"If I can say, “I love you,” I say, “I love in you all of humanity, all that is alive; I love in you also myself.” Self-love, in this sense, is the opposite of selfishness. The latter is actually a greedy concern with oneself which springs from and compensates for the lack of genuine love for oneself. Love, paradoxically, makes me more independent because it makes me stronger and happier — yet it makes me one with the loved person to the extent that individuality seems to be extinguished for the moment. In loving I experience “I am you,” you — the loved person, you — the stranger, you — everything alive. In the experience of love lies the only answer to being human, lies sanity."-Erich Fromm, The Sane Society.
Tag: books
Deborah Bräutigam : Will Africa Feed China?
In Will Africa Feed China? Deborah Bräutigam, one of the world’s leading experts on China and Africa, probes the myths and realities behind the media headlines. I have already watched a few talks by Deborah […]
Alain de Botton: Art as Therapy
“Art as Therapy: Alain de Botton on the 7 Psychological Functions of Art” by Maria Popova.
- Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers, Important Things To Remember."Who you are inside is what helps you make and do everything in life."
"Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but it's worth the effort."- Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers, Important Things To Remember.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Side of Paradise.“I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt, We Learn By Living."One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. But this, at least, I believe with all my heart: In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."
“Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees…
“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But […]
- Viktor Frankl, The Feeling of Meaninglessness."It is the very problem of our time that people are caught by a pervasive feeling of meaninglessness, which is the most conspicuous symptom of the collective neurosis of our time. It is accompanied by a feeling of emptiness. The "existential vacuum" has increased and spread literally all over the world. Our industrialised society is out to satisfy all needs, and our consumer society is even out to create needs in order to satisfy them; but the most human of all human needs - the need to see a meaning in one's life - remains unsatisfied. People may have enough to live by; but more often than not they do not have anything to live for."
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
