Daily Inspiration Quote by Robert Sternberg

Sternberg’s line lands like a calm rebuke to our culture’s favorite plot twist: the lightning-bolt romance that’s supposed to carry the whole story. As an educator and psychologist known for the “triangular theory of love,” he’s not moralizing against passion; he’s putting it on a clock. Passion is framed as fast chemistry, the kind of feeling modern life is optimized to chase and monetize because it’s immediate, legible, and addictive. It “develops” quickly because novelty, fantasy, and projection do a lot of early work. It “fades” quickly because novelty has an expiration date.

The subtext is almost managerial: if you build a relationship around the element most sensitive to time, stress, and habituation, you’re building on sand. Sternberg elevates intimacy and commitment not as more romantic but as more engineered. “Develops more slowly” suggests intimacy is cumulative data: repeated disclosures, repaired conflicts, small acts that prove someone is safe. Commitment, “more gradually still,” is the least cinematic component; it’s the decision to keep choosing the relationship when the emotional weather changes. The phrasing implies that commitment isn’t a single vow but an accretion of choices.

Context matters: Sternberg is writing from within late-20th-century relationship science, pushing back on the idea that love is either destiny or pure feeling. His intent is diagnostic and preventive. If passion is the spark, he’s telling you where the wiring and insulation are. The real warning: confusing speed for depth doesn’t just lead to disappointment; it sets people up to interpret the normal fading of intensity as failure, instead of as the moment the slower, sturdier parts are supposed to start doing their job.