thoughts on love...

I figured that it was only appropriate to share some of my favorite quotes about love...

“If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around us.”  

Hugh Grant in Love Actually

“Love is the passionate dance between two hearts. It is to believe in the dream, and together make it real.”  

Sylvana Rossetti

“Love is a force that connects us to every strand of the universe, an unconditional state that characterizes human nature, a form of knowledge that is always there for us if only we can open ourselves to it.”  

Emily H. Sell

“The devotion and love of a friend are feelings to prize and protect.”

Unknown

“I don’t want another pretty face, I don’t want just anyone to hold, I don’t want my love to go to waste, I want you and your beautiful soul.”

Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney

"To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is--solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things." 

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

"But let there be spaces in your togetherness.

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow." 

also from The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran

"He loves each one of us, as if there were only one of us."

     St. Augustine of Hippo

"To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He

has given us -- and He has given us everything.  Every breath we

draw is a gift of His love."

     Thomas Merton

"You know you are in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

Dr. Seuss

"Sometimes your nearness thames my breath away; and all the things I want to say can find no voice. Then, in silence I can only hope my eyes will speak my heart."

Robert Sexton

"There is only one happiness in life; to love and be loved."

George Sand

"If a hug represented how much I loved you, I would hold you in my arms forever."

Mandy Hampton

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because that is what love is. Love is not breathless, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned awe, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."

Louis de Bernieres

"True love begins when nothing is expected in return."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Now take this inspiration and go love the people in your life!

xo