Erich Fromm on enemies

Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’

To love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person.

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

John F. Kennedy1917–1963

• Forgiveness

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Drift-wood. QuoteInvestigator (Aug. 19, 2019)

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

William Blake1757–1827Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 4, plate 91, line 1

• Forgiveness
• Friendship