Hard To Love Yourself Quotes & Sayings

It was so stupid, and random, but at that second, with the morning sun hitting her auburn hair, and her huge brown eyes fixed on him, the lock flew off the "do-not-allow-yourself-to-even-think-about-it" portion of his brain, and every feeling he ever had for her - feelings he never even realized he had for her - flooded over him like a tidal wave. Love, tenderness, desire - it hit him so hard he had to excuse himself, go to the men's room, rest his forehead against the cool metal of the bathroom stall, breathing heavily, wondering what the hell had just happened. It left him exhausted and spent, as if he'd just run a hundred miles.
And almost a year later, he was still exhausted, spent, frustrated ... and madly in love. — Claire Matthews

Be nice to yourself... It's hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time. — Christine Arylo

I do a job and am lucky enough to do a job that I love, but it is a hard one. I'm not saying it is as hard as working in a coal mine, but it is still difficult in a different way. Sometimes you have to go through very strong emotional journeys and then come back to yourself. And that can be difficult to control. — Javier Bardem

But no life was without it's strain & strife, not if it was fully lived. Opening up to experience, even the good ones like trust & love, was to open yourself up to the pain. I suppose the key was to not compound matters by making the rest of it unnecessarily hard. My need for control had certainly done that in the past. So I made a promise to myself in that moment.
I would make a concerted effort to reach for what was soft & good in this world. I'd find a place to settle into, and hold still so that this world's good and soft could reach back & touch me as well. — Vicki Pettersson

Be a good person, do good things, learn, and love other people, but do these things because you love yourself, God, life and people, not because you fear going to hell if you don't. Keep the commandments (or whatever tenets you believe) because you want to be happy. Do it for you. God and the universe will unconditionally love you no matter which path you choose. You can learn whatever lessons you choose for yourself. If you want to learn things the hard way and experience fear, guilt and shame that is okay. But nothing you do (or don't do) can separate you from love. — Kimberly Giles

Be a bit of a challenge; not because you're playing games but because you realize you're worth the extra effort. — Mandy Hale

Latin [...], it was the sign of being able to detach yourself from here and now, abstract your understanding of words, train your memory and live solitary in your head with only books for company. So it was meant to be hard, but I found it wonderfully easy, for just these reasons. I fell in love with Latin. — Lorna Sage

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I' m not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living. — Haruki Murakami

have a good life, but you carry hell with you night and day. Like everyone else, you make yourself pay a thousand times for something you did once, and long ago. You make others pay . . . for your fear, for your knowledge." He hesitated, then gave her a hard look. "Will our love have to pay, in the end? — Miguel Ruiz

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

There's a beautiful forgiveness practice I love which is quite simple. It's called "Ho'oponopono" (pronounced: ho-o-pono-pono) and it's a lot easier to do than it is to say. It's a Kahuna Hawaiian technique, which involves repeating four phrases internally toward yourself or the person whom you're having a hard time forgiving. — Marci Shimoff

I meant it when I said I didn't believe in love at first sight. It takes time to really, truly fall for someone. Yet I believe in a moment. A moment when you glimpse the truth within someone, and they glimpse the truth within you. In that moment, you don't belong to yourself any longer, not completely. Part of you belongs to him; part of him belongs to you. After that, you can't take it back, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try. — Claudia Gray

Love is a lot of things. It's a hard place to fall and a soft place to land. It's give and take, push and pull. Love can bring out the absolute best or worst in us. But, when you find a love worth fightin' for, that's true love. And no matter the struggle or compromise, you can't walk away from that. Now ask yourself, is he worth fightin' for? — K. Langston

Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenceless heart. You don't know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Don't be afraid of who you are. You cannot hope to control your power if you do not understand it and who you are. You must protect yourself at all costs even against those you ... love.' He hesitated lost for a moment and Victoria felt his thoughts flicker briefly into a strange nothingness before moving back to the consciousness she recognized. His words were hard. 'Love is a breeding ground for betrayal. Guard against it. — Amalie Howard

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

If you're not someone who has a natural and effortless love for yourself, it's hard to let go of your desire to please other people, and that's really not an ingredient for a happy life. — Anne Hathaway

I think videos are really hard. I'm yet to be happy with a video. It's very weird watching yourself on camera, which I guess I'm going to have to get used to. I love the thought of being in them, but it's one thing to say that and another to actually do it. — Conrad Sewell

