Favorite Quotes from Leo Buscaglia

Leo Buscaglia is a professor of education at the University of Southern California, a native Californian, an inexhaustible traveler, a much-loved and cafrefully-listened-to speaker, and a person who truly lives as he speaks, who feels and is not fearful of displaying his emotions, who loves and is joyous in that love.

When I read his book "Love" for the first time, it was at a time in my life, where I thought my life was speeding at an immense speed, and I felt like I was going to crash at any moment...

Leo Buscaglia marked many quotes in this book which changed my outlook on life and love.

Here are some good examples:

~"To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity."

~"I find love much like a mirror. When I love another, he becomes my mirror, and I become his, and reflecting in each other's love we see infinity."

~"What we think is less than what we know: What we know is less than what we love: What we love is so much less than what there is; and to this precise extent, we are much less than what we are"

~"If you live for tomorrow, which is only a dream, then all you are going to have is an unrealized dream. And the past is no longer real. It has value because it made you what you are now, but that is all the value it has. So don't live in the past. Live now."

~"Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life"

~"Take me for what I am with all my frailties, all my stupidity, and so on. And if you can't, leave me be."

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

~"We seem to refuse to face the obvious fact that most of us spend our lives trying to find love, trying to live in it, and dying without truly discovering it."

~"Love is not learned by osmosis. It is actually acted out, and acted upon."

~"Living is the process of continuous rebirth. The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born."

~"In many cases, the need for togetherness and love becomes the major drive and goal of an individual's life. It is known that a lack of love is the major cause of severe neuroses and even psychoses in adulthood."

~"There is no doubt that without love, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death."

~" Just because the message may never be received does not mean it is not worth sending."

This is just a small sample of the inspiring book, "Love" by Leo Buscaglia At the time I read it, I was experiencing post-natal depression, and contemplating things a new mother should not be contemplating. Maybe this book, which was given to me by my mother, was a "wake up call" for me... Maybe subconsiously, I was crying for help, and Leo Buscaglia helped me to understannd that there is, in fact, a place in this world for me... And that I wasn't going crazy after all...

I suggest to anyone who is having issues with love, and relationships to read this book, and absorb every bit of it!  I have read it many times, and passed it around to my friends and family, and now I am in need of a replacement, because it's been read so many times, that the cover has fallen off and the pages are turning yellow. Just a reminder that this book was first published in 1972 and I have an original! 

If anyone has ever read this, you'll know what I'm talking about.  Leo Buscaglia should be nominated for "Most Inspiring Author of the Century"!