In the vanity of self-consciousness one feels at a long remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a simple and pure heart.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else.
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of the spirit which we seek.
It is a great delusion in those whose understanding has been darkened by self-love, to think that there is any obedience in the subject who tries to draw the superior to what he wishes.
In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.
That mystic clasp of love lies not on the threshold but at the end of spiritual life, and can be reached for the most part only after much spiritual exercising, many denials, self-denials, watchings, and, it may be, the Cross of pain and disillusionment.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.
Self-love, it is obvious, remains always positive and active in our natures.