Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.
Interpretation
Selfish individuals lack the capacity to truly love others, as well as themselves.
This quote by Erich Fromm highlights the idea that selfishness is a barrier to both self-love and the ability to love others. When individuals are consumed by their own desires and needs, they are unable to form genuine connections with others or even appreciate themselves, indicating that true love requires selflessness and openness to others.
In practice
During a workshop on relationships, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of giving and receiving love.
Love, experienced thus, is a constant challenge; it is not a resting place, but a moving, growing, working together; even whether there is harmony or conflict; joy or sadness, is secondary to the fundamental fact that two people experience themselves from the essence of their existence, that they are only one with each other by being one with themselves, rather than by fleeing from themselves.
Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you.
To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern β and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values.
In times of change, learners inherit the earth
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair that ever since in love's embraces met -- Adam, the goodliest man of men since born his sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Faith makes all things possible... love makes all things easy.
Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.
I always wished that I could find someone as beautiful as you, but in the process I forgot that I was special too.
The golden hours on angel wings_x000D_ _x000D_ Flew o'er me and my dearie,_x000D_ _x000D_ For dear to me as light and life_x000D_ _x000D_ Was my sweet Highland Mary.
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