The relationship you have with yourself is important.

Only people who love themselves can truly love others. So, loving God and others begins with being able to love YOURSELF unconditionally.

The Golden Rule assumes that you love yourself. What good would it be to treat others the way you would like to be treated if you do not care how you are treated?

If you are hard on yourself, it is very likely that you will be hard on others, so practice being gentle and compassionate with yourself.

Learning to love yourself is very good practice for learning to love others.

Loving yourself unconditionally requires that you forgive yourself for what you think are your weaknesses and mistakes. If you cannot forgive yourself, how will you be able to forgive others, and love them as God intended?

Loving yourself includes taking care of your physical body by resisting addictions such as drugs, alcohol, and food. You should also respect your body and protect it from reckless and harmful activities. Your body temporarily houses you, a soul, so look after it!

Loving yourself sometimes involves protecting yourself from physical or mental abuse. You cannot love others effectively if you allow yourself to be abused.

What you manifest in your life is directly related to the value and worth you place on yourself, so how you see yourself is critical to your evolution as a soul.

Loving yourself does not imply that you are selfish, arrogant or conceited. Loving yourself means that you have a positive self-image and you accept yourself for who you are. When you love yourself you are honest with yourself, and you are true to your values. At the same time, you know that you are not perfect, and that you need to learn to love unconditionally.

Always remember that God knows you much better than you know yourself, and you will always be worthy of His unconditional love.

Spiritual practices help us to loosen the grip of the ego-self and to connect to the true-Self, so that we can live purposefully, be of service and participate in love. The central Biblical injunction to "Love your neighbor as yourself" is usually interpreted to mean that we must learn to love others, with the assumption that we already love ourselves. Literally translated, though, this line actually reads, "And you will [in the future tense] love your fellow in the same way that you love yourself." In other words, we will love another to the extent and in the way that we love ourselves. If you are harsh with yourself, you will be harsh with others. If you can not forgive yourself, you can not forgive others. In this way, this line is not a commandment, but is a statement of fact. The truth is that most of us do not love ourselves very well, and consequently we hurt others. This is why spiritual practices so often seek to teach us how to love ourselves, so that we can better love others. Real love naturally flows in two directions.

Rabbi Alan Lurie

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Every decision you make, stems from what you think you are and represents the value you put upon yourself.

"A Course in Miracles", ACIM

People who truly love themselves do not become destructively self- centered. They do not abuse others. They do not stop growing and changing. People who love themselves well, learn to love others well too. They continually grow into healthier people, learning that their love was appropriately placed.

Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go

He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself for every man has a need to be forgiven.

Lord Herbert

I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves.

Etty Hillesum (concentration camp victim)

People were finally learning that only those who love themselves can love others, that only people who claim their own voice can hear the true song of another.

Elizabeth Lesser

Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. You're a perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that. Unconditional self- acceptance is the core of a peaceful mind.

St. Francis de Sales

I plan to stand by nonviolence, because I have found it to be a philosophy of life that regulates not only my dealings in the struggle for racial justice, but also my dealings with people, and with my own self.

Martin Luther King Jr.

When you know that you are eternal you can play your true role in time. When you know you are divine you can become completely human. When you know you are one with God you are free to become absolutely yourself.

Mother Meera

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

Janis Joplin

There is always a certain peace in being what one is, in being that completely.

Ugo Betti

One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.

Henri Nouwen

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

Anthony Powell

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.

Wayne Dyer

If we really love ourselves, everything in our life works.

Louise L. Hay

What you think about yourself is much more important than what others think of you.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

He that respects himself is safe from others.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.

Josh Billings

If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you'll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren't even giving to yourself.

Barbara De Angelis

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.

Fred (Mr.) Rogers

Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do.

Elvis Presley

The supreme act of forgiveness is when you can forgive yourself for all the wounds you've created in your own life. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. When you forgive yourself, self-acceptance begins and self-love grows.

Don Miguel Ruiz

Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.

Erich Fromm

People of character do the right thing, not because they think it will change the world but because they refuse to be changed by the world.

Michael Josephson

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Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Rumi, thirteenth century Sufi poet

Our doubts are traitors and makes us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

William Shakespeare

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment – or unlearning – of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is…our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Marianne Williamson

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self- esteem, the more likely one will treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.

Nathaniel Branden

Try to be like the turtle – at ease in your own shell.

Bill Copeland