“The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation.”

Source: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built i…" by Bruce D. Perry?
Bruce D. Perry photo
Bruce D. Perry 3
American psychiatrist 1955

Related quotes

Jane Roberts photo

“You cannot love someone you do not know -- not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979), p. 105

Meher Baba photo

“Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

44 : God Alone Is, p. 72.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)
Context: Before he can know Who he is, man has to unlearn the mass of illusory knowledge hehas burdened himself with on the interminable journey from unconsciousness to consciousness. It is only through love that you can begin to unlearn, and, eventually, put an end to all that you do not know. God-love penetrates all illusion, while no amount of illusion can dim God-love. Start by learning to love God by beginning to love those whom you cannot. You will find that in serving others you are serving yourself. The more you remember others with kindness and generosity, the less you remember yourself; and when you completely forget yourself, you find me as the Source of all Love.

Cassandra Clare photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. IV, p. 172
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: Questioner: Can one love truth without loving man? Can one love man without loving truth? What comes first?
Krishnamurti: Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself, and you cannot search for the unknowable away from relationship. You cannot search for reality, or for what you will, in isolation. It comes into being only in relationship, only when there is right relationship between man and man. So the love of man is the search for reality.

Blaise Pascal photo

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

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

“We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Chap. 1: "To Whom Much is Forgiven..."
The New Being (1955)

Cornel West photo

“We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

Imelda Marcos photo

“I have never been a material girl. My father always told me never to love anything that cannot love you back.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

As quoted in TIME magazine (November 1996) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985518,00.html.

Related topics