Leo Buscaglia Love Quotations

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.

I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.

Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.

What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.

Don't brood. Get on with living and loving. You don't have forever.

Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.

Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lie's man's only promise.

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.

All of my youth growing up in my Italian family was focused around the table. That's where I learned about love.

I have too much respect for people to try to control them. But they are estranged from love, afraid to reach out and touch one another. We're afraid to appear sentimental or speak in platitudes because people will say, 'What a jerk!' It takes courage in our culture to be a lover.

You can be a follower of Muhammad or Jesus or Buddha or whomever. Always, they said that the most essential factor is to love your neighbor. And to love you.

Perfect love is rare indeed - for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.

Love can never grow old. Locks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter's frost and chill, summer's warmth is in them still.

Love yourselfaccept yourselfforgive yourselfand be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.

Most of us are pawns in a game of love we don't understand.

I know for certain that we never lose the people we love, even to death. They continue to participate in every act, thought and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories. We find comfort in knowing that our lives have been enriched by having shared their love.

As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me, as soon as I in a love relationship do not lead another person to himself, this love, even if it seems to be the most secure and ecstatic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. For real love is dedicated to continual becoming.

Relish love in your old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!

A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself -- to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart

When love is accompanied with deep intimacy, it raises us to the highest level of human experience. In this exalted space, we can surrender our egos, become vulnerable and know levels of joy and well-being unique among life experiences. We attain a glimpse of the rapture that can be ours. Boundaries are blurred, there are no limitations and we rejoice in union. We become one and, at the same time, both....

Love yourself-accept yourself-forgive yourself-and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.

It is difficult for some people to accept that love is a choice. This seems to run counter to the generally accepted theory of romantic love which expounds that love is inborn and as such requires no more than to accept it.

Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.

Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life.

Love is like a mirror. When you love another you become his mirror and he becomes yours .... And reflecting each other's love you see infinity.

Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.

A life of love is one of continualgrowth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to thewonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.

The heart is the place where we live our passions. It is frail and easily broken, but wonderfully resilient. There is no point in trying to deceive the heart. It depends upon our honesty for its survival.

Each of us is responsible for creating an environment of warmth and consideration for those we love. I have always tried to define a good day not in terms of one in which all things were made right and comfortable for me but rather, as a day in which I have been able to make another's day more loving and special for them. We must treat each other with dignity. Not because we merit it but because we grow best in thoughtfulness....

To the extent to which you know yourself, and we are all more alike than different, you can know others. When you love yourself, you will love others. And to the depth and extent to which you can love yourself, only to that depth and extent will you be able to love others.

I would not want to form a partnership with an architect who has only a little knowledge of building or a broker who has a limited knowledge of the stock market. Still, we form what we hope to be permanent relationships in love with people who have hardly any knowledge of what love is.

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom

Love is not a thing, it is not lost when given. You can offer your love completely to hundreds of people and still retain the same love you had originally.

To live in love is life's greatest challenge. It requires more sublety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge and strength than any other human endeavor.

No one gets out of this world alive, so the time to live, learn, care, share, celebrate, and love is now.

One does not fall "in" or "out" of love. One grows in love.

Joy is always an integral part of loving. There is joy in every act of life, no matter how menial or repetitive. To work in love is to work in joy. To live in love is to live in joy... Why not choose joy?... Why not live in joy?

Love is always changing and, unless we stay aware and change with it, it eludes us.

Happiness and love are just a choice away.

Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.

Love creates an "us" without destroying the "me".

Each man lives love in his limited fashion and does not seem to relate the resultant confusion and loneliness to his lack of knowledge about love.

He must understand that if he is the world's finest plum and someone he loves does not like plums, he has the choice of becoming a banana. But he must be warned that if he chooses to become a banana, he will be a second rate banana. But he can always be the best plum.

What we need to know about loving is no great mystery. We all know what constitutes loving behavior; we need but act upon it, not continually question it. Over-analysis often confuses the issue and in the end brings us no closer to insight. We sometimes become too busy classifying, separating, and examining, to remember that love is easy. It's we who make it complicated.

One must never be satisfied with his ability to love. No matter where he is, it is always just a beginning.

There is seemingly so little love shared in this world, it is not surprising that we ask, "Where have all the lovers gone?" Since love is the most vital energy for good that is within our power to utilize, it is puzzling why we so seldom do so. Love is just a useless, abstract idea until we put it into action...unless we are always actively living in love, we are not utilizing the greatest gift we have been given and which we, in turn, have to offer....

The lover must often say, "I love because I must, because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me - and incedentally, only - for that joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it also will be good, for I will to love."

Love is trusting, accepting, and believing, without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it's an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears.

You can only give away what you have ... If you have love, you can give it. If you don't have it, you don't have it to give.

It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the basis of human love is revealed to us.

...the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate. Therefore, there's some way in which I can get to them.

Love is always open arms.

To love others you must first love yourself.

The life and love we create is the life and love we live.

Love is a dynamic interaction, lived every second of our lives, all of our lives.

If one wishes to know love, one must live love, in action.

Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement. To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever.

Love can never grow old. Looks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter's frost and chill, summer's warmth is in them still....

Like any other living, growing thing, love requires effort to keep it healthy....

We all need each other.

Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, 'Did you bring joy?' The second was, 'Did you find joy?

To love others you must love yourself...You can only give to others what you have yourself.

Love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both.

A wife says to her husband (or vice versa), "Do you love me?""Of course," he replies. "I've been married to you for twenty years, haven't I?"How satisfied would we be if we presented someone with a vintage wine and, upon asking his opinion of it, he replied, "I'm drinking it, aren't I?"Love still needs expression between those who share it.

He must also know evil, hate and bigotry as real phenomena, but he must see love as the greater force. He must not doubt this even for a moment or he is lost. His only salvation is to dedicate himself to love, in the same fashion as Gandhi did to militant nonviolence, as Socrates to truth, as Jesus did to love and as More did to integrity. Only then will he have the strength to combat the forces of doubt, confusion and contradiction. He can depend upon no on or no thing for reinforcement and assurance but himself.

Knowing that one is always capable of change, the second step lies in making the decision to change. Change does not occur by merely willing it anymore than behavior changes simply through insight.

To live in love is to live in life, and to live in life is to live in love

We don't love to be loved in return; we love to love.

To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain your uniqueness

Love is not some complex, mystical abstraction. It is something accessible and human that we learn through our everyday experience, as often at times of failure as in moments of ecstasy....

Every day we are offered new means for learning and growing in love.

Loving means sharing joy with people.

Experience seems to convince us that only fools trust, that only fools believe and accept all things. If this is true, then love is most foolish. For if it is not founded on trust, belief and acceptance, it's not love.

Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt, but it is the only way to live life completely.

If you make mistakes, if you act like a human being- I will love you no matter.

When it comes to giving love, the opportunities are unlimited, and we are all gifted.

To love is to risk not being loved in return.

One cannot give what he does not possess. To give love you must possess love. To love others you must love yourself.

Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears. Love lives the moment; it's neither lost in yesteryear nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is NOW!

Life is our greatest possession and love its greatest affirmation.

The oppposite of Love is not Hate - it's apathy.