Quotes from Mortimer Adler

Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, can persist even after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.

One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian.

When we ask for love, we don't ask others to be fair to us-but rather to care for us, to be considerate of us. There is a world of difference here between demanding justice... and begging or pleading for love.

Love consists in giving without getting in return in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That's why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.

Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.

If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks.

The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.

To agree without understanding is inane. To disagree without understanding is impudent.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies..