Self-love

“ Who keeps her close while she has power to charm;
Then yields her to his fellow-brutes a prey:
And where's the fault, my friend, in us, or they?
Two principles in human nature reign,
Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain:
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul ”

“ As he approves, as he dislikes,
Love or contempt her fancy strikes.
Self-love in nature rooted fast,
Attends us first, and leaves us last:
Why she likes him, admire not at her,
She loves herself, and that's the matter. ”

“ And let us look first at self-love—that master-passion in every human heart. Let us give self-love the first place in the inventory and catalogue of our passions, because it has the largest place in all our hearts and lives. Nay, not only has self-love the largest place of any of the passions of our hearts, but it is out of self-love that all our other evil passions spring. ”

“ By this beautiful act of creative wisdom, that which would have become in man the narrowest and most debasing self-love, has been transformed into an object of the most disinterested and ennobling affection. ”

“ That true self-love and social are the same; That virtue only makes our bliss below; And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. ”

“ What is this, in its origin, but self-love in the form of pride, intellectual pride, which thinks it knows all things and can account for all things; which scorns the idea of a Superior, and would gladly persuade itself that there is none, and which breaks out in rage and oaths at the very idea of such a Being? Self,—self, is at the bottom of the whole. ”

“ That it exceeds self-love, the love of the world, and even the love of life, experience testifies in a variety of cases. Have there not been, and are there not still, instances of men, who for a woman, the dear and desired object of their wishes, prostrate themselves on their knees, adore her as a goddess, and submit themselves as the vilest slaves to her will and pleasure? a plain proof that this love exceeds the love of self. ”

“ Whatever by reflected self-love inspires us with hope, fear, pity, terror, love, or mirth—whatever makes events, and time, and place, the ministers of character and pathos, let fiction or reality compose its tissue, is dramatic. ”

“ The principle we call self-love never seeks anything external for the sake of the thing, but only as a means of happiness or good: particular affections rest in the external things themselves. ”

“ Excessive self-love, a taste for exciting pleasures, aspirations of hatred, pride, and lordliness, a species of evil sympathy, the perfidious attraction of which brings together perverse natures without mingling them, had made of the princess and the Marquis accomplices rather than lovers. ”

“ Self-love exaggerates our faults as well as our virtues. ”

“ Indeed that mistaken Self-Love that reigns in the most of us, both Men and Women, that over-good Opinion we have of ourselves, and Desire that others should have of us, makes us swallow every Thing that looks like Respect, without examining how wide it is from what it appears to be. ”

“ The object of self-love is expressed in the term self; and every appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of them all are equally self or somewhat else. ”

“ DUTY SURVIVING SELF-LOVE THE ONLY SURE FRIEND OF DECLINING LIFE A SOLILOQUY Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
Yet why at others' wanings should'st thou fret?
Then only might'st thou feel a just regret,
Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
In selfish forethought of neglect and slight. ”

“ Who for thy self art so unprovident.
Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:
For thou art so possessed with murd'rous hate,
That 'gainst thy self thou stick'st not to conspire,
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate
Which to repair should be thy chief desire:
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,
Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,
Make thee another self for love of me,
That beauty still may live in thine or thee. ”

“ Love, my dear ladies, is self-sacrifice; it is a life out of self and in another. Its very essence is the preferring of the comfort, the ease, the wishes of another to one’s own, for the love we bear then? Love is giving, and not receiving. Love is not a sheet of blotting-paper or a sponge, sucking in every thing to itself ”

“ Not, to be sure, with the love of the side and infected, for with them stinks even self-love!
One must learn to love oneself- thus do I teach- with a wholesome and healthy love: that one may endure to be with oneself, and not go roving about. ”

“ Their self-love finds an intense pleasure in contemplating difficulties overcome, obstacles surmounted, and a goal won, all by their own unaided efforts, and to such the very obscurity of their origin is a source of boastful exultation. ”

“ On the contrary, if by self-love be meant my attachment to or interest in any object in consequence of it’s affecting me personally or from the stronger and more immediate manner in which certain objects and impressions act upon me, then it cannot be affirmed without an absurdity that all affection whatever is self-love. ”

“ Rightly understood, nothing is so admirable as self-love; but love yourself, not for what you are, but for what you may be. The wisest of teachers set no higher mark for duty than, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was a modern and unphilosophical derogation which substituted for it, “Vivre pour autrui.” In living the best for ourselves, we live the best for others. ”

“ Now if each of you will investigate, you will readily recognize two of the affections at least to which I have called your attention, self-love, and social love, but more particularly self-love, desire for self-gratification, desiring that you may be first mad happy, and then leaving the world to be happy afterward. ”

