love

everything gets less complicated if you think love is just "a hormonal reaction".*

let's see what notable people said about love:

theodor seuss geisel:
you know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

taylor swift:
when you are missing someone, time seems to move slower, and when i'm falling in love with someone, time seems to be moving faster.

kim kardashian:
i think you have different soul-mates throughout your life, that your soul needs different things at different times. i do believe in love. i will always believe in love, but my idea has changed from what i've always thought.

oprah winfrey:
lots of people want to ride with you in the limo. but you want someone who'll help you catch the bus.

william watson purkey:
you've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
love like you'll never be hurt,
sing like there's nobody listening,
and live like it's heaven on earth.

elie wiesel:
the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. the opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. the opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. and the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

william shakespeare:
love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

neil gaiman:
have you ever been in love? horrible isn't it? it makes you so vulnerable. it opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

lao tzu:
being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

chuck palahniuk:
the one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.*

paulo coelho:
when we love, we always strive to become better than we are. when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

one is loved because one is loved. no reason is needed for loving.

mahatma gandhi:
when i despair, i remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. think of it, always.

where there is love there is life.

sarah dessen:
love is needing someone. love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.

oscar wilde:
never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.*

plato:
every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. those who wish to sing always find a song. at the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

john krasinski:
when you're lucky enough to meet your one person, then life takes a turn for the best. it can't get better than that.

katy perry:
first and foremost, self-love, and then give love away.

fyodor dostoevsky:
above all, don't lie to yourself. the man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. and having no respect he ceases to love.

edgar allen poe:
we loved with a love that was more than love.

sigmund freud:
psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.

losing someone hurts. envy hurts. everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality, love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.

(see: mesa selimovic)

love is a choice. not a feeling.

rabbi abraham twerski talks about the difference between selfish love and true love, which must be a love of giving and not of receiving.

transcript:

"'young man. why are you eating that fish?' the young mans says, 'because i love fish.' he says, 'oh. you love the fish. that's why you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it.' he says, 'don't tell me you love the fish. you love yourself, and because the fish tastes good to you; therefore, you took it out of the water and killed it and boiled it.'

"so much of what is love is fish love. young couple falls in love. young man and young woman fall in love. what does that mean? that means that he saw in this woman someone who he felt could provide him with all of his physical and emotional needs, and she felt in this man somebody she feels that she can write, that was love, but each one is looking out for their own needs. it's not love for the other. the other person becomes a vehicle for my gratification.

"too much of what is called love is fish love. an external love is not on what i'm going to get but i'm going to give. we had an ethicist rabbi dessler, who said, 'people make a serious mistake in thinking that you give to those whom you love, and the real answer is you love those to whom you give.'

his point is if i give something to you, i've invested myself in you. since self-love is a given, everybody loves themselves, now that part of me has become in you, there's part of me in you that i love. true love is a love of giving, not a love of receiving.'

here are a few famous quotes on love from some of history's most notable philosophers:

— "love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - aristotle
— "love is not consolation. it is light." - simone weil
— "love is the expression of the one who loves, not of the one who is loved." - soren kierkegaard
— "love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis." - pierre teilhard de chardin
— "love is an endless act of forgiveness. forgiveness is me giving up the right to hurt you for hurting me." - beyonce giselle knowles-carter
— "love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - peter ustinov
— "to love another person is to see the face of god." - victor hugo
— "love is an untamed force. when we try to control it, it destroys us. when we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. when we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused." - paulo coelho

"i opened the book, picking a passage at random, and came across a tale about alexander the great. the emperor, as the story went, received as a gift some wondrous glass dishes. he liked the gifts very much, but smashed them all nonetheless. "why? are they not beautiful?" he was asked. "precisely because of that," he answered. "they are so beautiful that it would be hard for me to lose them. and with time they would break, one by one. and i would be sorrier than i am now."

the tale was naive but it still astonished me. its lesson was bitter: one should renounce everything he might ever begin to love, because loss and disappointment are inevitable. we must renounce love in order not to lose it. we must destroy our love so that it will not be destroyed by others. we must renounce every attachment, because of the possibility of regret. this thought is cruelly hopeless. we cannot destroy everything we love; there will always be the possibility that others will destroy it for us."

love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

trying to be the best version of yourself.

love is letting someone to hurt you.

