Quotes & Sayings About Loving Myself And Life

My smile faded as we reached Ellsberg and I realized I would see Farah within minutes. Suddenly, I was terrified.
"We've been apart for a month," I said after Judd called Cooper to say we were nearly there. "While Farah made a great life for herself, I was letting myself starve to death in a shit motel. I'll ruin everything for her and she'll stop loving me."
"Angel, your sister needs you too."
"No, she doesn't," I said, panicking now. "She's got Cooper. She's got school and friends. I'm not good at anything. I'll mess everything up."
"Farah sees what I do and that's why she needs you. — Bijou Hunter

There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety than myself. For it is my desire to live nor reign no longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving. — Elizabeth I

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life ... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion
joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things. — Barbara Kingsolver

Believe in God the Father, Almighty, Creator, infinitely holy and loving, who has a plan for the world, a plan for my life, and some daily work for me to do. I believe in Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, as Example, Lord, and Saviour. I believe in the Holy Spirit who is able to guide my life so that I may know God's will; and I am prepared to allow him to guide and control my life. I believe in God's law that I should love the Lord my God with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind, and with all my strength; and my neighbour as myself. I believe it is God's will that the whole world should be without any barriers of race, colour, class, or anything else that breaks the spirit of fellowship. To believe means to believe with the mind and heart, to accept, and to act accordingly on that basis. — Eric Liddell

Soon after they went back, Jules said to Jim: 'I love Magda. But it's a habit; it's not a great Love, not the real thing. To me, she's like a young mother and an attentive daughter, both at once.' 'But that's fine!' 'It's not the love I've always dreamed of having.' 'Does that kind of love exist?' said Jim. 'Of course! My love for Lucie.' Jim checked himself from saying, 'Because you do not possess her.' 'Besides,' Jules went on, 'knowing myself as I do, I shall never be able to forgive any woman for loving me. To love me is a sign of perversion or compromise -- and Lucie doesn't suffer from either. There's not a particle of me that she accepts.' 'With her, any man could think that.' 'Yes, could...' said Jules 'But I do.' 'Oh well,' said Jim, 'it's heroic and one can't help respecting it. It's a bit like martyrdom. And it's the key to your Life. If Lucie loved you...' 'She wouldn't be Lucie.' said Jules. — Henri-Pierre Roche

How can she stand up there so tall as she's telling us how her mother beat her and her father molested her when she was a little girl? How is it possible for her to look so proud? How is she not being consumed by shame? She should be disintegrating before our eyes. She should be struck by lightning, and God's big, angry, booming voice should be shaking the room with "How dare you? I told you never to tell." But that's not her God, she says. Her God is loving and kind and wants what's best for her. Her God loves peace and serenity and forgiveness. Her God doesn't make her keep secrets. I thought I knew God all my life, but maybe it was some other guy the whole time. I want this God. I want Val's God. I want a God who doesn't make me jump through hoops and hate myself to earn his love. — Amy Reed

I change the world by changing myself. I am changing the world by loving myself, by enjoying life, by making my personal world a dream of heaven. I change myself, and just like magic, other people start to change. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Loving myself and thinking joyful, happy thoughts is the quickest way to create a wonderful life. — Louise Hay

I'm not putting myself up as the epitome of virtue. I certainly am living a non-traditional life. But it is also a loving life and a very supportive one. I think that both in this, and the previous relationship, I think that I've been doing the best I can. — Hugh Hefner

POPPY: 25 December 2016

POPPY (standing up to Paul): You see family life as respecting boundaries and saying what makes people happy and treating everyone like they're treasured but only in a sanitized way.

I see family life as invading everyone's privacy and saying whatever I feel and treating everyone as they're treasured because they're my family and thus special as compared to the rest of the world.

I see a good family as loud and frantic and intrusive...He fits me, and I don't want to change. Not for you or anyone. I'm deeply in love with myself, and Emmett respects that...

