Gary Chapman Quotes

The object of love is not getting something you want but doing something for the well-being of the one you love.

Love can be expressed and received in all five languages. However, if you don't speak a person's primary love language, that person will not feel loved, even though you may be speaking the other four. Once you are speaking his or her primary love language fluently, then you can sprinkle in the other four and they will be like icing on the cake.

The one who chooses to love will find appropriate ways to express that decision everyday.

Life's deepest meaning is not found in accomplishments , but in relationships

Expressing love in the right language. We tend to speak our own love language, to express love to others in a language that would make us feel loved. But if it is not his/her primary love language, it will not mean to them what it would mean to us.

Love doesn't erase the past, but it makes the future different.

Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. I need to be loved by someone who chooses to love me, who sees in me something worth loving.

Love is a choice you make everyday.

Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.

Respect begins with this attitude: "I acknowledge that you are a creature of extreme worth. God has endowed you with certain abilities and emotions. Therefore I respect you as a person. I will not desecrate your worth by making critical remarks about your intellect, your judgment or your logic. I will seek to understand you and grant you the freedom to think differently from the way I think and to experience emotions that I may not experience." Respect means that you give the other person the freedom to be an individual.

Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a choice to show mercy, not to hold the offense up against the offender. Forgiveness is an expression of love.

In marriage it is never having my own way. It is rather discovering our way.

Recent research has indicated that the average individual listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting and interjecting his own ideas.

Nobody has the power to make you miserable . . . unless you choose to give them that power. Choose to enjoy every drop of today!

Love is something you do for someone else, not something you do for yourself.

All of us blossom when we feel loved and wither when we do not feel loved.

We can choose the attitude that says, I have been wronged. People have hurt me, but with the help of God, I am going to learn how to return good for evil, and I am going to make a difference in this world.

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter--discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer--comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature.

Empathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart.

We can certainly see contemporary examples of people who radically change. As long you believe your spouse will never change and you keep telling yourself that, then you live with no hope. But if you understand that that's a myth, then you open up the door to hope.

Togetherness has to do with focused attention. It is giving someone your undivided attention. As humans, we have a fundamental desire to connect with others. We may be in the presence of people all day long, but we do not always feel connected.

True love cannot begin until the "in love" experience has run it's course.

Most of us have more potential than we will ever develop. What holds us back is often a lack of courage.

Don't be a victim of the urgent. In the long run, much of what seems so pressing right now won't even matter. What you do with your children will matter forever.

Before I discovered the concept of the 5 love languages, a bit of advice I was given was to become a student of my wife and to take time to learn what makes her feel loved. I soon learned that what makes her feel loved may not always be the thing I want to do because it may not come natural to me. But learning to love her in the way that makes her feel loved is a greater demonstration of my love for her, because I've chosen to do it with a goal of pleasing her.