Honoré de Balzac, who knew a thing or two about all-consuming love, in Physiologie Du Mariage:
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Louis de Bernières in Corelli’s Mandolin:
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Charles Bukowski, who also famously deemed love “a dog from hell,” in this archival video interview:
Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a letter to his ten-year-old daughter explaining the importance of evidence in science and in life:
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Paulo Coelho in The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession:
Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.
James Baldwin in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985:
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
Haruki Murakami in Kafka on the Shore:
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/01/what-is-love/
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Louis de Bernières in Corelli’s Mandolin:
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
Charles Bukowski, who also famously deemed love “a dog from hell,” in this archival video interview:
Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a letter to his ten-year-old daughter explaining the importance of evidence in science and in life:
People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’. But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Paulo Coelho in The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession:
Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.
James Baldwin in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985:
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
Haruki Murakami in Kafka on the Shore:
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/01/what-is-love/
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