Nature battles against us sometimes, and it can be hard. Our souls seek a soul mate and our bodies seek to procreate. You need to be wise and self controlled and not put yourself in a place where nature might overcome your commonsense. — M.H. Strom

Our failure to forgive others keeps us in bondage. When you fail to take the hard road of learning to love your neighbor, or your enemy, or the one who painfully wronged you, you will find yourself forever stuck in a pit that from time to time overwhelms you. Forgiveness is hard in the short term. But staying stuck in the pit of unforgiveness, while easier in the short term, is death in the long term. — Dan Lacich

It's hard to get on the path to love when you're at war with yourself. — Paul Carrick Brunson

Easy, happily-ever-after kind of love is a myth. Love is more than that. It's a decision to care about someone even when you want to strangle them and to forgive them for not being perfect. Love is hard work. It involves real risk and, sometimes, real loss. But if you don't let yourself believe in the person you love, then you miss out on the good in them and the chance to have a real partner in life. — Ruth Cardello

Finally, remember that we cannot give what we do not have. If we do not love ourselves, we will be hard pressed to love others. If we are not just with ourselves, we will find it very difficult to look for justice with others. In order to become and remain a social justice advocate, you must live a healthy life. Take care of yourself as well as others. Invest in yourself as well as in others. No one can build a house of justice on a foundation of injustice. Love yourself and be just to yourself and do the same with others. As you become a social justice advocate, you will experience joy, inspiration and love in abundant measure. I look forward to standing by your side at some point. — William P. Quigley

Life isn't fair." I said. "It's taken me a while to get that. It's always going to disappoint you in some way or another. You'll make plans, and it'll push you in another direction. You will love people, and they'll be taken away no matter how hard you fight to keep them. You'll try for something and won't get it. You don't have to find meaning in it; you don't have to try to change things. You just have to accept the things that are out of your hands and try to take care of yourself. That's your job. — Alexandra Bracken

A Lutheran church in Nebraska is typically a place where any mad passion for Christ is politely concealed. Men and women recite the various creeds in hypnotic monotone; the hymns, pumped from wheezy organ pipes, are sung with no lilt or musicality. The members of the choirs not only don't dance, they don't sway. That's not to say no one is ever smacked hard with God's love or filled up to the eyeballs with the Holy Spirit, but when you are, you keep it to yourself. (48) — Timothy Schaffert

. In order to love yourself really, tests will be provided by life. All that is for your benefit, no matter how hard it is, no matter what the physical end result is. Physical things come and go, your Soul is part of the eternal. We promise you this. — A. Antares

And everyone saw me. Tobias saw me.
I hear footsteps. Tobias marches toward me and wrenches me to my feet.
"What the hell was that, Stiff?"
"I ... " My breath comes in a hiccup. "I didn't-"
"Get yourself together! This is pathetic."
Something within me snaps. My tears stop. Heat races through my body, driving the weakness out of me, and I smack him so hard my knuckles burn with the impact. He stares at me, one side of his face bright with blush-blood, and I stare back.
"Shut up," I say. I yank my arm from his grasp and walk out of the room. — Veronica Roth

While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school. — Holly Sprink

As far as I can figure, the way that it works is this: everyone has something that happened to them. The thing that we each carry. And you can see it in people, if you look. See it in the way someone walks, in the way someone takes a compliment, sometimes you can just see it in someone's eyes. In one moment of desperation, of fear, in one quick moment you can see that thing that happened. Everyone has it. The thing that keeps you up at night, or makes you not trust people, or stops love. The thing that hurts. And to stop it, to stop the hurt, you have to turn it into a story. And not just a story you play over and over for yourself, but a story that you tell. A story's not a story unless you tell it. And once you tell it, it's not yours anymore. You give it away. And once you give it away, it's not something that hurts you anymore, it's something that helps everyone who hears it. It's the kind of thing that's hard to explain. It's probably best if we just show you how it works. — Daniel MacIvor

Not everybody is going to love what you do, but you have to be yourself, that's what's most important. Bring it as hard as you can. — John Dyer Baizley

When life becomes hard, you will never like what your life is to be in the next day unless you love yourself for real. — Auliq Ice

