Love

I am the laughter of the new-born child On whose soft-breathing sleep an angel smiled. Richard Watson Gilder

Love is the Root of Divine Providence. Every virtue is the fruit of Love. Through Love we receive every good and perfect thing. God is Love.

No one can be always right and be a true Christian. It is a contradiction of terms. It comes from the failure to be real about oneself in the light of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. It is based on fear, and on the misuse of power. I imagined that I could somehow prevent my children from making mistakes. This is a temptation that many parents have to face, and it can be agonizing. After their early years, in which they must be taught the difference between right and wrong, we need to encourage them to choose to do the very best they can, to obey the deepest thing in their hearts, thoughts good and loving; but we must leave them really free to choose, without fear in ourselves. Perfect love drives out fear, and goes on whichever way they may choose.

Psychologists insist that children must feel love, that love is a primordial currency in human relations, this is easy to say. Unfelt love is the most dangerous hypocrisy. I would be inclined to aim lower, children & adults can sometimes be even more grateful for respect. This is perhaps the most despised, the most neglected & maligned of all qualities in the pursuit of happiness. It puts an undue strain on no-one. It must be applied indiscriminately, and since it is more a form of politeness, than an evaluation, a respect which is not deeply felt is practically indistinguishable from respect that is. Respect is the quality that makes the small voice of reason audible above the howling of the crowd. It is inherent in the rules of debate, it forces the speaker to listen, it may even enable the listener to speak.

Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

An idealistic lover is a blind lover, and therefore a true lover; a pragmatic lover is a sighted lover, and therefore a false lover.

The bushes of love are blossomed through the manure of hardship.

My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love.

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love - that is the soul of genius.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. Nelson Mandela

Every religion emphasizes human improvement, love, respect for others, sharing other people's suffering. On these lines every religion had more or less the same viewpoint and the same goal.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

We all have the power to give love. And if we do so, we change the kind of person we are, and we change the kind of world we live in.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Martin Luther King Jr.

In being with dying, we arrive at a natural crucible of what it means to love and be loved. And we can ask ourselves this: Knowing that death is inevitable, what is most precious today?

The world is evolving from imperfection to perfection. It needs all love and sympathy; great tenderness and watchfulness are required from each one of us.

Where there is great love there are always miracles.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.

If there is a time of judgment, instead of theological or institutional litmus tests, the only question asked about our life and spirituality will be "Did you love with abandonment?"

There are no outsiders in God's love - we are all insiders with God!

The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good.

All their combined expertise could not protect them from their own pathology or from mortality, but the life they shared gave both of them the strength they needed to meet the unavoidable. At the same time, they gave one another what was, in the circumstances, a rare and bountiful measure of joy.

----This quote refers to Kay Jamison professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and Richard Wyatt, chief of neuropsychiatry for the National Institute of Mental Health. He overcame severe childhood dyslexia, and she lives with bipolar illness that at times has made her psychotic.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

Extend the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love, gradually including your family, your neighbors, your community, your country, all countries -- all living sentient creatures.

Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.

Love all that has been created by God, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf and every ray of light. Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, love every separate fragment. If you love each separate fragment, you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God.

An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by its own fullness, not by its reception.

To be affectionately detached—that is a power. That is a wisdom. That is a love greater than any emotional love, a love born of understanding.

You don’t discipline yourself to attain the feeling of love. You attain the feeling of love and then you want to discipline yourself because you love the discipline, because it brings more love.

If you have love, you can live on bread crumbs. Without love, caviar will poison you.

One part of love is innocence
One part of love is guilt
One part the milk that in a sense
Is soured as soon as spilt
One part of love is sentiment
One part of love is lust
One part is the presentiment
Of our return to dust

Love is substance, lust illusion. Only in the surge of passion do they mingle in confusion.

The strength of Truth lies in Love and the strength of Love lies in Truth.

The day will comewhen, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.

Love all, trust a few.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you.
Criticize me, and I may not like you.
Ignore me, and I may not forgive you.
Encourage me, and I will not forget you.
Love me and I may be forced to love you.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

The more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?"

Resistance to oppression is often based on a love that leads us to value ourselves, and leads us to hope for more than the established cultural system is willing to grant ... such love is far more energizing than guilt, duty, or self-sacrifice. Love for others leads us to accept accountability (in contrast to feeling guilt) and motivates our search for ways to end our complicity with structures of oppression. Solidarity does not require self-sacrifice, but an enlargement of the self to include community with others.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.

Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you

Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...

Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better.

Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.

The first duty of love is to listen.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

One of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.

Love is more than just a feeling: it's a process requiring continual attention. Loving well takes laughter, loyalty, and wanting more to be able to say, "I understand" than to hear, "You're right."

Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

Never even consider spending the rest of your life with someone who isn't your best friend.

