"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
--James Baldwin

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"I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so."
--John Donne

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"There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem... It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough, you could be the happiest and most powerful being in the world."
--Emmet Fox

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"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

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

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"The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one person."
--Vi Putnam

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"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
--Bertrand Russell

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"Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds."
--William Shakespeare

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"To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be."
--Anna Louise Strong

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"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
--Mother Theresa

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"Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love."

--Henry David Thoreau

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"Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame."
--Henry David Thoreau

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

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"The first duty of love is to listen."
--Paul Tillich

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"Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
Love never fails..."
--1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
~ Erich Fromm ~

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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.
~ Pearl S. Buck ~

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The life and love we create is the life and love we live.
~ Leo Buscaglia ~

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Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage.
~ Lao Tzu ~

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The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies, With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies, When love is done.
~ Francis W. Bourdillon ~

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The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish,
but that they cease to love.
~ W. Somerset Maugham ~

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The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
~ Maulana Jalalu'ddin Rumi ~

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"Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are."
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve

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Love doesn't make the world go round,
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
~ by Elizabeth Browning ~

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If I know what love is,
It is because of you.
~ by Herman Hesse ~

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Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

--Jeanne Moreau, French Actress

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To love a person is to learn the song
That is in their heart,
And to sing it to them
When they have forgotten.
~ Arne Garborg ~

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Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.
~ Flavia Weedn ~

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Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
--Margery Williams     The Velveteen Rabbit

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Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.
--Matt Groening~

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For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
--Rainer Maria Rilke

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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love I gain nothing Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away...And now these things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
--1 Corinthians 13:1-8, 13

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We must love one another or die
--W.H. Auden poem - September 1, 1939

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"Tell me who you love, and I'll tell you who you are."
Creole Proverb

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If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with
--Stephen Stills

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If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
--Sir James M. Barrie

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If the universe has any purpose more important then topping a woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I have never heard of it.
--Robert A. Heinlein      Lazarus Long

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Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work.
--Vincent Van Gogh

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There is always something left to love. And if you haven't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
--Lorraine Hansberry

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This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess
--Rainer Maria Rilke

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To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it; and when the time comes, to let go.
--Mary Oliver

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Love is space and time measured by the heart.
--Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

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Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy;  Even love unreturned has its rainbow
--Eaton Stannard Barret

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The greatest thing you ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
--Nat King Cole

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Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
--Jean Anouilh

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Love is not something you feel. It's something you do.
--David Wilkerson

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When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
--Albert Camus

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Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.
--Katherine Hepburn

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Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.
--Erica Jong

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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
--Bertrand Russell

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Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us.

--Leo Buscaglia

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Song Of Myself            Walt Whitman       
48

I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his funeral
drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the
learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young man following
it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel'd
universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and com-
posed before a million universes.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not
in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than my-
self.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four and each
moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in
the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd
by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

--------------------------------

"I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
William Butler Yeats

---------------------------------

There are provisions in the Libit-Ishtar law code for the penalization of extra-marital coitus. Middle Assyrian laws include the following - "If he has kissed her - the wife of another - they shall draw his lower lip along the edge of a blade and cut it off." In the Code of Hammurabi a man might divorce his wife at will but must restore her dowry and provide maintenance. Both parties to adultery were liable to drowning; incest was punished by death or exile seduction was punished by fines; sodomy is not mentioned. The later Hittite Code, centuries after Hammurabi but deriving from his code, is generally said to show a marked ethical advance. For instance private revenge, not uncommon in old Babylonian law, is only allowed in one case - where a husband catches his wife in adultery: if the wronged husband thereupon kills both his wife and her lover he is guiltless in the eyes of the law; but if he does not act at once the moment of just vengeance is passed and he must then have recourse to lawful procedures.
http://www.world-sex-records.com/sex-432.htm

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I loved you...

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
Translated by Genia Gurarie, 11/10/95

I loved you, and I probably still do,
And for a while the feeling may remain...
But let my love no longer trouble you,
I do not wish to cause you any pain.
I loved you; and the hopelessness I knew,
The jealousy, the shyness – though in vain –
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.

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O Tell Me The Truth About Love              W. H. Auden

Some say that love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
And some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pajamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does it's odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway-guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
it wasn't ever there:
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all it's time at the races,
Or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my shoes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

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Perhaps the truth about love is buried here someplace.

Perhaps not.