How to Love Book

My fav quotes:
• Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. Even our capacity for love can betray us; taken to obsessive extremes, it can beget something very like hate.
• And given our human fallibility, the most important quality may turn out to be the ability to forgive.
• We cannot teach what we do not know
• If we wish, therefore, to protect ourselves from disappointment at the hands of others, and if we think it important to recognize those who will enrich our lives, we had best learn the art of pattern recognition when it comes to human behavior.
• humiliation represents a kind of death
• resolving symptoms such as anxiety, depression, even delusions, is usually a lot easier than changing someone's personality. How much harder it is then to change these ingrained traits in someone who does not see them as problematic and prefers to view interpersonal difficulties as the fault of others
• As in all things, "the wisdom to know the difference" draws us onward.
• love, that emotion that places the needs and desires of another at the level of our own
• Women need a reason to have sex; men just need a place.
• Life is hard, then you die" concept that keeps everyone's expectations low and serves as a rationalization for a lot of unhappiness
• If you want unqualified approval, get a dog.
• We require the good opinion of a few others and we long for the unconditional love of at least one.
• The scorpion responds, "It's my nature."
• Trying to love someone who does not love himself is generally a disappointing experience
• hypochondriacs, will ultimately be proven right: each life does end badly.
• Few of us, however, are equipped to spend our lives alone. It is no accident that the most feared punishment for those in prison is solitary confinement. Even people already denied most of the comforts of everyday freedom cannot long abide isolation. Of all the psychic pain that human beings suffer, loneliness is for most the worst. Being ignored is the final insult to our humanity.
• Lincoln is supposed to have said, "We're all responsible for our faces after 40.
• Nothing, it is said, improves one's reputation more than death.
• Lie down with dogs; get up with fleas" or, more optimistically, "An eagle does not catch flies.
• Why would people spend money to engage in such a process with another human being whose own life may be no happier or more fulfilling than their own? The answer, of course, is that most people find it beneficial to be listened to nonjudgmentally by a societally designated healer. Many benefit equally from similar (and less expensive) interactions with their hairdresser, bartender, or clergyman.
• "The gods gave men fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage."
• advertising industry bombards us with images that encourage dissatisfaction with what we have and how we look and perpetuates fantasies that we can purchase some better version of ourselves
• we get not what we deserve but what we expect
• when we spend time with others we become more like them. Just as soldiers can become brave by being with courageous comrades, so couples who have spent years in each other's company tend to share emotional, and sometimes even physical, characteristics. This is, perhaps, the best argument for choosing for a partner the person you want to become
• A man wakes up in the middle of the night to discover that his wife is not breathing. He grabs the phone, calls 911, and explains the problem to the dispatcher. "What's your address?" she asks. "714 Eucalyptus Street," he replies. "Can you spell that?" she inquires. After a pause, the man says, "How about I take her over to Oak Street and you can pick her up there?"
• "life is what happens while we're making other plans,"
• The boredom that characterizes school is good preparation only for work, which is commonly seen as an unpleasant necessity to generate the money needed to enjoy those possessions and activities that do bring us pleasure.
• "Why me?" I have the impulse to answer, "Why not you?" The implication on the part of those who are surprised at bad luck is that they have somehow earned their good fortune, which they expected to persist indefinitely.
• The military has a principle called "unity of command" (meaning someone has to be in charge), which is considered essential for success in war. When this tenet was violated in marital relationships, conflict increased.
• Another thing that we are not taught as children is that much, perhaps most, of our behavior is driven by unconscious needs and impulses rather than being a product of considered thought.
• "Sex is for a little while; cooking is forever."
• Jack Nicholson's compliment to Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets: "You make me want to be a better man." If someone can evoke this feeling in us, we are truly in love.
• If, however, awareness is combined with patience, we may succeed