Erich Fromm Quotes

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

When you acknowledge the integrity of your solitude, and settle into its mystery, your relationships with others take on a new warmth, adventure and wonder.

I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.

Your absence has not taught me how to be alone, it merely has shown that when together we cast a single shadow on the wall

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ, and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.

Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you.

One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.

Being by myself, that is to say, without a man - it's been a long time - is allowing me to know what it feels like - to live in my own skin, to remember what I miss and don't miss about a relationship.

Solitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.

I am then never less alone than when alone

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

All my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.

The ability to reflect is associated with critical thinking and reasoning ability. And the capacity to be alone is one of the highest levels of development. It's important to know how to self-soothe and be confident of other people's love even when they're not there in front of you.

I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person.

Some of the reason why we marry the wrong people is that we don't really understand ourselves.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

Sometimes, we only get to know someone as one aspect of who they are. Then you start peeling back the layers and understanding more and more about who they are - their vulnerabilities, their fears, their joys, all those other words that equal humanity.

Relationships are very good at making you more conscious of yourself. Especially as you get older, you develop a crust around your madnesses and shortcomings that take someone else to recognize them.

Love comes in all different shapes and forms - from friendship and sisters and mums - and as I've got older, I've definitely learned that some of my happiest times have been when I've been on my own.