Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.
— Paradise, by Toni Morrison (via shiningstar)
Love brings you face to face with your self. It’s impossible to love another if you cannot love yourself.
— John Pierrakos (via nunquam-singularis)
(Source: quote-book)
If you have love you don’t need to have anything else. If you don’t have it it doesn’t matter much what else you do have.
— J.M. Barrie (via girlwithoutwings)
(Source: fazberries)
Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.
— Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
(Source: thetreesweremistaken)
Man is gifted with reason; he is life being aware of itself; he has awareness of himself, of his fellow man, of his past, and of the possibilities of his future. This awareness of himself as a separate entity, the awareness of his own short life span, of the fact that without his will he is born and against his will he dies, that he will die before those whom he loves, or they before him, the awareness of his aloneness and separateness, of his helplessness before the forces of nature and of society, all this makes his separate, disunited existence an unbearable prison. He would become insane could he not liberate himself from this prison and reach out, unite himself in some form or other with men, with the world outside.
— Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
— Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
