affection

The name is not important anymore - it's the tone that counts.  I feel like an old dog I know.  He will come to any name you call him, just so long as your demeanor carries with it the promise of affection and food

“As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him.  A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring.  Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood.”

Edward Gibbon

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.

I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange with-out heresy.

He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: while he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds them to some things: shortsightedness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries to others.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

A self-centered man admitted: "Sure, I know that the Bible says to love our neighbors as ourselves. But frankly, I don't believe that my neighbors can stand all that affection."

A research project in Australia, entitled "The Congruent Garden: an Investigation into the Role of the Domestic Garden in Satisfying Fundamental Human Needs," interviewed gardeners on the values of gardening in their everyday lives. The researchers established that gardens have the potential to satisfy nine basic human needs (subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, freedom) across four existential states (being, having, doing and interacting.)

There are three men that all ought to look upon with affection: he that with affection looks at the face of the earth, that is delighted with rational works of art, and that looks lovingly on little children.