The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly _x000D_ themselves.
Interpretation
True love involves allowing others to be their authentic selves.
This quote by Thomas Merton highlights the essence of love as a genuine acceptance and encouragement for individuals to fully express their true selves without fear of judgment. It emphasizes that love is not possessive or controlling, but rather liberating and supportive, enabling loved ones to flourish in their authenticity.
In practice
In a romantic relationship, you can use this quote to encourage your partner to pursue their passions.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two.
The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.
It's just the most amazing thing to love a dog, isn't it? It makes our relationships with people seem as boring as a bowl of oatmeal.
You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.
I march in the parade of liberty But as long as I love you Iβm not free How long must I suffer such abuse Wonβt you let me see you smile one time before I turn you loose?
She lived in her past life β every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how β these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.
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