M. Scott Peck Love Quotations

I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional. The person who truely loves does so because of a decision to love. This person has made a commitment to be loving whether or not the loving feeling is present. ...Conversely, it is not only possible but necessary for a loving person to avoid acting on feelings of love.

Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.

True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision.

Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.

Genuine love is volitional rather than emotional.

Falling in love is not an act of will. It is not a conscious choice. No matter how open to or eager for it we may be, the experience may still elude us. Contrarily, the experience may capture us at times when we are definitely not seeking it, when it is inconvenient and undesirable.

Ultimately love is everything.

Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.

I gave examples from my clinical practice of how love was not wholly a thought or feeling. I told of how that very evening there would be some man sitting at a bar in the local village, crying into his beer and sputtering to the bartender how much he loved his wife and children while at the same time he was wasting his family's money and depriving them of his attention. We recounted how this man was thinking love and feeling love--were they not real tears in his eyes?--but he was not in truth behaving with love.

There is no act of love that is not an act of work or courage. No exceptions.

The feeling of being valuable is a cornerstone of self-discipline because when you consider yourself valuable you will take care of yourself- including things like using your time well. In this way, self-discipline is self-caring.

Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words.

Nirvana or lasting enlightenment or true spiritual growth can be achieved only through persistent exercise of real love.

Love always requires courage and involves risk.

When we love something it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it....

Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved.

Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other.

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

While I generally find that great myths are great precisely because they represent and embody great universal truths, the myth of romantic love is a dreadful lie. Perhaps it is a necessary lie in that it ensures the survival of the falling-in-love experience that traps us into marriage. But as a psychiatrist I weep in my heart almost daily for the ghastly confusion and suffering that this myth fosters. Millions of people waste vast amounts of energy desperately and futilely attempting to make the reality of their lives conform to the unreality of the myth.

Since true listening involves a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the others. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable, and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the dance of love is begun again.

When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.