Virtues

"Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other's eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God's creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature."

"In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other."

"Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it."

"He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him."

"Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity."

"If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return."

"This pain, accompanied by the idea of our own weakness, is called humility; the pleasure, which springs from the contemplation of ourselves, is called self-love or self-complacency. And inasmuch as this feeling is renewed as often as a man contemplates his own virtues, or his own power of activity, it follows that everyone is fond of narrating his own exploits, and displaying the force both of his body and his mind, and also that, for this reason, men are troublesome to one another. Again, it follows that men are naturally envious, rejoicing in the shortcomings of their equals, and feeling pain at their virtues. For whenever a man conceives his own actions, he is affected with pleasure, in proportion as his actions display more perfection, and he conceives them more distinctly--that is, in proportion as he can distinguish them from others, and regard them as something special. Therefore, a man will take pleasure in contemplating himself, when he contemplates some quality which he denies to others. But if that which he affirms of himself be attributable to the idea of man or animals in general, he will not be so greatly pleased: he will, on the contrary, feel pain, if he conceives that his own actions fall short when compared with those of others. This pain he will endeavor to remove, by putting a wrong construction on the actions of his equals, or by, as far as he can, embellishing his own. It is thus apparent that men are naturally prone to hatred and envy, which latter is fostered by their education. For parents are accustomed to incite their children to virtue solely by the spur of honor and envy, but perhaps, some will scruple to assent to what I have said, because we not seldom admire men's virtues, and venerate their possessors. In order to remove such doubts I append the following corollary."

"Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of... the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the “elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new “elementary force.”"

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?"

"Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love."

"This endeavor to bring it about, that our own likes and dislikes should meet with universal approval, is really ambition; wherefore we see that everyone by nature desires (appetere), that the rest of mankind should live according to his own individual disposition: when such a desire is equally present in all, everyone stands in everyone else's way, and in wishing to be loved or praised by all, all become mutually hateful."

"When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return."

"The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency."

"...it follows that everyone endeavors, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates..."

"From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred."

"Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it."

"If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival."

"If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul."

"Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned."

"The feeling of love - is a fervent desire of goodness to a man."

"When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you. When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you. When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you. Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you."

"The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over."

"Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom— there I will give you my love. The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my beloved."

"All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind."

"If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love."

"The secret of all future development is a recognition that everything achieved by man from a right comprehension of evolution is a sowing of seed which must ripen into love. And the greater the amount of love-force, so much the greater will be the creative force available for the future. In that which will grow from love, will lie the mighty forces leading to that culminating point of spiritualization described above... Spiritual knowledge is transmuted through its own nature into love... The wisdom of the outer world becomes inner wisdom in man from the Earth period onward and when it is concentrated in him, it becomes the germ of love. Wisdom is the necessary preliminary condition for love; love is the fruit of wisdom, reborn in the ego."

"All's fair in love and war."

"To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence."

"The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the 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."

"For true evangelical faith...cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it...clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it."

"Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates. The earth is blue. And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it."

"Maybe the heart is part of the mist. And that's all that there is or could ever exist. Maybe and maybe and maybe some more. Maybe's the exit that I'm looking for."

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— for your love is more delightful than wine."

"Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C. And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity. Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone? God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill."

"The problem is all inside your head, she said to me The answer is easy if you take it logically I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free There must be fifty ways to leave your lover."

"She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover"

"You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights."

"But as a philosopher said, one day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, after all the scientific and technological achievements, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

"First thing I remember when you came into my life I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you."

"And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart, Everybody sees you're blown apart, Everybody feels the wind blow.'"

"How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!"

"In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen."

"This is the day, which down the void abysm At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep: Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings."

"True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning."

"Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave."

"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."

"Time passes, people move...Like a river's flow, it never ends. A childish mind will turn to noble ambition...Young love will become deep affection... The clear water's surface reflects growth..."

"Yet all love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever. * * * * * They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now: but those who feel it most Are happier still after long sufferings As I shall soon become."

"And bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's."

"Familiar acts are beautiful through love."