The Art of Loving

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love.

Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.

Whoever is capable of giving of himself is rich.

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering.

there is no good and evil unless there is freedom to disobey

Having faith” in another person means to be certain of the reliability and unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of the core of his personality,

love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go

thought has been beautifully expressed by Marx: “Assume,” he says, “man as man, and his relation to the world as a human one, and you can exchange love only for love, confidence for confidence, etc. If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically trained person; if you wish to have influence on other people, you must be a person who has a really stimulating and furthering influence on other people. Every one of your relationships to man and to nature must be a definite expression of your real, individual life corresponding to the object of your will. If you love without calling forth love, that is, if your love as such does not produce love, if by means of an expression of life as a loving person you do not make of yourself a loved person, then your love is impotent, a misfortune.”

they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.

If I love the other person, I feel one with him or h