TRUE LOVE GIVES MEANING TO LIFE: QUOTES AND EXTRACTS OF POEMS


Right: Fragment of Indian painting
Shiva and family


LOVE IS HAPPINESS...

There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.
George Sand, 1804-1876, French writer, Letter to Lina Calamatta

Whether life is or is not worth the pain of being lived, or, rather, whether it is worth the pain and the pleasure of being live depends, first and foremost on one’s capacity for love.
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy



Happiness is to be happy in love, unhappiness is to be unhappy in love, or to have no love at all.
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy, Vintage



It is love which keeps us alive, since it alone makes life loveable. It is love which saves; it is therefore love which must be saved.
Andre Comte-Sponville, French philosopher, The Little Book of Philosophy, Vintage



Only the soul that loves is happy.
Johann Goethe, 1749-1831, German writer, Egmont

Even if I speak all the languages of men and of angels, if I don't have love, life became sounding brass, and a clanging cymbal.
Bible, Corinthians  

We human beings are animals dependant on love.
Humberto Maturama, in E. Morin Method V

The poetry of life, with the love it contains and that contains it, is the only response to death.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Love makes us tolerate destiny, and makes us love life.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Love is the great poetry in the prosaic modern world.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

The two wings of our souls, immune to any gust of wind, are true love and faith.
Attributed to Stanislas-Xavier Touchet, 1848-1926, French religious

Life is sown with miracles that only people who love can wait for.
Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower

                                      
You might say that love is friendship gone mad.
Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

BROTHERLY LOVE
Love and meaning of life


In Tibet we say that many illnesses can be cured by the one medicine of love and compassion.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan political and spiritual leader, Voices from the Heart 

No material object, however beautiful or valuable, can make us feel loved, because our deeper identity and true character is in the subjective nature of the mind.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan political and spiritual leader, Voices from the Heart 

The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan political and spiritual leader, Voices from the Heart 

The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another.
Dalai Lama, Tibetan political and spiritual leader, Voices from the Heart 

I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. 
Mother Teresa, 1910-1997, Roman Catholic missionary, Guardian 6/9/97

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ESSAY
Essay We all are Abelards and Heloises




Love in Philosophy and Poetry: Plato
Plato, 428-347 b.C., Greek philosopher, Symposium

 

When a lover is fortunate enough to meet his other half, they are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight for a single instant.

Love sleeps on the naked earth, in partaking of his mother’s poverty…. In the space of a day he will be now, when all goes well with him, alive and blooming, and now dying, to be born again by virtue of his father’s nature, while what he gains will always ebb away as fast.

 

Love is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in-the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress.

Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, love is always plotting against the fair and good; love is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an enchanter, sorcerer, sophist. Love is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature.

Love in Literature: Shakespeare poem
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet and playwright

 

Romeo: Just as a pilgrim might kiss the statue of a saint in hopes of receiving forgiveness for sins, so your acceptance of my kiss undoes any sin I committed by holding your hand.
Juliet: So you claim to have gotten rid of your sin by kissing my lips. Now I've got the sin. What are you going to do about that?
Romeo: "You want me to kiss you again? Great!"

 

'Tis torture, and not mercy: heaven is here,
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
Live here in heaven and may look on her;
But Romeo may not.

Did my heart love till now?
Forswear it sight,
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
Romeo and Juliet

For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me?
Midsummers’s Night Dream

Love in Literature / Poetry: Abelard and Heloise
Heloise, 1098-1164, French Religious, The letters of Abelard and Heloise
Peter Abelard, 1079 – 1142, French Logician, Historia Calamitatum, Macmillan

 

Abelard (some extracts from his letters)

We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love, and then in the hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. Our hands sought less the book than each other's bosoms - love drew our eyes together far more than the lesson drew them to the pages of our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the most fragrant balm in sweetness. What followed? No degree in love's progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself could imagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it. And our inexperience of such delights made us all the more ardent in our pursuit of them, so that our thirst for one another was still unquenched.

In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, I devoted ever less time to philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to go to the school or to linger there; the labour, moreover, was very burdensome, since my nights were vigils of love and my days of study. My lecturing became utterly careless and lukewarm.

It was not long after this that Heloise found that she was pregnant, and of this she wrote to me in the utmost exultation, at the same time asking me to consider what had best be done. Accordingly, on a night when her uncle was absent, we carried out the plan we had determined on, and I stole her secretly away from her uncle's house, sending her without delay to my own country. She remained there with my sister until she gave birth to a son, whom she named Astrolabe

When her uncle and his kinsmen heard of this, they were convinced that now I had completely played them false and had rid myself forever of Heloise by forcing her to become a nun. Violently incensed, they laid a plot against me, and one night while I all unsuspecting was asleep in a secret room in my lodgings, they broke in with the help of one of my servants whom they had bribed. There they had vengeance on me with a most cruel and most shameful punishment, such as astounded the whole world; for they cut off those parts of my body with which I had done that which was the cause of their sorrow. This done, straightway they fled, but two of them were captured and suffered the loss of their eyes and their genital organs. One of these two was the aforesaid servant, who even while he was still in my service, had been led by his avarice to betray me.
Peter Abelard, Historia Calamitatum, Macmillan, translated by Henry A. Bellowss

Heloise (some extracts from her letters)

God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself; I wanted simply you, nothing of yours.

For not with me was my heart, but with you. But now, more than ever, if it be not with you, it is nowhere. For without you it cannot anywhere exist

But if I lose you what is left for me to hope for? What reason for continuing on life's pilgrimage, for which I have no support but you, and none in you save the knowledge that you are alive, now that I am forbidden all other pleasures in you and denied even the joy of your presence which from time to time could restore me to myself?

For a long time my pretence deceived you, as it did many, so that you mistook hypocrisy for piety; and therefore you commend yourself to my prayers and ask me what I expect from you. I beg you, do not feel so sure of me that you cease to help me by your own prayers. Do not suppose me healthy and so withdraw the grace of your healing. Do not believe I want for nothing and delay helping me in the hour of my need. Do not think me strong, lest I fall before you can sustain me....

The letters of Abelard and Heloise, Penguin Books, translated by Betty Radice

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ESSAY
Essay We all are Abelards and Heloises


See also:
Life and friendshipip
Happiness
Philosophies of Life
Life Best Years

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