Erich Fromm

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an ordination of character which determines the relatedness of the person to the whole world as a whole, not toward one object of love"

"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies."

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."

"If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."

"In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."

"To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime."

"Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted."

"Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved."

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'"