"I'm not her (Christine). I don't have a dream to fix animal boo-boos. Loving Emmett and living close to my family are the only dreams I see as worth having. — Bijou Hunter

Perhaps I had never had a grip on myself to start with, living life on cruise-control while I waited for a home that would never be mine. It would be warm. Loving. Wonderfully chaotic, occasionally tempestuous, but full of good intentions and laughter. It would be all of the great things embodied by your run-of-the-mill greeting card, and it was still the last thing that I thought of each night as I let myself believe for a moment or two that such things were possible. — Alice Yi-Li Yeh

I have felt alone all my life. I was always too smart, or working too hard, or too full of doubt to fit in with everyone else. But when I'm with you, I never feel alone, Will. Never. I feel seen, and I feel listened to, and I feel important and cared for. When I first met you, I told myself I had to be insane to think that someone like you would be interested in someone like me. But it didn't stop me from falling in love with you, because loving you is as easy and as natural as breathing for me. This may shock you, but my love doesn't come with conditions or requirements. It absolutely doesn't require physical exam, that is for sure. It just is, Will. And it's unstoppable, because, believe me, I've tried to stop it. So I guess what I'm trying to say in my usual inarticulate, rambly, too-wordy way, is that I'm not going anywhere. No matter what. — Sarah Mayberry

Oh, but once my memories had pulsed with the blood-heat of life. In desperation, I forced myself to recall that once, I had walked with kings and conversed in languages never heard in this land. Once I had stood at the prow of a Sea Wolf ship and sailed oceans unknown to seamen here. I had ridden horses through desert lands, and dined on exotic foods in Arab tents. I had roamed Constantinople's fabled streets, and bowed before the Holy Roman Emperor's throne. I had been a slave, a spy, a sailor. Advisor and confidant of lords, I had served Arabs, Byzantines, and barbarians. I had worn captive's rags, and the silken robes of a Sarazen prince. Once I had held a jeweled knife and taken a life with my own hand. Yes, and once I had held a loving woman in my arms and kissed her warm and willing lips ... Death would have been far, far better than the gnawing, aching emptiness that was now my life. — Stephen R. Lawhead

To restore you and myself, I return to my state of garden and shade, cool reality, I hardly exist and if I do exist it's with delicate care. Surrounding the shade is a teeming, sweaty heat. I'm alive. But I feel I've not yet reached my limits, bordering on what? Without limits, the adventure of a dangerous freedom. But I take the risk, I live taking it. I'm full of acacias swaying yellow, and I, who have barely begun my journey, begin it with a sense of tragedy, guessed what lost ocean my life steps will take me to. And crazily I latch onto the corners of myself, my hallucinations suffocate me with their beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all this I gained when I stopped loving you. — Clarice Lispector

I'm trying to learn that in my Christian walk as well. If I'll move to the beat of the Spirit and relinquish control of my life to Him, I'll be able to dance to the music God has playing in His head rather than movin' and agroovin' to the catchy little tunes I've got going in my own. For when I allow the Lord to provide the accompaniment to my life, I discover a richly layered soundtrack more beautiful than anything I could compose myself. But following God's beat, dancing to His rhythm, trusting in His sovereignty - all that can be hard for a rhythmically challenged, control-loving person like me. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm a headstrong little girl who wants her own way in pretty much every area of life. Fortunately, I have a Father who loves me in spite of that. But while He loves me as I am, He also loves me too much to leave me that way. So He insists I follow His lead in order to "grow up" in my salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Becoming more like Jesus and less like me. — Joanna Weaver

I saw my name: THOMAS, Petria. Saw my time, 57.72. Saw the number one next to them. I'd done it. Me! Petria Thomas, Olympic champion. The feeling inside was one of pure, utter joy. Excitement, disbelief, relief, hapiness, amazement, the whole works. Id worked so hard. I'd gone through so much, privately, publicly. I'd lost faith in myself and found it again. I'd sometimes stopped believing that I could do it and that I had a purpose in life. I'd come through the darkness, and this, this moment, was the sweetest, most amazing light there could possibly be. I was alive and loving it! — Petria Thomas

Please don't hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving
you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have
otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy.
Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and
hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me
deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you're always going to haunt me. — Daria Snadowsky

I was receiving at least ninety-nine incredible, positive, and life-changing responses for every negative or abusive one, yet I couldn't stop looking at the one percent. I couldn't get them out of my mind. I let them kill my excitement. I let them destroy my love for what I was doing. I let them shut me down. I let them bully me into changing the way I did things around here.
I almost stopped. I almost gave up. I almost quit writing.
But every time, I remembered my dad.
He taught me better than that.
And I forced myself to be excited again. I forced myself to see the goal and vision of why I was excited in the first place. I forced myself to start skipping over the negative replies and start diving into the loving ones. — Dan Pearce

I love animals; I've always loved animals. It's how I identified myself for so long, but I didn't know that in so many ways, I was living my life not in alignment with that. And once I learned about those ways I could be loving animals better, I made those changes, which made me happier and had me living a life that had me contributing. — Rory Freedman

When I find myself filling with rage over the loss of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns and questions should be focused on what I learned or what I have yet to learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life?

