Inspirational Quotes on Love

“You are part of my existence, part of myself.”

“I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. All my expectations depend on one person. And how indefinite and uncertain they are!”

“Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it.”

“Would it be weakness to return my love?”

“Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.”

“In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends.”

“The righteousness of God in His election means, then, that as a righteous Judge God perceives and estimates as such the lost cause of the creature, and that in spite of its opposition He gives sentence in its favour, fashioning for it His own righteousness.”

“Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity.”

“This [love] ought to be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour in us … that we should heartily love each other.' But that which in the truth of religion is the essence of the fable, is to the religious consciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.”

“How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love? Who has not experienced the overwhelming power of melody? And what else is melody but the power of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; … feeling communicates itself. … Is it man that possesses love, or is it not … love that possesses man? When love impels a man to suffer death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power his own individual power, or is it not rather the power of love?”

“[L]ove unites. … [N]ot a visionary, imaginary love – no! a real love, a love which has flesh and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living.”

“[I]n love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a need of the heart; … the life which he has through love to be the truly human life, … The individual is defective, imperfect, weak, needy; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from wants, self-sufficing, infinite; … friendship is a means of virtue, and more: it is … dependent however on participation. … [I]t cannot be based on perfect similarity; on the contrary, it requires diversity, for friendship rests on a desire for self-contemplation. One friend obtains through the other what he does not himself possess. … However faulty a man may be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him if he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect, I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others.”

“[L]ove is also the idealism of nature … Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love alone gives the plant it corolla. And what wonders does love not work in our social life!”

“The clearest, most irrefragable proof that man in religion contemplates himself as the object of the Divine Being … is … love … , the … central point of religion. God, for the sake of man, empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside his Godhead. … How can the worth of man be more strongly expressed than when God, for man's sake, becomes a man, when man is the end, the object of the divine love? The love of God to man is an essential condition of the Divine Being … . Here lies the ultimate emphasis, the fundamental feeling of religion. The love of God makes me loving; … But when I love and worship the love with which God loves man, do I not love man … ? [I]f God loves man, man is the heart of God … [I]s not the content of the divine nature, the human nature? … [T]he love of God … - the … central point of religion – [is] the love of man to himself.”

“...Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely ‘neighbor-regarding concern for others,’ which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore, Agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. If one loves an individual merely on account of his friendliness, he loves him for the sake of the benefits to be gained from the friendship, rather than for the friend’s own sake. Consequently, the best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution.”

“[Hitler wasn't] the first one to claim that God was on [his] side. But claiming it and keeping with His character are two different things. Jesus walked with the weak of this world--the sick, the lame, the blind. [Hitler] called them weaklings, the refuse of society, and said they had to be done away with. [God] talked of humility; [Hitler] talked of pride. [God] talked of submission; [Hitler] talked of conquering. [God] talked of love; [Hitler] talked of hate. [God] even allowed those who opposed Him to speak; [Hitler] silenced even those who just wanted to ask questions. [God] allowed those who despised Him the freedom to make their choice. For [Hitler], the only freedom possible was to implement [his] plan for world domination.”

“Out of that union [Kingdom of God reign] we discover love as a life power that has the marvelous, many-sided expression spelled out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. But this beautiful statement by Paul is commonly misunderstood in exactly the same legalistic way as is Jesus' Discourse on the Hill. Love, Paul there tells us, is patient, kind, free of jealousy and arrogance, is not rude or self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs, takes no joy in things that are wrong but instead in what is true. It always protects, always accepts, always hopes, and endures everything. And it never quits (1 Cor. 13:4–8). People usually read this, and are taught to read it, as telling them to be patient, kind, free of jealousy, and so on—just as they read Jesus' Discourse as telling them to not call others fools, not look on a woman to lust, not swear, to go the second mile, and so forth. But Paul is plainly saying—look at his words—that it is love that does these things, not us, and that what we are to do is to “pursue love” (1 Cor. 14:1). As we “catch” love, we then find that these things are after all actually being done by us. These things, these godly actions and behaviors, are the result of dwelling in love. We have become the kind of person who is patient, kind, free of jealousy, and so on. Paul's message is exactly the same as Jesus' message. And no wonder, for as Paul was always the first to say, he learned what he taught from Jesus (Gal. 1:12).”

“What causes love, since it is a passion, is its object; and since it is a sort of affinity or agreement with the object, what causes love is the goodness or agreeableness of that object. Evil can only be loved because it seems good, because being partially good it is perceived as wholly so. And the beautiful is a form of the good: if something is agreeable in general we call it good, and if the perception of it is agreeable we call it beautiful. But goodness must be known before it can become the object of love, so knowledge itself can be said to cause love. Knowing is an activity of reason, which abstracts from things and then makes connections between them, needing to know each part and property and power of things if it is to know them perfectly. But loving is an appetite for things as they stand, and to love perfectly we need only love them as they are perceived to exist in themselves.”

“Friendship is the deepest part of love”

“¿Por qué fatalidad ha sido preciso que lo que hace y constituye la dicha del hombre, sea tan a menudo el origen, y la causa de su infortunio?”