Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.

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The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

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The deepest need of the human being is to overcome our separateness, to leave the prison of our loneliness.

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Hate is a product of the unfulfilled life.

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Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

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Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.

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The affirmation of one's own life, happiness, growth and freedom, is rooted in one's capacity to love.

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To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness

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The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.

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