more quotes, quotations and passages on love

The salvation of people is
through love and in love.

Viktor Frankl

Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “to the least of these my brethren.” Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded. Wendell Barry

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense. Ken Kesey Effort matters in everything, love included. Learning to love is purposeful work. Michael Levine

To love means being 100 percent responsible for your experience of living, to not be a victim or a martyr, and to be 100 percent accountable for the quality of your life, which includes the amount of love, joy, and growth you create in your relationships each day. To love is the ability to remain strong, stable, and committed through difficult times, changes, and challenges. It means being gentle, kind, and supportive of your potential, goals, and aspirations. Harold Bloomfield

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only what you are expecting to give--which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving. If you are very lucky, you may be loved back. That is delicious, but it does not necessarily happen. Katharine Hepburn

Nothing beats love. Love is the greatest healing power there is;
nothing else comes close. Not ancient cures, modern medicines
and technologies, or all the interesting books we read or the wise
things we say and think. Love has a transformational power.

Naomi Judd

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

Ursula K. LeGuin

Many days we may not get up with love in our hearts for our family,
our friends, our co-workers. We may, in fact, want them to show
their love for us first. But if we reach out, give love unconditionally,
focus on another's needs, love will return tenfold. And the act of
loving them will lift our own spirits. We will know love; we will feel
love for ourselves and the many persons close to us.

unattributed

It is especially appropriate to say that the greatest
command, the most condensed philosophy, the wisest
success-achieving advice ever given was given by
a man who was crucified. He summed it all up when
he said, "Love one another." One does not really need
to fight for success. One can love one's way to success.

Thomas Dreier

How many times have you spoken
the words, "I love you," and
really felt the reverence those
sacred words deserve? How wide
is the path of love you tread?
Can it encompass all those around
you? How aware are you of the
love returning from others that
may be prompted by the love
you are giving? Pour out love in
thought, in word, and in action.
Try to think love, speak love,
feel love, and become immersed
in it, until all else in your life
and world is absorbed and
melted into giving love.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life

Once you have found yourself
and accepted your aloneness,
then the greatest blessing is to share
the love that arises within you.
Each new moment presents
the richest opportunity to be loving.
And you can share love
in the simplest of ways.
Be soft and gentle.
Be caring and kind.
Be loving in an ordinary way,
without any sense
of wanting anything back,
Life offers you
the most precious gift.
The gift of allowing you
to be present and share love.

Leonard Jacobson

The face of love is variable. I am able to love without demanding
that my relationships assume the structures and forms I might choose
for them. My love is fluid, flexible, committed, creative. My love
allows people and events to unfold as they need. My love is not controlling.
It does not dictate or demand. My love allows those
I love the freedom to assume the forms most true to them.
I release all those I love from my preconceptions of their path.
I allow them the dignity of self-definition while I offer them
a constant love that is ever variable in shape.

Julia Cameron

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

Elbert Hubbard

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

William Shakespeare

Nor can that endure which has not its foundation upon love,
For love alone diminishes not, but shines with its own light;
Makes an end of discord, softens the fires of hate, restores
peace in the world, and brings together the sundered,
Redresses wrong, and all and injures none;
And who so invokes its aid will have no fear of future ill,
But shall find safety and have everlasting peace.

unidentified early Christian manuscript

If our heart goes out in love to all with whom we come in contact,
we inspire love and the same ennobling and warming influences of
love always return to us from those in whom we inspire them. There
is a deep scientific principle underlying the precept — If you would
have all the world love you, you must first love all the world.

Ralph Waldo Trine
"Thoughts I Met on the Highway"

If religion commands universal charity, to love our neighbors as ourselves,
to forgive and pray for all our enemies without any reserve; it is because
all degrees of love are degrees of happiness, that strengthen and support
the Divine life of the soul, and are as necessary to its health and happiness,
as proper food is necessary to the health and happiness of the body.

William Law

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates from the center to
the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love
is the talisman of human weal and woe--the open sesame to every soul.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Love is when I am concerned with your relationship with your own
life, rather than with your relationship to mine. . . . There must be a
commitment to each other’s well-being. Most people who say they
have a commitment don’t; they have an attachment. Commitment
means, “I am going to stick with you and support your experience
of well-being.” Attachment means, “I am stuck without you.”

