Thomas Merton Quotes

If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.

Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love towards themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others.

If you can learn to love yourself and all the flaws, you can love other people so much better. And that makes you so happy.

If you can't love yourself, you can't love other people.

If you love yourself, you love others. If you hate yourself, you hate others.

A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.

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.

As you love yourself, so shall you love others. Strange but true, with no exceptions.

When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness, is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.

I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everything in life works.

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should love ourselves as we love our neighbors.

If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.

Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I wish I had reminded myself of that more.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.

If you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody else. And I think as women we really forget that.

Until you are somewhat comfortable and confident and embrace who you are as a person, you can't possibly love somebody else because you don't like yourself that much.

Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me... I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them. Let me extend that generosity to myself.

If you want to love others, I think you should love yourself first.

A lot of people say if you can't love yourself, then you can't love others. It's always different, but I definitely have loved a lot in my life.

The prerequisite to loving others is to love yourself. If you don't have a healthy respect for who you are, and if you don't learn to accept yourself faults and all, you will never be able to properly love other people.

If the Ego is hateful, Love your neighbor as yourself becomes a cruel irony.

If one doesn't respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.

Do right, not to deny yourself but because you love yourself and because you love others.

It seems that for some people the idea of compassion entails a complete disregard for or even a sacrifice of their own interests. This is not the case. In fact, you first of all have to have a wish to be happy yourself - if you don't love yourself like that, how can you love others?