Loving isn't merging, surrendering, uniting with the other. Rather, it's a kind of solitude; of profound aloneness. It induces you to mature and become whole for the sake of your beloved .. to truly love another, you must first wholly love yourself. Love therefore exacts the most demanding claim of all; it both chooses you and pursues you, and reaches out, as if over vast distances, to call and draw you into your now and future self."-- John VanDyke Wilmerding, ideas put forth inspired by ('after') Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet . Rainer Maria Rilke
About This Quote

When you are in love, you are able to give up your life for the person that is with you. This makes you very vulnerable, however, when someone that is very important to you leaves, this hurts. However, once you truly love yourself and understand who you are as a person, then no one can break your heart. When you accept your flaws and work to change them, then you will be able to accept the flaws of others and work with them instead of fighting against them. Without loving yourself first, it is difficult to be able to love others.

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  1. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
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