Did I learn to be kinder,
To be more patient,
And more generous,
More loving,
More ready to laugh,
And more easy to accept honest tears?
If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds, I am able to say, Thank You to them for their love and Thank You to God for their lives. — Maya Angelou

I loved reading the Dalai Lama's words: "My religion is loving-kindness." I realized that meant loving-kindness to everyone in my life: past, present, and future; and that meant loving-kindness to myself
in my pain, in my jealousy, in my fear. — Elizabeth Kim

The biggest obstacle I've had to overcome is loving myself 100%. And that's still a battle. I love myself, but sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. And I think I've been my worst enemy in life, because others haven't been able to do anything to me unless I allowed them to do it. — Mike Epps

Before label yourself and before you decide that there is something irreparably wrong with your thoughts or emotions, ask yourself: "Do I have a caring, unconditionally loving best friend in myself?" If the answer is "No," then you will not find the solution to your suffering until you address this serious, life-threatening absence of self-compassion. Self-love is not a dinner mint. Self-love matters. Self-love saves lives. — Vironika Tugaleva

Once I figured out what I was going to do with my life, I was definitely going to get a dog. Maybe I'd get a rescue. I liked the idea of an older dog that was already broken in and just needed a loving home. The irony was, that wasn't too different from how I was feeling about myself. — Dorothea Benton Frank

I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner ... I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life
namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. — C.S. Lewis

You happened to me,You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I'm finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you've ... rested me.And don't you dare tell me you've stopped loving me back, because you're still a better person than I am, and I'm counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

From the pool of awakenings which includes creativity, strength, generosity, loving-kindness and transformation, I selected seven awakenings to immerse myself in each day: consciousness, compassion, forgiveness, expansion, abundance, healing, and balance. I believe that if we can live a life toward mastery of any seven principles in the pool of awakenings, then our lives will flourish and those we hold dear in our lives will experience greater fulfillment. Which seven do you choose? — Davidji

It's not all it's cracked up to be, having real emotions. I know that with the most dazzling men there have been times I've been terribly bored and I am sure they've been equally bored with me. Then much of life is indeed boring, and that's nobody's fault ... Myself, I've been in the very arms of a beloved and felt nothing, when the only choice was whether to admit I felt nothing or to lie. The hardest thing about loving someone is those moments when you're not. And there are inevitablty such moments; the amount of trust required to get past them is stupendous. — Lionel Shriver

Dear God:
I surrender myself to you. All that I am right now and all I'll ever be I leave in your hands. I understand my life will not be perfect, there's things I must learn along the way. I'm asking for you to continue to remind me that you are the one in control. It's because I'm not perfect I'll need these reminders. Please allow me to create joy in my life through your loving hands. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. — Ron Baratono

Dear God, please help me to love and value myself, and treat myself with loving care. Please help me to know that I deserve happiness (as we all do), and that I have the right to change my life in healthful ways. Thank you for supporting me as I stand in my power, strength, and love in my relationships and in my career, and for helping others to accept and support the changes that I need to make. — Doreen Virtue

I am freeing myself from security, sensation and power addictions that make me try to forcefully control situations in my life and thus destroy my serenity and keeps me from loving myself and others. — Ken Keyes Jr.

It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority ... I worked probably 25 years by myself ... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public. — Mary Oliver

You didn't want to put in the work to make us happen.
It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go.
I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done - poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn't do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone.
Nathan Qells — Mary Calmes

I'm a father myself for the first time in my life, and I had very very loving parents. — David Keith

These are things I can't change. Not one of them. Can't fix, can't heal, can't put the broken pieces back together. But what I can do is offer myself, wholehearted and present, to walk with the people I love through the fear and the mess. That's all any of us can do. That's what we're here for. Not the battle lines, keeping people in and out. Not the "pro" and "anti" stances, but the presence, the listening, the praying with and for on the days when it all falls apart, when life shatters in our hands. — Shauna Niequist

And yet there are other days, when I'm downtrodden or morose, when I find myself at my desk late at night, unable to sleep, flipping through (of all things) Oscar's dog-eared copy of Watchmen. One of the few things that he took with him on the Final Voyage that we recovered. The original trade. I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: "A Stronger Loving World." To the only panel he's circled. Oscar - who never defaced a book in his life - circled one panel three times in the same emphatic pen he used to write his last letters home. The panel where Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan are having their last convo. After the mutant brain has destroyed New York City; after Dr. Manhattan has murdered Rorschach; after Veidt's plan has succeded in "saving the world." Veidt says: "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end." And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: "In — Junot Diaz

The Wedding Ring

Although the lamp was out, above its darkness
I saw the bright reflection of a flame.
My soul is bare, stripped to the purest bareness;
It has escaped, transcended all its bounds.

