This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Self-love then does not constitute THIS or THAT to be our interest or good; but, our interest or good being constituted by nature and supposed, self-love only puts us upon obtaining and securing it.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.
Self-love is really a foundation for everything, and however you practice or express that is so, so important.
Self-love is the source of all our other loves.
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 but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.
The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves.
Self-love, it is obvious, remains always positive and active in our natures.