#elf

Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort. ↗

— Deborah Day

#nurturing #self-esteem #self-help #self-love #love

A deep love resides inside each of us. This love is independent of the desires, thoughts, and opinions, good or bad, which are readily offered to us. It is a love that is gentle and kind, accepting and nonjudgmental, playful and spontaneous, courageous and curious. It is always encouraging and always evolving. This love can be discovered only through turning off the noise around us, coming to ourselves in silence, meditation, and prayer. If we listen carefully we will hear the murmurs of our inner voice tell yearnings of our truest selves. What is available to us is a profound understanding, appreciation, and full acceptance of self, all of the good and all of the bad. Only when we truly know that we are able to tap into this part of ourselves can we begin to love others fully. Love for others is the manifestation of love for self. We cannot love another more than we love ourselves. Life is a mirror. If you want to know what love for yourself looks like, look at your love for others. If you want to know what your love for others look like, look at your love for self. When you love yourself this way, you love God this way. This relationship is the divine love triangle; self, God, and others in any order. ↗

— Marlon Hartley Lindsay

#courage

Looking outside of yourself for love and acceptance, leaves your happiness in the hands of others. ↗

— Debra Beck

#self-esteem #unconditional-love #love

The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#living #self #love

The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to... (hesitates) ...me. (Pause.) ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#beckett #darkness #play #self #love

Judgment should never enter into the hearts and minds of others while observing another in a pain that cannot be understood. ↗

— Amy Denise

#love #perfect-anguish #perseverance #romance #self-discovery

Never shall a young man, Thrown into despair By those great honey-coloured Ramparts at your ear, Love you for yourself alone And not your yellow hair. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#self-expression #love

To love, and be loved, this is the greatest challenge that any of us face in our lives. ↗

— T. Scott McLeod

#acceptance-of-others #love #lovers-quarrel #relationship #self-acceptance

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell. ↗

— Gary Shteyngart

#bookshelf #love

He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#intimacy-self-sacrifice #therapy #transparency #love