Felice Leonardo “Leo” Buscaglia (1924–98) was an American self-help author and motivational speaker. He championed the philosophy that love heals all and gained a reputation as an “apostle of love” for concluding his speeches by hugging every audience member.
Buscaglia got his start as a speech therapist and a supervisor of special education in Pasadena, California. When working as an education professor at the University of Southern California, the suicide of one of his students distressed him. He was inspired to teach a course titled “Love 101,” combining sociology and psychology. Six hundred students attended the first lecture, prompting Buscaglia to launch his career as a motivational writer and speaker. His first book, Love (1972,) examined the phenomenon of human love as the one unifying force in life.
Buscaglia authored over a dozen books and sold more than 11 million copies in 20 languages. His other notable books were Living, Loving and Learning (1982) and Loving Each Other (1984.) Once, five of his books appeared on the New York Times best-seller list simultaneously.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Leo Buscaglia
The most painful thing to experience is not defeat but regret.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Regret
The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Battle
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things… I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Inner-child
Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don’t miss it.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Living, The Present
We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: People, Individuality, Courage, Love, Honesty
Love is trusting, accepting, and believing, without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it’s an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Truth, Act, Joy, Trust, Love, Beauty
Man is happiest when he is creating. In fact, the highest state of which man is capable lies in the creative act.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Love, Act, Lies
Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Dreams
It is when we ask for love less and begin giving it more that the basis of human love is revealed to us.
—Leo Buscaglia
You can’t imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I’ve said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love.
—Leo Buscaglia
What’s the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?
—Leo Buscaglia
Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.
—Leo Buscaglia
Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.
—Leo Buscaglia
I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, “No, I won’t do it, I won’t behave his way anymore. I’m lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving and then you do it.”
—Leo Buscaglia
A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself—to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.
—Leo Buscaglia
Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement. To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Romance
Our greatest joy and satisfaction comes from the act of giving.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Satisfaction
We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Love, Doubt, Death
What love we’ve given, we’ll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.
—Leo Buscaglia
Love can never grow old. Locks may lose their brown and gold. Cheeks may fade and hollow grow. But the hearts that love will know, never winter’s frost and chill, summer’s warmth is in them still.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Love
Choose the way of life. Choose the way of love. Choose the way of caring. Choose the way of goodness. It’s up to you. It’s your choice.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Choices
Why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful?
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Gratitude, Blessings
Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Being Ourselves
We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn’t affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made—everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we’ve effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too.
—Leo Buscaglia
Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lie’s man’s only promise.
—Leo Buscaglia
Your talent is God’s gift to you; what you do with it is your gift to God.
—Leo Buscaglia
There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness, and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that, I have complete control.
—Leo Buscaglia
Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself. Not to whom I want you to be, but to who you are.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Love
A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Growth, Courage, Life
The essence of love is getting out of oneself and into others. When we care less about our feelings, our rights, our happiness, our security, etc., and begin to concern ourselves with the feelings, rights, happiness, and security of others, we will have found the true power of love.
—Leo Buscaglia
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