Really to live requires a great deal of love, a great feeling for silence, a great simplicity with an abundance of experience; it requires a mind that is capable of thinking very clearly, that is not bound by prejudice or superstition, by hope or fear.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you. As long as you demand to be loved, there is no love in you; and if you feel no love, you are ugly, brutish, so why should you be loved? Without love you are a dead thing; and when the dead thing asks for love, it is still dead. Whereas, if your heart is full of love, then you never ask to be loved, you never put out your begging bowl for someone to fill it.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
You must find out for yourself what it is you love to do. Don’t think in terms of choosing a vocation in order to fit into society, because in that way you will never discover what you love to do. When you love to do something, there is no problem of choice. When you love, and let love do what it will, there is right action, because love never seeks success, it is never caught up in imitation; but if you give your life to something which you don’t love, you will never be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti in Think on These Things
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
—Henry Miller in The World of Sex
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
—Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
—Alain de Botton
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.
—Elie Wiesel
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
—Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
—P.J. O'Rourke
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
—Oscar Wilde
Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It’s about accepting all of yourself.
—Tyra Banks
It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self love deficit.
—Eartha Kitt
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
—Lucille Ball
There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
—John Lennon
I couldn’t love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn’t love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that’s all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.
—Rainbow Rowell in Attachments