The Art of Loving

just as it is important to avoid trivial conversation, it is important to avoid bad company. By bad company I do not refer only to people who are vicious and destructive; one should avoid their company because their orbit is poisonous and depressing. I mean also the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive; of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliche opinions instead of thinking.

The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love—is the source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety.

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling—it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.

Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.
Paracelsus

The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life.

If I am like every- body else, if I have no feelings or thoughts which make me different, if I conform in custom, dress, ideas, to the pattern | of the group, I am saved; saved from the frightening experience of aloneness. The dictatorial systems use threats and terror to induce this conformity; the democratic countries, suggestion and propaganda

If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself."

Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness.

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.

These men still feel like children; they want mother's protection, love, warmth, care, and admiration; they want mother's unconditional love, a love which is given for no other reason than that they need it, that they are mother's child, that they are helpless