I have observed a strange idea of love that many people seem to have: they see love as a kind of gift that has to be given back. Someone says, “I love you,” and if the other person does not reply with an “I love you, too,” the first person gets upset. But love doesn’t always have to be reciprocated. We can just love. If love doesn’t come back to you, it is still love that you give and that you feel. We do not always have to look to get something back for what we give, do we?
17th Karmapa
from the book The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out
translated by Ngodup Tsering Burkhar & Damchö Diana Finnegan
Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 17th Karmapa.
Further quotes from the book The Heart Is Noble:
- Capacity for Change
- Finding our nobility of heart
- Taking delight in your inner nature
- Difference without Division
- My trust is a gift
- There are no fixed starting points
- Loving Responsibility
- Boxed limitless potential
- Look what he did
- Our life is vast
- We truly have everything we need already
- Disconnected from our own noble heart
- Interdependent reality
- Who are you
- Our relationship to the material world
- Making healthy relationships possible
- Take joy in your sincere intentions
- Distinguishing between wants and needs
- Breaking barriers