Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.

Self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties.

I think the most difficult love begins with one's self. How you treat yourself is something you bring to your relationships.

Self-love is a busy prompter.

Conditional love is love that is turned off and on....Some parents only show their love after a child has done something that pleases them. "I love you, honey, for cleaning your room!" Children who think they need to earn love become people pleasers, or perfectionists. Those who are raised on conditional love never really feel loved.

You can only experience love if you have self love.

Love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty.

The path to solid, supportive, healthy relationships, self-respect, and a quality life starts with the usually painful decision to do the Right Thing.

Real love makes you more of an individual. It does not efface your individuality, it gives you individuality. Real love is very respectful.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given -- it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason.

Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.

Self-love is the love of a man's own self, and of everything else for his own sake. It makes people idolaters to themselves, and tyrants to all the world besides.

Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving

Fortunately, however, we no longer have to argue that self -love is not only necessary and good but that it also is a prerequisite for loving others.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

Self-love is an idolatry. Self-hatred is a tragedy.

Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not success ? for what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own self-respect.

Self-love is the starting point for everything.

A certain type of man, when he loves for the first time, his love is not really love, it is possession. Possessions don't have rights or feelings; they are something to owned and controlled. He had spent more than a year trying to do just that, and failing.

Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.

Self-approval is a dangerous state of mind.

If you cannot get along with yourself, you'll never be able to get along with other people.

I speak of honor-your honor to God-your honor to country-your honor to self. I sincerely believe it to be the cure to most of our ills, both on a national or individual basis.