Sublime

To be happy is to be understood, to be loved, and to have the power to understand and love others.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to

And another thing—don’t avoid negative states. Negative states can teach you a lot. Don’t avoid people who create negative states in you. We have a tendency to turn around and walk away, but they are going to require you to reevaluate yourself and see yourself in a new light.

The odds are very good that’s not going to happen. If your parents could love you the way you want to be loved, it would have happened already. Only you know how you want and need to be loved. Only you can love you the way you want and need to be loved.

much better than

The Greek idea of love turns to a notion to which we desperately need to rehabilitate ourselves: education. For the Greeks, given the scale of our imperfections, part of what it means to deepen love is to want to teach – and to be ready to be taught. Two people should see a relationship as a constant opportunity to improve and be improved.

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable… The purpose of life is to matter—to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that we lived at all.

may

God knows that the key to unlocking the potential in a man is to treat that man with unconditional respect, long before he deserves it.