The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image. Thomas Merton

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island