"Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity"
About this Quote
The subtext is almost administrative: closeness creates access, and access creates leverage. Friends and allies know where the soft spots are. They know the history, the insecurities, the exact sentence that will detonate a room. A stranger can insult you; a confidant can wound you with precision. That’s why “violent animosity” is not a contradiction here but a predictable escalation: affection builds a shared world, and a quarrel threatens to tear that world apart, which feels existential.
Context matters. Saskya Pandita wasn’t offering a romantic aphorism; he was governing and advising in a landscape where monasteries, clans, patrons, and rival schools sat uncomfortably close, bound by obligation as much as devotion. “Too great a familiarity” reads like a warning against porous boundaries in politics and spiritual communities alike. He’s advocating disciplined distance - not coldness, but a calibrated restraint that keeps relationships from turning into ownership. The brilliance is its realism: it reframes conflict not as a failure of love, but as one of its recurring side effects when intimacy outruns wisdom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Pandita, Saskya. (2026, January 15). Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/great-affection-is-often-the-cause-of-violent-153266/
Chicago Style
Pandita, Saskya. "Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/great-affection-is-often-the-cause-of-violent-153266/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/great-affection-is-often-the-cause-of-violent-153266/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