A man, I held desire my dearest treasure.
but I give it, myself, my sacred pain,
my prayers, my ecstasies - all these, O Father,
I give with love to You, most loving one.

And so the hour of limitless surrender
enclosed me in a cloak of flames like wings;
empowered me with the power of Your commandment,
and clothed me in Your holy veil of fire.

So let me stretch my hand out to my brother;
I look in the Face of You, the Fount of Life,
and in the radiance of transfigured torture
I bear my cross, light as a wedding ring. — Zinaida Gippius

Beautiful

I am beautiful inside and out
I am beautiful without a doubt
So I'll stop listening to the voices in my head
The ones telling me I'm better off dead
I am smart and will make it far
I will be someone I will be a star
I will make it just to prove you wrong
I will let my life go on
I will not dwell on what you said
I will forget what you did
I am thin I am not fat
I will no longer tell myself that
I am kind and loving to those who need it the most
I will see you simply as only a ghost
I am courageous I will let nothing get in my way
I am all these wonderful things each and every day — Various

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn't change so much anymore. It doesn't change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven't been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I'm human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It's my shadow I see watching me. It's my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on. — F.K. Preston

Imagine if you took it on in yourself to reorient your life trajectory toward your divinity. Your divinity: I so loved the world, that I gave it all of myself. Imagine your birth as an act of pouring yourself forth into life as a loving means of redemption. Imagine your human life as what you have come to redeem. And when you've fully awakened to all of it, then you've fully redeemed your human incarnation. — Adyashanti

What became clear as I sat on my plastic chair and drank my instant coffee was that I had somehow found myself on the other side. I had crossed a bridge. Their struggle was no longer my struggle. It wasn't that I would ever stop grieving for Will, or loving him, or missing him, but that my life seemed to have somehow landed back in the present. — Jojo Moyes

I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming.
I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright. I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. But if left with just the experience we've shared, I know my life was better because of it. — Emma Forrest

And if I'd be left alone in the woods again, I smiled to think how I'd find new gifts and thrive. At the end of a long trail and the beginning of the rest of my life, I was committed to always loving myself. I would put myself in that win-win situation. — Aspen Matis

I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life. — Rob Sheffield

Love is powerful. It leaves a mark. And I can only speak for myself, but finding you, knowing you, loving you - it's marked me for life. — Maggie Bloom

I wanted to be in my daughter's life, and I decided I didn't want to do music anymore because I was compromising myself too much and I wasn't loving what I was doing. — Tweet

I'm living the life I love, I tell myself, and loving the life I live. I tell myself: I deserved this. This is exactly what I wanted. — Chuck Palahniuk

I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven, for loving her, for needing her more than my own life, for belonging to her more than my own soul."

"If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day."

"...he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

"If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave."
"Be with me always. Take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you."
~ Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte

In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again ... We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night. — Mary Cantwell

In some mysterious way, in all his brokenness, he reveals to us our own brokenness, our difficulties in loving, our barriers and hardness of heart. If he is so broken and so hurt and yet is still such a source of life, then I, too, am allowed to look at my own brokenness and to trust that I, too, can give life to others. I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions. It's okay to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness. That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience. I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too. And I can trust that I am loved just as I am, and that I, too, can love and grow. — Rick Santorum

Because just before I arrived, he showed up on the bus. He, meaning Damien.
He reminded me of the pain I'd felt when he died. He reminded me of what it's like to feel your heart explode in your chest cavity at the realization of living your life without the only person you've ever loved. And he reminded me of the promise I'd made to him months ago. I told him that I'd love him forever.
That I'd never let go.
But part of me wants to let go.
Deep down inside I know that I can't go on loving a ghost forever. I tell myself this every day. Then I see him and I forget about having those thoughts. Because when I do see him, he looks like the Damien I met on that humid summer day, who was smirking at me, and driving his candy apple red Cadillac in reverse. When I see him he looks so vivid.
So full of life.
Not so ... so ...
So dead. — Lauren Hammond

