Love Quotes:
I wanted to learn more about love, so I went to the masters. I found some quotes about love spoken by people that we all know and can appreciate as having intriguingly valid opinions. Here are some of the best I could find with a small paragraph of my own following each:
"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."
-Benjamin Franklin
This one is the first that my mind instantly wrapped around. I believe that unless we love ourselves first, we really cannot even understand how to love anyone else. Also, if you love yourself purposefully - not selfishly - then you will develop as an individual. When you are a self-realized and developed individual, you have more to offer to someone that you may love. When people who do nothing to develop themselves are searching for love, they are really just searching for someone to love them. I say love yourself first and then offer your love to another or others. Then everyone can benefit from the positive side of love.
"Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."
-St. Augustine
Everyone has heard this about a million times, but have you ever really thought about what it means? St. Augustine obviously believed in love. He must have been in love. I personally do not agree. I have loved and lost at love (several times). Relationships do not normally last forever. I am not even sure that they are meant to. I can think of at least 3 or 4 relationships (each having lasted for at least 3 years) where we loved each other and then stopped. Looking back, I wish that I would have invested all of that energy into developing myself and waiting for the real love of my life to arrive. I think St. Augustine must have been a wimp.
"Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting."
-Mother Theresa
Now, I've never really known that much about Mother Theresa, but now I feel that I know all that I need to know. A person like her, to me, is like Jesus or the Buddha must have been - wholesome and true. That is the way that all humans should feel and strive to be like. If we all started spreading love, then maybe we wouldn't be in wars. Maybe the entire planet could begin to mesh and all people could see through the blinding hatred that they seem to be enveloped in. Do I see it ever happening? Hell no. People are jerks. Most will never be like Mother Theresa.
"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds."
-Shakespeare
Ah, Shakespeare - you weird-speaking fellow. I think this is saying that any love that cannot endure some crap is doomed to fail. How true is that? Anyone who loves another and gives their thought and effort to sustain that love understands that you have to put up with a lot at times to make love work. Any couple who has been together for any impressive amount of time has suffered together for different reasons at different times. It isn't very wise to assume otherwise. Love takes work. Lasting love is more about choice than destiny. We have to dedicate ourselves to loving ourselves and others. That is only natural. It is when we meet challenges head-on and still persevere that love proves its validity and grows stronger.
Well, that's all I have to say about love quotes for now. Does anybody feel me?