“Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

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Rainer Maria Rilke176

Austrian poet and writer 1875–1926

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

"The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Source: Existentialists and Mystics Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“Identification [with the other] is difficult but precious. It involves doing violence to yourself. Yet Scripture says that "heaven is taken by violence" to oneself [Luke 16:16]. To identify oneself with the other is to love him beyond words, a total giving of oneself in truth.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"Living the Mandate", p. 36
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it's difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“It is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people… Think of things in themselves.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

“Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

The Spirit of Saint Francis de Sales, ch. 7, sct. 3 (1952) <br class="br">Quoted by Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus in L'esprit de Saint François de Sales, Part 3, ch. 5 http://books.google.com/books?id=XdDvTZWjR_sC&q=%22Ceux-l%C3%A0%22+%22qui+aiment+%C3%A0+se+faire+craindre+craignent+de+se+faire+aimer+et+eux-m%C3%AAmes+craignent+plus+que+tous+les+autres+car+les+autres+ne+craignent+qu'eux+mais+eux+craignent+tous+les+autres%22&pg=PA194#v=onepage (1650)

“The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

“Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

“Should or can there be a single standard of behavior for both sexes? Is there such a thing as a biologically rooted female culture that should remain separate from male culture, partly because it is different than or superior to male culture?

Women must convert their love for and reliance on strength and skill in others to a love for all manner of strength and skill in themselves.”

Phyllis Chesler (1940) Psychotherapist, college professor, and author

Women and Madness (2005), p. 346, and see Women and Madness (1972), p. 298 (similar text).
Women and Madness (1972, 2005)

“Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.”

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