“Why is love beyond all measure of other human possibilities so rich and such a sweet burden for the one who has been struck by it? Because we change ourselves into that which we love, and yet remain ourselves. Then we would like to thank the beloved, but find nothing that would do it adequately. We can only be thankful to ourselves. Love transforms gratitude into faithfulness to ourselves and into an unconditional faith in the Other. Thus love steadily expands its most intimate secret. Closeness here is existence in the greatest distance from the other- the distance that allows nothing to dissolve - but rather presents the “thou” in the transparent, but “incomprehensible” revelation of the “just there”. That the presence of the other breaks into our own life - this is what no feeling can fully encompass. Human fate gives itself to human fate, and it is the task of pure love to keep this self-surrender as vital as on the first day.”

“Loving others is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. Altruism that rewards one's self.”

“Our heart is actually already open, but it is our judgments about others and ourselves that keep it closed. When we stop judging others and ourselves, our heart begins to open. The way to healing is to learn to love and accept ourselves unconditionally. It means to embrace both our positive and negative sides with love. It means to love everything that we find inside ourselves. Healing happens when we bring everything that we find inside ourselves out into the light.”

“Our faith in others betrays that we would rather have faith in ourselves.”

“Sanity, as the project of keeping ourselves recognizably human, therefore has to limit the range of human experience. To keep faith with recognition we have to stay recognizable. Sanity, in other words, becomes a pressing preoccupation as soon as we recognize the importance of recognition. When we define ourselves by what we can recognize, by what we can comprehend- rather than, say, by what we can describe- we are continually under threat from what we are unwilling and/or unable to see. We are tyrannized by our blind spots, and by whatever it is about ourselves that we find unacceptable.”

“For anyone who feels lost in their own way, going back to who you are and what you love or moving forward to whoever you are meant to be or meant to love, is the purpose of being lost. We lose ourselves, so we can find out who we truly are. And when by fate we do, we discover the best version of ourselves.”