Dear little house that I have lived in, there is happiness you have seen, even before I was born. In you is my life, and all the people I have loved are a part of you, so to go out of you, and leave you, is to leave myself. — Richard Llewellyn

It takes a really long time to realize this, but if you're lucky you eventually see that you've got this life on this planet and you're responsible for really loving yourself. And I mean really, really, really loving yourself. Love is never a corruption. I'm talking about loving yourself with a true love, a love that's incorruptible and everlasting. — C. JoyBell C.

Kids are tough sometimes. There are moments when I'm so frustrated and don't feel like we understand each other. When I hit a moment like this and words of aggravation are on the tip of my tongue, this is what I say to myself:
You have been given the unbelievable honor of taking care of and loving the next generation of people. Your work with them is hands down the most important work you'll ever do. Think about how many people these children will come in contact with in their life time. The messages and love you give them or don't give them will be your voice in the future. Think about that when you're aggravated or tired. Every word you speak over them matters. Your voice and the unspoken energy you're sending them are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Speak to them as if they are Kings and Queens and you are on stage in front of thousands of people -because that's how they deserve to be treated.
Give them the best of you. — Brooke Hampton

There's plenty about my life I can't change. Can't bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can't make the world loving and kind. Can't change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot -- I can change that. Can change it big. Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day. — Paul Fleischman

It has made me better loving you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it's a delightful story. — Henry James

For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, "Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions." But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. — Jean-Paul Sartre

In time, the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I'd write you another letter. But I never sent them for fear of what I might find. By then, you'd gone on with your life and I didn't want to think about you loving someone else. I wanted to remember us like we were that summer. I didn't ever want to lose that. — Nicholas Sparks

Personally, I think it is better for me to love myself and enjoy being me, than to please someone else by pretending to be someone I'm not. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

In the end, Astrid couldn't do anything about my . . . turning into light, but she made a prediction. She said the sun would help me and I would be cured thanks to its efforts.'
'The sun?'
'Yes. It was the symbol I drew from among the runes. Astrid says it represents . . .'
'What?' he said, looking at me curiously, and I could see that he really wanted to hear the answer.
I became embarrassed.
'It's not important . . .' I muttered.
'Please tell me!' He turned fully towards me and I could feel myself blushing pink.
'The . . . man in my life.'
I was done for. My heart was beating heavily but Elijah, for the first time since I had awoken, smiled. I was incredibly ashamed of myself, so I made to go back to the house, but the Dark Angel grabbed my wrist. — A.O. Esther

I grew up on welfare in the South Bronx; I had a very tough upbringing in that neighborhood. Reading books like The Four Agreements, A Return to Love, and The Power of Now helped me to overcome many internal battles. Had I not worked on myself, put value in myself, I would not have the loving and supportive people that I have right now in my life, including my husband and children — Andrea Navedo

Love is everywhere, and I am loving and lovable, and to hold on to that new affirmation and to repeat it often, then it will become true for me. Now, loving people will come into my life, the people already in my life will become more loving to me, and I will find myself easily expressing love to others. — Louise L. Hay

Affirm my life every morning and let myself have a good day, free myself each night to dream the necessary dreams, find pleasure in serving those I love, give up guilt at refusing to when they demand my self-annihilation, find joy in teaching, joy in talking to loving readers ... , give my self time every day to walk or go to a museum, be generous because it reminds me how much abundance I have been given, be loving because it reminds me not to feel jealous of those who only seem to have more, seize my life, release my anger, bless the known and the unknown world ...
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live for ever.
I no longer do. — Erica Jong

I began by asking myself, "What do I want out of life?" And the answer was happiness. Investigating further, I went into the moment when I was feeling happiest. I discovered something which to me was startling at the time. It was when I was loving that I was happiest. That happiness equated to my capacity to love rather than to being loved. That was a starting point. — Lester Levenson

I want to tell you about a woman I have been married to for ten years, my wife, Ann, who speaking truthfully, saved me from myself. Who saved me from destroying myself because of my background. Who saved me from wasting my life, drinking my life away, never fulfilling my dreams because of what I had come from, and truly believing and loving - truly the first person to ever truthfully, unconditionally love me. — George Lopez