Love is generally confused with dependence; but in point of fact, you can love only in proportion to your capacity for independence.
Rollo MayRead
To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before
Interpretation
What this quote means
True love encompasses both the joys and pains of life, allowing us to fully experience and understand our emotions.
Rollo May's quote emphasizes that love is not just about experiencing happiness and fulfillment; it involves accepting the full spectrum of human emotions, including grief and sorrow. To genuinely love, we must be willing to face the challenges and disappointments that accompany deep emotional connections, ultimately leading to a heightened awareness and appreciation of life's richness.
Themes
LoveEmotionsJoySorrowConnection
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding speech, one could mention how marriage involves embracing both the joys and challenges of love.
More from Rollo May
All quotes →Terrorism and the whole drug scene are vivid examples of the fact that what persons abhor most of all in life is the possibility that they will not matter.
Rollo MayRead
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
Rollo MayRead
Beauty is the experience that gives us a sense of joy and a sense of peace simultaneously.
Rollo MayRead
The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.
Rollo MayRead
Joy is the zest that you get out of using your talents, your understanding, the totality of your being, for great aims...That's the kind of feeling that goes with creativity. That's why I say the courage to create. Creation does not come out of simply what you're born with. That must be united with your courage, both of which cause anxiety, but also great joy.
Rollo MayRead
Similar quotes
With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.
Alfred De MussetRead
Love brings up everything unlike itself.
Marianne WilliamsonRead
You're the love of my life. I don't care how corny that sounds. You're the start of it, and the end of it. And you're the best of it.
Nora RobertsRead
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
Henry MillerRead
Love is a wonderful, terrible thing
William ShakespeareRead
The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.
Suzanne CollinsRead