“ My love of others cannot therefore be built upon the love of myself, considering this last as the effect of ‘physical sensibility,’ and the moment we resolve self-love into the rational pursuit of a remote object, it has been shewn that the same reasoning applies to both, and that the love of others has the same necessary foundation in the human mind as the love of ourselves. ”

“ Self-love, therefore, as the actuating principle of the mind, must imply the efficacy and operation of the imagination of the remote ideas of things, as connected with voluntary action, and the most refined benevolence, the greatest sacrifices of natural affection, of sincerity, of friendship, or humanity, can imply nothing more. ”

“ Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections, which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief object of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of the night. ”

“ I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. ”

“ Thus self-love, as one part of human nature, and the several particular principles as the other part, are themselves, their objects, and ends, stated and shown. ”

“ What do we all find in our hearts? An immense self-love, a tremendous concentration of our attention upon our personal drama, physical cravings bare and physical cravings disguised and sublimated, desire to possess, desire for securities, and such-like fear-begotten desires, a desire for praise and approval and an instinctive dread of the disapproval and hostility of our fellow-men, an aggressive pride and self-assertion so soon as fear is allayed. ”

“ Do you think that it makes for happiness to force oneself into the extravagant belief that love is the only thing in the world worth having, and to sacrifice for it independence, self-respect, one’s whole scheme of life. ”

“ The business of self-love being to excite to action, it is quick and impetuous; and moving instinctively, has, like attraction, its force prodigiously increased as the object approaches, and proportionably lessened as it recedes. ”

“ The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; ”

“ THAT you may ascertain how wide and extensive is the reign of self-love within you, frequently turn to consider which of the passions of the soul it is which most often leads your will, for it will be found not to stand alone. ”

“ I would be rich in love to heap you with love; I long to love you, sweet ones, perfectly— Like God, who sees no spanning vault above, No earth below, and feels no circling air— Infinitely, no boundary anywhere. I am a beast until I love as God doth love. 15. Ah, say not, 'tis but perfect self I want But if it were, that self is fit to live Whose perfectness is still itself to scant, Which never longs to have, but still to give. A self I must have, or not be at all: Love, give me a self self-giving—or let me fall To endless darkness back, and free me from life's thrall. ”

“ Again Self-love, an excellent Principle when true, but the worst and most mischievous when mistaken, disposes us to be retentive of our Prejudices and Errors, especially when it is joyn’d as most commonly it is with Pride and Conceitedness. ”

“ Now if we grasp the sense in which each school uses the phrase 'lover of self', the truth may become evident. Those who use the term as one of reproach ascribe self-love to people who assign to themselves the greater share of wealth, honours, and bodily pleasures ”

“ Yes; love can save from the sterility of selfishness, and from the death of despair; but love alone. No other talisman has the power; pride, self-sustainment, coldness, pleasure, nothing—nothing—but that divine word of Life which is life's soul! ”

“ Self-love must be overcome by mortification of self, by asking of God to give us His love, to fill us with His love, for if the love of God fills our hearts, self-love must be rooted out. Let me ask of our Lord that I may have the same resolution in spiritual matters, and in the carrying out and on of a spiritual life, which I have where a temporal matter is concerned. ”

“ According to them, self-love is an instinctive principle in the human mind, which impels you to preserve your life and promote your happiness. The moral faculty they define to be an original principle of your nature, whereby you distinguish between right and wrong. ”

“ Consider the appetite of hunger, and the desire of esteem: these being the occasion both of pleasure and pain, the coolest self-love, as well as the appetites and passions themselves, may put us upon making use of the proper methods of obtaining that pleasure, and avoiding that pain; but the feelings themselves, the pain of hunger and shame, and the delight from esteem, are no more self-love than they are anything in the world. ”

“ Your love will not be in vain, it will be reciprocated, and the love that reciprocates yours will, as a magnet, draw you—you—your immaterial ego—your true self—towards it. Now you begin to understand, I can tell by your face. ”

“ So that whosoever thus loves himself, must be a slave either to honor or pleasure, which he looks upon as his greatest happiness, as gratifying that inclination to himself, which is uppermost in his heart. And from these two kinds of self-love spring many others, as various as are the means and instruments of obtaining the honors, or fulfilling the lusts, which have taken possession of our hearts. And these are chiefly three: 1. Pride, or an inclination to be eminent and popular in the world. 2. Pleasure and luxury, by which we indulge and gratify the flesh. ”

“ Nay, so strong is this feeling, 82that we extend it even to those counterfeits in friendship, flatterers and sycophants. Our self-love, rather than our self-interest, is the master-key to our affections. ”

“ If we look on the bright side of love, we must acknowledge that it has at least one advantage; it annihilates pride and immoderate self-love; true love, whose aim is the [364] happiness and equality of the beloved object, being incompatible with those feelings. ”

“ This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind; it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it. ”