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Daily Inspiration Quote by Saskya Pandita

"Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity"

About this Quote

Affection, in Saskya Pandita's telling, isn’t the opposite of conflict; it’s premium fuel for it. The line has the hard-edged clarity of a leader who has seen how intimacy collapses the distance that usually keeps people polite. When you care deeply, you also accumulate expectations, unspoken contracts, and a running tally of perceived slights. The emotional stakes rise, and so does the sense of betrayal when reality fails to match the private script.

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

TopicWisdom
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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.

More Quotes by Saskya Add to List
Affection, Familiarity, and the Roots of Animosity
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About the Author

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Saskya Pandita (1182 AC - 1251 AC) was a Leader from Tibet.

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