“In the subconscious fantasies that make conception look so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own.”

Variant: When you see a man of worth, think of how you may emulate him. When you see one who is unworthy, examine yourself.

Ibid., p. 125
Original: Nunca amamos niguém. Amamos, tão-somente, a ideia que fazemos de alguém. É a um conceito nosso — em suma, é a nós mesmos — que amamos.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Source: Cork

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)

Source: Where We Belong

Source: Change of Heart

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 5 : The Delphic Oracle as Therapist, p. 99
Context: The self is made up, on its growing edge, of the models, forms, metaphors, myths, and all other kinds of psychic content which give it direction in its self-creation. This is a process that goes on continuously. As Kierkegaard well said, the self is only that which it is in the process of becoming. Despite the obvious determinism in human life — especially in the physical aspect of ones self in such simple things as color of eyes, height relative length of life, and so on — there is also, clearly, this element of self-directing, self-forming. Thinking and self-creating are inseparable. When we become aware of all the fantasies in which we see ourselves in the future, pilot ourselves this way or that, this becomes obvious.