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In praise of love

What with all the various horrors and falsehods that humanity is visiting upon itself, I thought it might be kinda nice to focus on something which requires a leap of faith but doesn't end up with a holy text. I mean, of course, love. Not lust, but love. Not the usual flirt thread, or stories about well-endowed redheads in tight-fitting leather getting assertive (be still, my beating heart), but love, the funny thing that happens when you step on the universe's trap door. When you realize somebody else's existence has suddenly become as important as your own. Yeah, that thing.

So this is a thread for nothing but quotes, good quotes, in praise of love. Not cynical stuff on love, because hey, we can all do that. I mean, after you get off the floor, dust your rear, and move on, and find the genuine thing around the next corner...or maybe a thousand corners, later.

Your contributions, if you please. Here's mine, to start with:

"To live is like to love--all the reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it." -Samuel Butler

Great thread idea Fable

I've long identified with this...

When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

From: The Prophet Khalil Gibran
the complete poem can be found at: http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibran2.html

This is only cynical if you think it is cynical - it has always struck me as being a very sound indication of the human condition (and moved me greatly).

Margaret are you grieving over golden grove unleaving?
Leaves like the thoughts of man you,
With your fresh thoughts care for can you?
Bye and bye nor shed a sigh,
Though worlds of wanwood leaf meal lie,
It is the blight that man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerald Manly Hopkins (hopefully not mangled) - Curdis !

Re: In praise of love

Originally posted by fable
Not the usual flirt thread

Awwwwwwwwwww.

Okay, okay.

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.
That word is love.
- Sophocles

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
- Plato

Urgh. It's so warm and fuzzy in here... Bah humbug!

Originally posted by Curdis
This is only cynical if you think it is cynical - it has always struck me as being a very sound indication of the human condition (and moved me greatly).

Not cynical at all...! It's not quite right for the thread, being more a poem about a child's grief, but it's one of my all-time faves, and I've quoted it in our poetry thread.

Okay, that's twice we've agreed about great art (the other being Freberg ). You now have exquisite taste.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do beleive her, though I know she lies.
-Shakespeare

Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.
-Shakespeare

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
-Shakespeare (Again )

If you remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
-Shakespeare

I guess I'm a little fond of Shakespeare

And, of course,

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The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is an irresistable desire to be irresistably desired.
Robert Frost

But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
William Shakespeare

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles

Random Thoughts on Love

I dug this out of an old thread ...It's a piece I wrote some time ago.


Random Thoughts on Love


Love is never bad. It is never the same. It comes in many forms and unbidden.

Love should not be feared. There is no such thing as love without loss, but the greatest loss is to never allow yourself to love.

Love takes courage.

To love or be loved is a blessing. To love and be loved is a gift of the Divine.

Love is for sharing. It was never meant to be locked away in secret, that is obsession, and it sickens the soul.

Tell the people you love that you love them. No one knows their hour of fate, and you may miss the chance if you wait for the “right time”.

Love with out expectations. Love does not have to be returned in kind to be validated. It can not be bartered. It is a gift of your soul to another.

Love requires no action. It just is.

Love is not sex. Sex is not love. Physical union with a person you love is the holiest form of communion.

Love should be given freely and without condition.

No one can “steal” your love. The only person who can destroy your love, is the person to whom it is given.

Love can be lonely, but loneliness without love is death.

The ability to love knows no limits. It does not understand numbers. As love is given, it increases.

Love is not exclusive. It does not care.

Love is a font which can never run dry, as long as it is allowed to flow.

As many as there are drops in the ocean, such is the nature of love.

Love is like the wind. You can not see it, or taste it, but you feel it. It can not be contained, for if you box the wind, it surely dies.

Re: In praise of love

Originally posted by fable
What with all the various horrors and falsehods that humanity is visiting upon itself, I thought it might be kinda nice to focus on something which requires a leap of faith but doesn't end up with a holy text. I mean, of course, love. Not lust, but love. Not the usual flirt thread, or stories about well-endowed redheads in tight-fitting leather getting assertive (be still, my beating heart), but love, the funny thing that happens when you step on the universe's trap door. When you realize somebody else's existence has suddenly become as important as your own. Yeah, that thing.

Beautifull

_____


But i have no other quote... what mean that i am off topic.

But there is a book. My mom gave it to me. Later, i gave it to my gf.
If there is a book about love, it is this one. And, its my favorite.

Rolland Barthes - Fragments d'un Discours Amoreux

There is certainly an english version. Please look for it. Describe Barthes is futile, let him describe you for youself.