To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone
This quote hits bad, and true.
The olf Queen Bee of Libertarianism wrote more about love than most people expect.
“Love is our response to our highest values – and can be nothing else.”
“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a mans’ sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life.”
“To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’.”
“Love is the expression of one’s values.”
“Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”
“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.”
“Man is an end in himself. Romantic love – the profound, exalted, lifelong passion that unites his mind and body in the sexual act – is the living testimony to that principle.”