on love

W sent me a quote from Herman Hesse:

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

She meant it from her to me, but this is true for both of us.

So I went to look for a pile of love quotes, and found these. Some favorites:

Rumi:
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:
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover be.

Sir Arthur Pinero:
Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.

Tom Robbins:
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

Ambrose Bierce (included only because I love AB):
Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.

Ann Landers:
If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough.

Barbara De Angelis:
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.

C.S. Lewis:
Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.

Emily Dickinson:
That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love.

Erich Fromm:
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved."
Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love."
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you."
Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

Francis David:
We need not think alike to love alike.

Franklin P. Jones:
Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

George Sand:
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Hazrat Inayat Khan:
The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no reason to hate them; you just forget.

Henry David Thoreau:
There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Ingrid Bergman:
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

Isha McKenzie-Mavinga:
On reflection, one of the things I needed to learn was to allow myself to be loved.

James D. Bryden:
Love does not die easily. It is a living thing. It thrives in the face of all of life's hazards, save one -- neglect.

Jimi Hendrix:
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

Lisa Hoffman:
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

Pascal:
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.

Paul Tillich:
The first duty of love is to listen.

Pearl S. Buck:
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin:
Absence is to love as wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small and kindles the great.

Roy Croft:
I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you

This one is my favorite:
Margaret Anderson:
In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.

This one kinda scares me :)
Mark Twain:
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.