Admittedly, there's a certain coarseness about [businessmen]; for there's no point in even trying to be [one] unless your love for money is so absolute that you're ready to accompany it on the walk to a double suicide. For money, believe you me, is a hard mistress, and none of her lovers are let off lightly. As a matter of fact, I've just been visiting a businessman and, according to him, the only way to succeed is to practice the "triangled" technique: try to escape your obligations, annihilate your kindly feelings, and geld yourself of the sense of shame. — Soseki Natsume

It's hard to feel desire when you don't feel desirable — Christine Feehan

However mean your life is, meet and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its doors as early in the spring. Cultivate property like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts ... Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. — Henry David Thoreau

Why are you so hard on yourself?
I love you just the way you are,
with your withered coat and wet scarf dangling like a spotless chandelier.
The snow banks in Montreal are high, but I can see your trace, and silent grace and tin cup through the paned window.
The precipitation melts your face, distorting your expression through the aged glass; broken, when I threw ancient stones to get your attention
as a child.
I wanted a friend. The honest kind. — V.S. Atbay

Ever since people are kids they use their parents as some
sort of measurement for how bad a situation is. When you fall on the ground
really hard and you can't figure out whether it hurts or not you look to your
parents. If they look worried and rush toward you, you cry. If they laugh and
smack the ground saying "Bold ground," then you pick yourself up and get
on with it.
When you find out you're pregnant and feel numb of all emotions you
look at their expressions. When both your mum and dad hug you and tell
you it's going to be OK and that they'll support you, you know it's not the
end of the world. But depending on the parents, it could have been pretty
damn close. — Cecelia Ahern

But when you kill someone you love, the hard part is never over. It just gets easier to distract yourself from what you've done. — Veronica Roth

You're right, though - the easy, happily-ever-after kind of love is a myth. Love is more than that. It's a decision to care about someone even when you want to strangle them and to forgive them for not being perfect. Love is hard work. It involves real risk and, sometimes, real loss. But if you don't let yourself believe in the person you love, then you miss out on the good in them and the chance to have a real partner — Ruth Cardello

The hard truth is, the life thing moments happen. They are the details, the surprises, the every now and again "dang it" moments that are necessary for you to be able to appreciate good times and accomplish greater things. — Jaha Knight

This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness - in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us. — Elisabeth Elliot

Friendship! That bond shared, not with the one you see every day but with the one that has got your back any day.
Well, that seems so hard to find these days.
So just be the best friend to yourself until you have found a best friend like yourself. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

There's a chasm between writing about yourself and writing about your personal life. A lot of young writers want to turn their lives into stories, into films, books, because they feel their lives are somehow significant. But really, it's not their personal lives that matter, but their own, hard-fought-for ideas. Not just anybody's ideas, but the ideas that they have paid for with their suffering and their sacrifices and their love of their fellow humans. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Strong is on the inside, a root that keeps you standing whatever might hit you. But hard is only on the outside, this shield you put up to keep all the pain on the inside from showing. The soft inside is still there even when you don't let yourself see it. And the shell keeps you safe, but it also keeps the good things from penetrating; love and trust and joy. — Elizabeth Joy Arnold

Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out? — Ian Wallace

Regardless of what you have been through or where you're going, I hope you're still able to soar to newer heights. I hope you find what you're looking for whether it's in faraway lands or at the base of your feet. I hope you find your joy again and laugh so hard your stomach muscles ache for days. I hope you keep the company of good friends and lovers who are worthy of your radiance. I hope you are finally able to reach that deep inner peace hidden within your bones. Most importantly, I hope you find yourself. And when you do, I hope you find that you were always a miraculous and spectacular being, worthy of the greatest love and the deepest peace. I honor you in hopes that you will one day learn to honor yourself. — Emily Maroutian

In the end, the most important thing is to be true to yourself and those you love and work hard. I mean, work like there's no tomorrow. Train. Strive. I mean, really train and cultivate your talent to the highest degree. Be the best at what you do. Get to know more about your field than anybody alive. Use the tools of your trade, if it's books or a floor to dance on or a body of water to swim in. Whatever it is, it's yours. — Michael Jackson

Love your sport. Never do it to please someone else; it has to be yours. That is all that will justify the hard work. Compete against yourself, not others, for that is who is truly your best competition. — Peggy Fleming

