.

  Judith Viorst

  Friday, Monday, Sunday

  Judith Viorst (2001). “Suddenly Sixty and Other Shocks of Later Life”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

• You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

  Judith Viorst

  Children, Age, Faces

  8 Copy quote

• We grow because the clamorous, permanent presence of our children forces us to put their needs before ours. We grow because our love for our children urges us to change as nothing else in our lives has the power to do. We grow (if we're willing to grow, that is: not every parent is willing) because being a parent helps us stop being a child.

  Judith Viorst

  Children, Parent, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead.

  Judith Viorst

  Women, Lying, Dinner

  Judith Viorst (2014). “When Did I Stop Being Twenty and Other Injustices”, p.96, Simon and Schuster

  16 Copy quote

• We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies.

  Judith Viorst

  Baby, Jobs, Loss

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.

  Judith Viorst

  Mother, Father, Hate

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• We cannot love others as others unless we possess suficient self-love, a love we learn from being loved in infancy.

  Judith Viorst

  Self, Self Love, Infancy

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.68, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Brevity may be the soul of wit, but not when someone's saying "I love you.

  Judith Viorst

  Love You, Soul, May

  Judith Viorst (1987). “Love and Guilt and the Meaning of Life, Etc.”, Fireside

  8 Copy quote

• My mom says I'm her sugarplum.
  My mom says I'm her lamb.
  My mom says I'm completely perfect
  Just the way I am.
  My mom says I'm a super-special wonderful terrific little guy.
  My mom just had another baby.
  Why?

  Judith Viorst

  Mom, Baby, Sibling

  Judith Viorst (2010). “Necessary Losses: The Loves Illusions Dependencies and Impossible Ex”, p.94, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

  Judith Viorst

  Mom, Mother, Bad Day

  "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". Book by Judith Viorst, June 16, 1972.

  20 Copy quote

• For some it takes a lifetime to find true love, But for the lucky ones a lifetime is merely enough to share the love they've found.

  Judith Viorst

  Greatest Love, Lucky, Lifetime

  12 Copy quote

• Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.

  Judith Viorst

  Sexy, Smart, Love Is

  20 Copy quote

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