Love is like a campfire: It may be sparked quickly, and at first the kindling throws out a lot of heat, but it burns out quickly. For long lasting, steady warmth (with delightful bursts of intense heat from time to time), you must carefully tend the fire.

Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.

Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love.

I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people.

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

[W]e all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us.

In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.

Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved.

Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

Responsibility . . . lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. And there are ways in which we can consciously work to develop feelings of love and kindness. For some of us, the most effective way to do so is through religious practice. For others it may be non-religious practices. What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment we live in seriously.

To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

We need not think alike to love alike.

When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being.

Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

For there is one thing I can safely say: that those bound by love must obey each other if they are to keep company long. Love will not be constrained by mastery; when mastery comes, the God of love at once beats his wings, and farewell -- he is gone. Love is a thing as free as any spirit; women naturally desire liberty, and not to be constrained like slaves; and so do men, if I shall tell the truth.

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver.

Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.

Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back.

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.

Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.

If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.

The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Women get married expecting to change their husbands, while men get married expecting their wives will never change.

My hope is that a religious consciousness will begin to rise, one based on enhancing humanity, grasping life in all of its complex wonder, having the courage to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be and that it will express itself in our national life in more earth centered, justice enhancing and humane ways.

We can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion. This, then, is my true religion, my simple faith. In this sense, there is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine, or dogma. Our own heart, our own mind, is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need.

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.

Love your fellow as yourself.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Do not kiss your children so they will kiss you back but so they will kiss their children, and their children’s children.

All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles – someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.

You can’t lead the people, if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people, if you don’t serve the people.

Love wins.

The best loving partnerships demand of us not great sacrifice but great expansion.

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself.

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?

All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

I had rather live and love where death is king, than have eternal life where love is not.

Instead of loving a God, we love each other. Instead of the religion of the sky--the religion of this world--the religion of the family--the love of husband for wife, of wife for husband--the love of all for children. So that now the real religion is: Let us live for each other; let us live for this world without regard for the past and without fear for the future. Let us use our faculties and our powers for the benefit of ourselves and others, knowing that if there be another world, the same philosophy that gives us joy here will make us happy there.

Love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent to borrower and lender both.

The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts.

Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. . . . You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there's love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.

True love is in the image of God (by God I simply mean the fundamental cause of everything. It brings us into existence and, within the limits of its might, supports us in our quest for fulfillment). It is a desire to nurture, not to capture.

Generally, in a loving environment, human beings show humanity as naturally as fruit trees give fruit in the summer. Love is to these beings as sunshine is to these trees. It helps them grow into what they are meant to grow into (unless their nature is flawed from the start, which is an exception to the rule): beautiful and bountiful creations, as opposed to ugly and puny aberrations.

How much can we collectively be civilized – that is, mutually respectful and helpful, in the knowledge that this high goal can unite our wills toward a common good of colossal proportions? In other words, what is the ceiling of our possible civilization, which implies responsibility and solidarity, an elevation of life to love? Nobody knows the limit, so none should be set but the sky!

Sages forever strive to be at one with truth. Their ideal – which they pursue earnestly but never achieve to perfection – is to grow into supreme human beings whose knowledge and behavior coincide with the nature of things and their earthly mission: with life and love.

Devils can be driven out of the heart by the touch of a hand on a hand, or a mouth on a mouth.

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

The intelligent and good man holds in his affections the good and true of every land--the boundaries of countries are not the limitations of his sympathies. Caring nothing for race, or color, he loves those who speak other languages and worship other gods. Between him and those who suffer, there is no impassable gulf. He salutes the world, and extends the hand of friendship to the human race. He does not bow before a provincial and patriotic god--one who protects his tribe or nation, and abhores the rest of mankind.

That best portion of a good man's life:
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.

The rules for parents are but three... Love, Limit, and Let them be.

Work is love made visible.

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination.

Love of country cannot be a supersized version of individual narcissism.  True love of country--of this country--is love of our children, of a creed that promises them a better life before it promises us anything, and embraces the sacrifices needed to make that better life. True love of country is giving ourselves to a cause and a purpose larger than ourselves.  And that cause is to make liberty worth having, to make the pursuit of happiness deeper than the quest for personal pleasure, and to leave a legacy of progress and possibility. 

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

One must love the mirror in the face of truth, only if one loves the outlook of your inner compassion.

One who obeys the will of Heaven will practice universal love.

Love people.  Use things.  Not vice-versa.

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.

Love doesn't make the world go 'round.
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

Until he has unconditional and unbiased love for all beings,
man will not find peace

Love is a force that connects us to every strand of the universe, an unconditional state that characterizes human nature, a form of knowledge that is always there for us if only we can open ourselves to it.

The communal life of human beings had . . . a two-fold foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external necessity, and the power of love.

For never does hatred cease by hatred here below; hatred ceases by love; this is an eternal law.