It's about passion, about allowing yourself to be overwhelmed, allowing a love to be feral without needing to domesticate it. Loving something or someone for what or who it is, not what you want it to be. That takes an enormous amount of strength and integrity. Which ties back in with the calling: allowing something to be scary, to be overwhelming; to devote yourself to it even if it requires great changes from you. It's something we have to live up to; it does not arrive neatly wrapped up in an understandable package. That would be easy. And the Lovers is always hard. RECOMMENDED — Jessa Crispin

You must want to change. It sounds simple, but it's obviously not. If things were easy, then something would be wrong. You must make a firm decision that this is what you want. If you want to change, if you want to free yourself from a depressed, mediocre mindset, then you must make a conscious decision to do something about it, and stick to it. If you don't want to change, nothing will help you. Years of endless work will be lost on you unless you internalize your strength and push forward. It is how hard you push in times of difficulty that will prove your strength. — Leigh Hershkovich

Pause and remember - Stop mentally abusing yourself. Stop agonizing over your past mistakes and worrying about the future. Life is hard enough without the added fear, panic and anxiety. Your soul is crying out for love and encouragement. Take a moment to breathe deep, get present and find some compassion for yourself. Then, go out and treat yourself right; pamper yourself and take care of your needs. You are worth it! — Jennifer Young

Quit being so hard on yourself. We are what we are; we love what we love. We don't need to justify it to anyone ... not even to ourselves. — Scott Lynch

In a lot of ways home improvement is like marriage. It's not glamorous. It can take a lot of hard work and effort. There are days it feels like it might be easier to burn the whole thing to the ground and start all over again. Then you remember how much you love the house or your husband and you recommit yourself to what it takes to see the whole thing through. Even when it might involve paintbrushes and compromise and sanding and scraping all the rough edges. And when you look back on a tough patch a few months after the worst has passed, you don't remember all the hard work and the tears. You just have the satisfaction of knowing you've made something beautiful. — Melanie Shankle

How do you make someone love you? For the very young, there can be nothing harder in the world. You may try as hard as you like: place yourself beside them, cook their favourite food, bring them wine or sing the love songs that you know will move them. They will not move them. Nothing will move them. You will waste days interpreting the simple banalities of a phone call; months staring at their soft lips as they talk; you will waste years watching a body sitting in a chair and willing every muscle to take you across the room and do a simple thing, say a simple word, make them love you and you will not do it; you will waste long nights wondering how they cannot feel this - the urge to embrace, the snow melt in the heart when you are near them - how they can sit in that chair, or speak with those lips, or make a call and mean nothing by it, hide nothing in their hearts. Or perhaps what they hide is not what you want to see. Because surely they love someone. It simply isn't you. — Andrew Sean Greer

Reality is hard to see through the adrenaline rush of a new love. It's easy to project your hopes and dreams onto a relationship when it's new and exciting, but the truth is that it is only in knowing who you are at your core and staying true to yourself that you can possibly see the difference between passion and real love. — Jennifer Lopez

But you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost. You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined. — Carson McCullers

For a God whose heart is supposed to be as cold as his realm, you are so warm and kind. You
make it hard to resist, she murmured.
Why should you resist? You know how much you are enjoying yourself.
Much as I hate to admit it, she sighed — M.M. Kin

A stroke will change your life no doubt. But it's not the end. It can be a beginning . Life is different but its far from over..A stroke happens in your head but it doesn't have to dominate your thoughts. You're stronger than that stroke.. Get pissed, work hard at recovery, Have fun , Make a plan to move forward!, Work on a prjoect read a book or anything with in your ability stay safe. Above all don't turn away family and friends they love you.. And love yourself too. It really makes a difference.. I've been thru this.too. God bless! — Robin Arthur Jessup

I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more. ISAIAH 43:25 NOVEMBER 16 Rest in the Lord, wait patiently, have faith in Providence and God's love. In this way, you actually get your life under new management. What happens when a business repeatedly fails to show a profit? Usually it gets new management, doesn't it? A human life that hasn't been going well likewise calls for new management. Does everything go wrong for you? Why? Poor management. Are you nervous and tense and tired? Why? Poor management. Are you resentful and grumpy and bitter, full of hate and miserable as a result? Why? Poor management. You are making life hard for yourself because you don't think right, you don't act right, you don't plan right. Get your life under new management. Do it by opening your mind and heart to Jesus Christ. Take Him into your thinking and living. — Norman Vincent Peale

