Quote

It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.

Harriet Lerner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harriet Lerner
Well
Tend
Love
Deep
Another
Truth
Also
Persons
Person
Wells
Clich

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

Image
Self-help books for women are part of a multibillion-dollar industry, sensitively attuned to our insecurities and our purses.
Harriet Lerner
Image
You can't evaluate a prospective partner if you insulate your relationship from your family and friends--and his.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Only through our connectedness to others can we really know and enhance the self. And only through working on the self can we begin to enhance our connectedness to others.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Every time I open Facebook, I see a post with something like, We must forgive or be prisoners of our own bitterness and hate. People think that forgiveness is all-or-nothing, but this myth hurts people. You can forgive 10, 97, or 14 percent. Forgiveness is complicated.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Silence can pose a greater threat than the difficult truth.
Harriet Lerner
Image
I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.
Harriet Lerner
Image
We will be in tune with our bodies only if we truly love and honor them. We can't be in good communication with the enemy.
Harriet Lerner
Image
We all fear change, even as we seek it.
Harriet Lerner
Image
If you pursue a distancer, he or she will distance more. Consider it a fundamental law of physics.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Being who we are requires that we can talk openly about things that are important to us, that we take a clear position on where we stand on important emotional issues, and that we clarify the limits of what is acceptable and tolerable to us in a relationship.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness.
Harriet Lerner
Image
No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid - they also ask, Do you forgive me?, because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Women are raised to be the nurturers and steadiers of rocked boats, to hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it. But it shores up your own dignity and integrity if you're able to say, There are a million things I love about you, and I want our relationship to continue. I forgive you 95 percent, but not this 5 percent.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Differences don’t just threaten and divide us. They also inform, enrich, and enliven us.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Wherever you find a wife and mother-in-law slugging it out, you'll find a son who's not speaking up to either his mother or his wife.
Harriet Lerner
Image
Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
Harriet Lerner