When someone says, 'I love you,' he is telling you about himself, not you. When someone says, 'I hate you,' she is telling you about herself, not you. World views are self views-literally.
Finally he closed the distance between us and kissed me - a sweet, gentle kiss that held within it every single one of the thousand days I'd loved him as my everything, long after I'd begun to love him as a friend.
I devote myself to what I love the most, and for this very reason I hesitate to designate it with lofty words: I do not want to risk believing that it is a sublime compulsion, a law, which I obey: I love what I love the most too much to wish to appear to it as one compelled.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
You know how cunningly mankind is planned:
We have one loving and one hating hand.
The loving's made to hold each other like,
While with the hating other hand we strike.
The deeper you love yourself, the more the universe will affirm your worth. Then you can enjoy a lifelong love affair that brings you the richest fulfillment from inside out.
You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to help him organize it."
That strain again! It had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet as it was before.