It's easy to teach, give lesson to other, passing comments, but hard to learn when it comes to yourself. — Nutan Bajracharya

Remorse went out of fashion around the same time that "Stop feeling guilty," and "You're too hard on yourself," and "You need to love yourself more" came into fashion. — Gail Godwin

Write 100 things that you love about your partner. It's another way of keeping yourself in check. It's hard to do. — Chris Pirillo

What Gosta,' he said to himself, 'can you no longer endure? You have been hardened in poverty all of your life; you have heard every tree in the forest, every tuft in the meadows preach to you of sacrifice and patience. You, brought up in a country where the winter is severe, and the summer joy is very short, have you forgotten the art of bearing your trials?
'Oh Gosta, a man must bear all that life gives him with a courageous heart and a smile on his lips, else he is no man. Sorrow as much as you will. If you love your beloved, let your conscience burn and chafe within you, but show yourself a man and a Varmlander. Let your glances beam with joy, and meet your friends with a gay word on your lips! Life and nature are hard. They bring forth courage and joy as a counterweight against their own hardness, or no one could endure them ... — Selma Lagerlof

Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer. — David McCullough Jr.

Sometimes you have to walk out on a limb, knowing you could fall thirty feet to the hard ground, just to see if that apple on the edge is worth the risk like you think it is."
"And what if it's not?"
"Then you get up, dust yourself off, and keep walking til you find the next tree. — Kandi Steiner

I had not known before that love is obedience. You want to love, and you can't, and you hate yourself because you can't, and all the time love is not some marvelous thing that you feel but some hard thing that you do. And this in a way is easier because with God's help you can command your will when you can't command your feelings. With us, feelings seem to be important, but He doesn't appear to agree with us. — Elizabeth Goudge

Stardust is
the hardest thing
to hold out for.
You must make of yourself
a perfect plane-
something still
upon which
something settles-
something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It's hard to explain.
Stardust — Kay Ryan

You know how when you step on court your coach is like "go go go!"? And all throughout you just keep telling yourself to hit harder and harder and keep at it? You know how much you treasure those five-minute timeouts? You know how good you feel at the end of a session? You know how you're glad you're tired? No pills, no shots, just plain energy. I want to work like that. Whether I have to write ten thousand words or send five hundred emails, brainstorm for hours at a time, I want to have that energy. To keep fighting. To know it's all worth it.
Oh, yeah. That's my perfect day. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate? — Nora Ephron

How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Because there's another side to it, you know. When someone is invested in your well-being, like your parents, for example, you become responsible for them in a way. Anything you do to hurt yourself hurts them. I already felt responsible for too many people that way. You're not really free when people care about you; not if you care about them. — Lisa Unger

Practice self-nurturing, not only to get you through hard times but to guide you into a loving relationship with yourself. When you follow through with a simple act like comforting yourself with homemade soup, bringing home a fragrant flower for your night table, or taking a sweet solitary walk in a beautiful place, then you get an experience of being kind to yourself that can answer all those questions about "what do they mean, love myself?" This question is more easily answered by doing than by thinking. — Dossie Easton

I'm going to make it very hard. I love you and I'm tired of being told what I should want and what I should do. You and I got married and I can stomp my foot and scream and rail at you because of the deal you made with my father, but the truth is I wouldn't have married you if I didn't want to". She took a deep breath. "And I don't think anyone. including my father, could have forced you to marry me. So, Mr. Megalos, consider yourself stuck with me. — Leanne Banks

If you're having a hard time being compassionate to or forgiving of yourself or others, you repeat these four phrases directed to yourself or the other person: "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you." And just by saying and feeling those phrases, you will find your heart starts to melt. — Marci Shimoff

Amazing relationships aren't about making one perfect choice in your choice of partner. They're about the infinite amount of choices you make in each conflict, each conversation, and each moment to open yourself and to stay open, even when it's hard. — Vironika Tugaleva

