Love, Compassionate...
"I can think of no better way of redeeming this tragic world today than love and laughter. Too many of the young have forgotten how to laugh, and too many of the elders have forgotten how to love. Would not our lives be lightened if only we could all learn to laugh more easily at ourselves and to love one another?"
-- Theodore Hesburgh“Love is the only rational act.”
--Levine“Though we share this humble path alone, how fragile is the heart./ Oh, give these clay feet wings to fly, to touch the face of the stars./ Breathe life into this feeble heart. Life this mortal veil of fear./ Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears, we’ll rise above these earthly cares./ Cast your eyes on the ocean, cast your soul to the sea./ When the dark night seems endless, please remember me.”
--Loreena McKennitt, Dante’s Prayer“We can only learn to love by loving.”
--Iris Murdoch“Perhaps the chief business of life is simply to learn how to love.”
--Marsha Sinetar“Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”
--Mother Teresa“All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie,/The romantic lie in the brain/Of the sensuous man-in-the-street/And the lie of Authority/Whose buildings grope the sky:/There is no such thing as the State/And no one exists alone;/Hunger allows no choice/To the citizen or the police;/We must love one another or die.”
--W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder.”
--Charles Morgan
“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved—loved for ourselves, or rather, in spite of ourselves.” –Victor Hugo“An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.”
–Harold Loukes“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“He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
–Einstein“I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.”
--Mother Theresa“Love never claims, it ever gives.”
–Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi“Agape is disinterested love…Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes…Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr., An Experiment in Love (1958)“If I can’t love Hitler, I can’t love all.”
–A. J. Muste“There is only one thing that has power, and that is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”
--Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country“Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.”
--I Corinthians 13:4-7“Power said to the world, ‘You are mine.’
The world kept it prisoner on her throne.
Love said to the world, ‘I am thine.’
The world gave it the freedom of her house.”
--Rabindranath Tagore“Love is a mighty power, a great and complete good. Love alone lightens every burden, and makes the rough places smooth…Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth; for love is born of God, and can rest only in God, above all created things. Love flies, runs, and leaps for joy; it is free and unrestrained. Love gives all for all, resting in One who is highest above all things, from whom every good flows and proceeds. Love does not regard the gifts, but returns to the Giver of all good gifts.”
--Thomas a Kempis