Stewart Emery

When we come to the last moment of this lifetime,
and we look back across it, the only thing that's
going to matter is "What was the quality of our love?"

Richard Bach

love - love2 - love 4 - love 5 - love 6

The cure for all ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the
crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word "love." It is the
divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life. To each
and every one of us, it gives the power of working miracles if we will.

Lydia Maria Child

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Loving and being loved is the greatest of human joys, the ultimate
human experience. We can exist without love; but we are not
living fully as human beings without it.

Edward E. Ford

When we really love others, we accept them as they are. We make
our love visible through little acts of kindness, shared activities, words
of praise and thanks, and our willingness to get along with them.

Edward E. Ford

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

Willa Cather

The greatest truth I know about life is that love is the answer. If you ask me what the question is, I will tell you it is every question you could ever ask. Love is always the answer to every question and problem. We are here to love and be loved and learn a few things in the process.
I can never be wrong when I choose to love. Love rewards me by bringing meaning to my life. I know when I choose to love I will always be in the right place at the right time. It provides my life with the order and harmony that bring me peace.
All I ask of life is to be given the chance to love, and I pray that I will be able to do that, despite my imperfections. My days are devoted to acting as if I am the lover I want to be, and I know someday I will become who I hope to be. Until that day, those around me remain grateful for my attempt.

Bernie Siegel
365 Prescriptions for the Soul

Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible--it cannot
be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a
moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could.

Barbara de Angelis

From the moment we walk out the door until we come back home
our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world that we have to soak
up as much love as we can get, simply to arm ourselves.

Patty Duke

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity--love. And the story
of a love is not important--what is important is that one is capable of
love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Helen Hayes

Once I knew the depth where no hope was and darkness lay on
the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once
I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. My life was
without a past or future, and death a consummation devoutly to be
wished. But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my
hands that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped up with the
rapture of living. I do not know the meaning of the darkness,
but I have learned the overcoming of it.

Helen Keller

Pure love has no conditions or boundaries. Love does not restrain itself
or hold back. Love gives all the time and doesn't ask for anything in return.
Love is a continuous flow without any limits. And all of this is inside you.

Rhonda Byrne

The highest form of love [is] love that allows for intimacy
without the annihilation of difference.

Evelyn Fox Keller
(writing about Barbara McClintock)

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
When we strive to become better than we are,
everything around us becomes better too.

Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.
A Testament of Hope

You don't love someone because they're perfect,
you love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

Jodi Picoult
My Sister's Keeper

Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship
to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying
attention. Noticing. This requires presence.

Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem Every Day

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love,
which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross

From the spiritual side:

Instead of allowing yourself to be so unhappy, just let your life
grow as God wants it to grow; seek goodness in others, love
more persons more; love them more impersonally, more
unselfishly, without thought of return. The return,
never fear, will take care of itself.

Henry Drummond

God looks at the world through the eyes of love. If we, therefore, as
human beings made in the image of God, also want to see reality
rationally, that is, as it truly is, then we, too, must learn
to look at what we see with love.

Roberta Bondi

All the old traditions tell us that there is more than one path to the great
Goal.. . . The shortest and easiest pathway of all is the pathway of Love.
It is the one pathway that is open to all, irrespective of what their personal
conditions or circumstances may be. For every person, everywhere, true
attainment awaits through the yoga of Love, for yoga means union
and it is our union with God that makes the attainment possible.

Emmet Fox

By loving others, we get to
pass on lessons in this
schoolhouse of life.
Loving others is the virtue
that is so hard to embody
yet crucial for advancing in
our spirituality. In loving others,
we elevate others
as well as ourselves and
grow closer to our Higher Power.
We experience consciously that
mysterious, mystical, joyful essence
that is life and God. We rise
and transcend our false
barriers to enjoy the Oneness that,
even if long forgotten,
we still crave deep down
in our cores.

Michael Goddart

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward". Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm, fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called "love". Love is a choice — not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity — a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.

Carter Heyward
Our Passion for Justice