If you hate yourself, you will hate others. If you love yourself, you will love others. If you are hard on yourself, you will be hard on others. If you are compassionate with yourself, you will be compassionate with others. Love, respect, unconditionally accept, and encourage yourself to the greatest of your abilities. Either love who you are and where you are - relishing this moment - or love where you are going and who you will become, delighting in your path. Allow nothing to interfere with your sacred relationship with yourself and strive to maintain an unshakeable sense of self-confidence. — Russell Anthony Gibbs

Loving a person isn't a magical, sparkly passion. It's hard work. It's putting the other person before yourself. It's companionship and being able to trust and depend on each other. That loquacious true love everyone spouts about is really finding a partner who will go through the heartbreaks and joys of life with you. — K.M. Shea

But beauty is about finding the right fit, the most natural fit, To be perfect, you have to feel perfect about yourself
avoid trying to be something you're not. For a goddess, that's especially hard. We can change so easily.
-Aphrodite — Rick Riordan

When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself
that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83) — Geneen Roth

I've always been serious that way, trying to evolve to a more conscious state. Funny thing about that,though. You tweak yourself,looking for more love, less lust, more compassion, less jealousy. You keep tweaking, keep adjusting those knobs until you can no longer find the original settings. In some sense,the original settings are exactly what I'm looking for-a return to the easygoing guy i was before my world got complicated, the nice guy who took things as they came and laughed so hard the blues would blow away in the summer wind. — Bill Withers

I try to tell people to do, or advise them, anyway, is adopt conservative philosophies like hard work, preparation, perseverance, love of God, love of country, personal responsibility. Start to think for yourself and then go out and vote. And I think that once they start to do that, they will know where their vote should go. — David A. Clarke, Jr

We have to learn to love people even if they are not giving you what you want ... and then not take it personally. If you feel hurt, you have to recognize that they are not hurting you because you are you, but because they are them. You have to try not to be so hard on yourself. — Krishna Das

I mean it,' he said. 'I love your nose.'
Love. He'd said it. Though only for her nose ...
Her eyes grew larger, wider behind her eyeglasses. She looked afraid, yet full of hope. She was dying to believe him about something she couldn't see in herself.
'I don't like my nose,' she said.
'You're so hard on yourself. I think your nose is the best nose I've ever met.'
She gave a little snort. 'You see? The best nose. Honestly. You aren't supposed to notice a woman's nose.'
'Why not?'
'It's supposed to blend in, be part of the overall beauty of her well-proportioned face.'
'Yours is part of your overall beauty.'
She made a face at him, complete with tongue stuck out. — Judith Ivory

When I look back, it saddens me to think that I was so hard on myself - when I was younger, I thought I had to look like everyone else, but I learned that beauty comes from how you feel about yourself. Once I started taking care of my mind, body, and soul, I realized that I didn't need to conform to what's "normal" and started to love myself. — Demi Lovato

Yoga is the rule book for playing the game of Life, but in this game no one needs to lose. It is tough, and you need to train hard. It requires the willingness to think for yourself, to observe and correct, and to surmount occasional setbacks. It demands honesty, sustained application, and above all love in your heart. — B.K.S. Iyengar

I know heroes exist because i'm my little brother's hero. It isn't easy, it's not always fun, it's full of hard choices, and sometimes you have to put yourself second to help the people you love. But being a hero is a choice — Chris Colfer

The thing that's hard about it - the thing that makes it so hard when the person you love has been taken from you, not by something evil you could have seen coming but by random, pure chance - is that you find yourself suddenly living through a history other than the one you expected to live, through no fault of your own. I feel . . . it's hard to describe, but I feel weirdly outside of time. Ever since the accident I've had these moments when I felt like a visiting guest in this world, not a permanent resident. Like sometimes I look in a mirror and I feel like I can almost see through the version of me on the other side of the glass. And sometimes I feel like I can see the history I used to be in more clearly than the history I'm in now - the real history is one where Philip and Sean and I are all together, being a family and doing whatever family things people do, and this one's like . . . like a fake version of events that I've been yanked into, where everything's gone wrong. — Dexter Palmer

What's the point of opening yourself up to your friends if they don't notice you in your vulnerable state? The point of it all is to love friends completely and utterly, at their best and worst, and to love more than just the good things. It's about showing that you're willing to accept them for whatever they are, that they should not feel insecure or self-conscious in your presence, which can be a hard task to achieve. — Esther Earl