“love is merely the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole.” aristophanes

the date of aristophanes’ birth is actually not known, however evidence suggest he had been born in cydathenaeus, a deme in athens in the year c.447 bc. he wrote 40 plays, eleven are extant and these have remained a part of western literature. until his death in c.388 bc, aristophanes remained the leading comic poet of greece.

aristophanes gave a speech at plato’s symposium. a symposium was just a dinner party in ancient greece the learned gave speeches, ate and drank, and in the book the symposium where all the speeches were complicated theoretical and philosophical musings about love aristophanes more or less said love is not so difficult and delivers his speech in the form of a myth.

aristophanes gives us a myth that is wildly imaginative and very entertaining. the story is pleasant enough and has an uplifting conclusion, with the suggestion thatlovehelps us to find our "other half" and that one day we might be fully reunited. aristophanes' myth is so overtly delightful, we might ask why he insists that he be taken seriously. aristophanes does not mean his myth to be taken as the literal truth. perhaps in taking his myth seriously, he does not so much want us to take it literally as he wants us to take the comic perspective seriously. that is, we should not laugh off his myth as nonsense, but rather ask what it can teach us. like all good comedy, aristophanes' myth is not entertainment purely for the sake of entertainment. in producing an uplifting response in his listeners, aristophanes also hopes to lead them to a certain perspective on love.

one interesting point to note is that aristophanes' myth suggests that we are attracted not to certain qualities ina person so much as we are attracted to the person him or herself. a certain person is right for us not because that person has certain qualities we find appealing, but because that person's character is similar to ours and resembles our "other half." we find that person's particular qualities attractive because they belong to someone whose nature we find sympathetic, and not the other way around. when we have found someone with a similar nature to ours, we want to bond with them and live a shared life with them. the idea of sharing one's life with another is a common greek theme regarding interpersonal relationships. a similar thought is expressed by aristotle in his writings on friendship, for instance. as drawn out by aristophanes' myth, this attraction to our "other half" is one of the noblest pursuits of all. it makes us whole again, and can ease any feelings of incompleteness we may experience in our everyday life.

aristophanes' myth on the origin of love

long ago, aristophanes explains, there were three genders: male, female, and androgynous, and each person was twice what they are now. that is, they had four hands, four legs, two heads, two sets of genitals, and so on. they could move both forward and backward and would run by spinning themselves around cartwheel-like on all eight limbs. males were descended from the sun, females from the earth, and those who were androgynous were descended from the moon.

they were very powerful and vigorous and made threatening attacks on the gods. the gods did not want to destroy them because they would then forfeit the sacrifices humans made to them, so zeus decided to cut each person in two. he also suggested that if this didn't settle humans down, he would cut them in two once again and they would have to hop about on one leg.

apollo (the god of light) then turned their heads to make them face towards their wound, pulled their skin around to cover up the wound, and tied it together at the navel like a purse. he made sure to leave a few wrinkles on what became known as the abdomen so that they might be reminded of their punishment because they longed for their original nature, people kept trying to find their other half and reunite with it. when they found their other half, they would embrace and stay together, not wanting anything else.

eventually, people started dying of hunger or general inactivity. zeus took pity on them, and moved their genitals around so that they would be facing frontward. this way, when they embraced, they could have sexual intercourse, and those who were formerly androgynous could reproduce, and even two men who came together could at least have sexual satisfaction and then move on to other things.

this is the origin of our instinctive desire for other human beings. those who are interested in members of the opposite sex are halves of formerly androgynous people, while men who like men and women who like women are halves of what were formerly whole males and females. aristophanes applauds male-male relationships between men and boys since such couples value boldness, braveness, and masculinity, both in themselves and in others.

when we find our other half, we are overwhelmed with affection, concern, and love for that person. this great amount of care cannot result simply from a desire for sex, but we have difficulty articulating precisely what it is that makes us care so much. if hephaestus, the blacksmith god, were to offer to weld a couple together so that they would become one and never be parted, even in death, they would leap at this opportunity.

"love"is the name that we give to our desire for wholeness, to be restored to our original nature.

aristophanes observes that if we are disobedient or disorderly toward the gods, zeus might split us in two once more, so we must strive ourselves, and encourage others, to behave well toward the gods. in this respect, love is our leader, and if we work against love we will find ourselves on the wrong side of the gods. aristophanes urges eryximachus and the others not to take his speech as a simple comedy, or a joke directed at such life-partners as pausanias and agathon. given that we are all separate, love does what he can for us given the circumstances: he guides us toward those who are close in nature to us and who best fit our character. perhaps if we continue to show reverence to the gods, he may one day restore us to our formerly whole selves.