Love

“The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.” - Hooks

In Christianity, agape from Ancient Greek ἀγάπη (agápē) is “the highest form of love, charity” and “the love of God for man and of man for God”. This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a deep and profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance. According to 1 Timothy it comes “out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned”. It goes beyond just the emotions to the extent of seeking the best for others. The verb form goes as far back as Homer, translated literally as affection, as in “greet with affection” and “show affection for the dead”. Other ancient authors have used forms of the word to denote love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to eros (an affection of a sexual nature).

Eros from Ancient Greek ἔρως (érōs) ‘love, desire’ is a concept in ancient Greek philosophy referring to sensual or passionate love, from which the term erotic is derived. Eros has also been used in philosophy and psychology in a much wider sense, almost as an equivalent to “life energy”. Protestant author C. S. Lewis posits it as one of the four ancient Greek words for love in Christianity, alongside storage, philia, and agape

To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. The Agony of Eros

• whilst in love one must give, one must never give oneself away and that it was all too easy to die for love - the hard thing being to live for it.

“This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We’re a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented.” ― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“Never Love Unless You Can” ― Thomas Campion, title of 1617 poem

“Love is a decision, not an emotion.” – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

• 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. ― Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
• “In a soulmate we find not company, but a completed solitude.”— Robert Brault

Still, there is this terrible desire to be loved.
Still, there is this horror at being left behind.
― Michael Cunningham, from The Hours (1998)

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. ― Jorge Luis Borges

• “Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.” ― Slavoj Žižek
• “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” ― Tim Kreider
• “The first symptom of true love in a man is timidity, in a young woman, boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming each the other’s qualities.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
• “Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.” ― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
• “The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
• “To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
• “You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
• “Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.” ― Edmond De Goncourt
• “It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.” ― Susan Sontag
• “In the meantime, I am inventing your presence, just as one day I shall also be unable to let myself die alone, dying is the greatest peril of all, I won’t be able to pass over into death and put my first foot into my first self-absence ― in the last and so first an hour too I shall reinvent your name ― less presence and with you I shall start to die until I am able on my own not to exist, and then I’ll let you go.” ― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
• To quote Scruton: “Marriage imposes on erotic love the pious arrangement of the home. In entering a marriage, they do not merely exchange promises: they pass together into a condition that is not of their own devising. It contains the deposits of countless previous experiences of intimacy, which has been passed from generation to generation. The marriage ceremony is, therefore, one of the most important of human ceremonies,” a recognition of the sacred, the transcendent.
• We loved and the closest we’ve come to explaining why … is because it was you and because it was I. ~ Venus Trines at Midnight ― Linda Goodman
• “My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.” ― André Breton
• If you want to kill somebody, conquer his heart, then leave slowly and leave them between death and madness.” ― Nizar Qabbani
• “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” ― George Orwell
• “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” ― Iris Murdoch
• “Dependence is scorned even in intimate relationships, as though dependence were incompatible with self-reliance rather than the only thing that makes it possible.” ― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

We are one, after all, you and I,
together we suffer,
together exist,
and forever will recreate each other.
― Teilhard de Chardin

• “I dream of a love that is more than two people craving to possess one another.” ― Irvin D. Yalom

It doesn’t matter if when love calls
I am dead.
I’ll come.
I will always come
if ever
love calls.

― Alejandra Pizarnik

• To give all for Love is a most sweet bargain. ― Gertrude More
• Adore each other. Be fiendishly smitten. Be frantically in love. Can there be too many perfumes, too many rosebuds, too many nightingales? Can lovers love each other too much, be too enchanting, too beguiling, too charming? Is it possible to be too much alive, too happy? Adore each other, and never mind the rest. — Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)
• “What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• “A soulmate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace. This kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious in life.” ― Thomas Moore
• “When you realize someone is trying to hurt you, it hurts less. Unless you love them.” ― Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus
• “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.” ― Rumi
• “To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.” ― Victor Hugo
• “That which we experience when we are in love is perhaps our normal state. Being in love shows a person who they should be.” ― Anton Chekhov
• Soul is resonance… . We often use the language of soul phenomena without realising we are doing so. We speak of ‘being in tune’ with someone, or ‘being on the same wavelength’. Something about a connection with another person just feels right. It clicks. ― Robert Sardello
• “While every human being has a capacity for love, its realization is one of the most difficult achievements.” ― Erich Fromm
• “But there is a charm that is greater still When my love’s eyes are lowered When all is fired by passion’s kiss And through the downcast lashes I see the dull flame of desire.” ― Fyodor Tyutchev
• “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” ― Leo Tolstoy
• “Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for that reason, rather than its rarity, that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.” ― Hannah Arendt
• Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love. - Rupert Spira (The Ashes of Love, 2014)
• “To fall in love is to project the most noble part of one’s being onto another human being (..) the divinity we see in others is truly there, but we don’t have the right to see it until we have taken away our own projections. (..) in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of Concept of God, not at the other person.” ― Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche
• “Romantic love has always been inextricably tied to spiritual aspiration.” ― Robert A. Johnson, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love
• “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.” ― Iris Murdoch
• ‘For many intelligences, the thought of homely intimacies is associated with a spontaneous disgust at too much sweetness–which is why there is neither a philosophy of sweetness nor an elaborated ontology of the intimate.’ ― Sloterdijk
• “Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love.” ― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving“
• To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
• “There is no pain in life equal to that which two lovers can inflict on each other.” — Cyril Connolly
• “There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.” — Richard Powers, The Overstory
• “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” — C. S. Lewis
• “The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” — Vincent van Gogh
• “As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.” — William Makepeace Thackeray
• “Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt of my own existence, because my very doubts reveal to me a something which doubts.” - George Henry Lewes
• “Brichard was quite right when he said to me with his usual malice: ‘When you’re in love with a woman, you must ask yourself: What do I want to do with her?’ - Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard

In Islam, Mahabbah refers to love, affection, and devotion, particularly the love of God (Allah) and love for the sake of God. It’s a central concept in Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, and is considered a crucial element in spiritual development and the formation of an ideal society.

• Love for God (Mahabbatullah): Mahabbah is often understood as the intense love and devotion a Muslim feels towards Allah, motivating them to obey His commands and strive for His pleasure.
• Love for the sake of God: This aspect of Mahabbah emphasizes loving others, including fellow Muslims, for God’s sake, fostering unity and compassion within the community.
• Sufi Perspective: Sufis view Mahabbah as a transformative force that leads to a deeper understanding of God and a closer relationship with Him.
• Fruits of Mahabbah: The practice of Mahabbah is believed to cultivate virtues like humility, sincerity, and a yearning for God’s proximity.
• Connection to other Islamic Concepts: Mahabbah is closely related to concepts like khawf (fear of God), shukr (gratitude), and tawakkul (trust in God), forming a holistic framework for spiritual growth.
• Distinction from other types of love: Islamic scholars differentiate between love for God, love for what God loves, love for God’s sake, and love that is associated with idolatry, as explained by Ibn al-Qayyim.