Everything just feels so empty without her. She was more a parent to me than my birth parents were. She took me in, fed, dressed me, but most importantly, she treated me with respect. She taught me that my abilities were nothing to be ashamed of, nothing I should try so hard to deny. She convinced me that what I had was a gift-not a curse- and that I shouldn't let other people's narrow minds and fears determine how I love, what I do, or how I perceive myself in the world. She actually made me believe that in no way, shape, or form did their uninformed opinions make me a freak. — Alyson Noel

Involve yourself every day. Work hard and figure out how to love acting all day, every day. It's getting into a made-up situation and making it good and making it real and just playing, just practicing and playing. Like the musicians that I played piano with: they never expect to be rich or famous, but they, for the sheer joy of it, play every day, all day. — Jeff Goldblum

If you're looking for love, focus on something you love to do and work hard. Love will find you. Basically, love yourself before you love anyone else. A lot of girls have such insecurities nowadays that you have to be comfortable with who you are before you can really have a good relationship with someone else. — Sasha Pieterse

The Lord wants us to escape this delusive world. He cries for us, for He knows how hard it is for us to gain His deliverance. But you have only to remember that you are His child. Don't pity yourself. You are loved just as much by God as are Krishna and Jesus. You must seek His love, for it encompasses eternal freedom, endless joy, and immortality. — Paramahansa Yogananda

You work so hard to fix yourself, but maybe what you need isn't another tactic, another book, another expert, another five-step plan. Maybe, you don't need to be fixed. Maybe, what's really holding you back is the idea that you need to be fixed. Maybe you just need to let yourself play instead of always making yourself do homework. — Vironika Tugaleva

The Authority has said: Dream! But in truth , they mete out our destinies in tiny rations; they've said how far we can go, how long, and where. Aspirations are useless, because to aspire, is to reach. Dream, they say, but not too big. Laugh, they say, but not too loudly . Love, they say, but not too hard. When you find you cannot contain yourself any longer and you imagine things beyond the walls they've built for you, constructed to imprison your desires, and when your heart is filled with impossible things, then, I say, you have achieved true independence. Our Anarchy is not simply a battle of flesh and blood; it is a war of the mind. The time is always now to declare your freedom! — Logan Keys

Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won't accept. — Anna Taylor

My parents say you're no good, Elijah." I exhaled and killed the cigarette in the grass.
Laughing, Eli's eyes went to my lips and his hands touched my bare midriff. "Really? And what do you say?"
He had brought his lips so close to mine that it became hard to think about my next words when all I wanted to do was crush my mouth to his. I wanted him to completely consume me. "I think you're broken," I finally got out, and Eli arched a brow. "But I think I'm broken too. I just don't know it yet. — Nadege Richards

Nuala shot me a hard look. Shut up. I don't think love has anything to do with how the other person is. I mean, maybe a little. I think what really matters is you yourself. Like, you know, let's say you lo- really liked a self-involved ass. That doesn't matter. What matters is how that ass makes you feel. If you feel like the best person in the world when you're with him, that's what makes you like him. It really isn't about how nice of a person he is at all. — Maggie Stiefvater

You are going to do some really stupid and mean things in the name of love. Don't be so hard on yourself when things don't turn out. You are a good person that loved deeply. Anybody worth having will know that hurting someone is not showing someone who you really are. You're a sensitive person that showed the depth of your love, by the depth of your pain. Fairytale love will show you only one face. Real love will show you as many faces as it takes to get you to see how much that person really wanted you in their life. — Shannon L. Alder

When something flipping out to the worse, don't feel bad. But be strong and make yourself hard so that the situations stop taking chance to hurt you. — Giridhar Alwar

But beauty holds only part of a man, and that for just so long. Keep some of yourself hidden. You can lavish love and praise on him and work hard by his side...But the secret is keeping your innermost beauty, the secrets of your soul, locked in your heart so that he must always reach out to you for it. — Suzanne Fisher Staples

Don't let yourself forget that God's grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don't stop singing. — Hildegard Of Bingen

But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both. I want to share every single one of your sunshines and save them for later. I will tuck them into my pockets so I can give them back to you when the rain falls hard. Friend, I want to be the mirror that reminds you to love yourself. I want to be the air in your lungs that reminds you to breath. When the walls come down, when the thunder rumbles, when nobody else is home, hold my hand, and I promise I won't let go. — Sarah Kay