You must love me as I am
You must love me as I am. Do not tell me how much I should love you. I am content. I find my satisfactions in a calm considerate reverence measured by the virtues which provoke it. So love me as I am. When I am virtuous, love me; when I am vicious, hate me; when I am lukewarm, neither good nor bad, care not for me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks 5:452
