“Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one's uniqueness, one falls in love with one's complexity.”

— John Fowles , book Daniel Martin

Source: Daniel Martin (1977), Ch. 2, Games

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Narcissism: when one grows too old to believe in one's uniqueness, one falls in love with one's complexity." by John Fowles?

John Fowles 120

British writer 1926–2005

Related quotes

“One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

LOVE (1972)

“…… When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: CliffsNotes on Dumas's The Three Musketeers

“I grow dauntless as I grow old, I believe any one that plods on in any one way, especially if that one way will bring him bread & cheese, will grow the same.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in: Undated letters to Jackson, in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
undated, Undated letters to William Jackson

“One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.”

Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose

Lenz (1835).

“To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Variant: I would prove to the men how mistaken they are in thinking that they no longer
fall in love when they grow old--not knowing that they grow old when they stop
falling in love.

“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.