Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
It is not self-seeking, nor easily angered.
It keeps no record of wrongdoing.
It does not delight in evil,
But rejoices in the truth.
It always protects, trusts, hopes, and preserves.
There is nothing love cannot face;
There is no limit to its faith, hope, and endurance.
In a word, there are three things that last forever:
Faith, hope, and love;
But the greatest of them all is love.  
-1 Corinthians 13:4-7

If I know what love is, it is because of you.
- Herman Hesse

True seeing always gives rise to true love. -Thich Nhat Hanh


 

won't use the door, only the window.
 - Rumi

This is my commandment, that ye love one another. - Yeshua

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.
- Victor Hugo

We are all born for love…it is the principle of existence and its only end. - Benjamin Disraeli

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. - Euripides

Love conquers all things. - Virgil

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



Love never claims, it ever gives; love never suffers, never resents, never revenges itself. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction. -Mahatma Gandhi

A lifetime without Love is of no account
Love is the Water of Life
Drink it down with heart and soul!
- Rumi

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Love is the only gold. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,

to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.

First, to let go of live.

In the end, to take a step without feet;

to regard this world as invisible,

and to disregard what appears to be the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been

to enter this circle of lovers,

to see beyond seeing itself,

to reach and feel within the breast.

- Rumi

If you have 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





One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.  That word is love.  - Sophocles

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection - Buddha

Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies.  - Swedish Proverb

Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
- Mother Teresa

The beauty of the heart

is the lasting beauty:

its lips give to drink

of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,

that which pours,

and the one who drinks.

All three become one when 

your talisman is shattered.

That oneness you can't know

by reasoning.

- Rumi

Do all things with love. - Og Mandino

How very close

is your soul with mine

i know for sure

everything you think

goes through my mind

i am with you

now and doomsday

not like a host

caring for you

at a feast alone

with you i am happy

all the times

the time i offer my life

or the time

you gift me your love

offering my life

is a profitable venture

each life i give

you pay in turn

a hundred lives again

in this house

there are a thousand

dead and still souls

making you stay

as this will be yours

a handful of earth

cries aloud

i used to be hair or

i used to be bones

and just the moment

when you are all confused

leaps forth a voice

hold me close

i'm love and

i'm always yours
- Rumi



For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:21

All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. - Leo Tolstoy

My words are drunk, my heart is drunk,
And your images are drunk -
They all pile on top of each other
And just gaze.

One turning, burning diamond.
One, one, one.
One turning, burning diamond.
- Rumi

"Knowing thyself" is the first practice of love. -Thich Nhat Hanh

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. - Song of Solomon



Thou and I

Joyful the moment when we sat in the bower, Thou and I;
In two forms and with two faces - with one soul, Thou and I.

The colour of the garden and the song of the birds give the elixir of immortality
The instant we come into the orchard, Thou and I.

The stars of Heaven come out to look upon us -
We shall show the moon herself to them, Thou and I.

Thou and I, with no 'Thou' or 'I', shall become one through our tasting;
Happy, safe from idle talking, Thou and I.

The spirited parrots of heaven will envy us -
Wen we shall laugh in such a way, Thou and I.

This is stranger, that Thou and I, in this corner here...
Are both in one breath here and there - Thou and I.

-Rumi

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
- Lao Tzu





Held like this, to draw in milk,
no will, tasting clouds of milk,
never so content.
- Rumi

All you need is love. -

John Dryden

Love is the way messengers
from the mystery tell us things.
Love is the mother.  We are her children.
She shines inside us, visible-invisible.
-Rumi



Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
-

John Keats

Aphrodite singing ghazals.  A sky with
gold streaks across.  A stick
that finds water in stone.  Jesus
sitting quietly near the animals.

Night so peaceful.  THIS IS ENOUGH
was always true.  We just haven't
seen it.  The hoopoe already wears
a tufted crown.  Each ant is given
its elegant belt at birth.  This love
we feel pours through us like a song.
The source of now is here.
- Rumi





Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. -

Franklin P. Jones



Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. -Corinthians 13:7-8

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.  - Anais Nin

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an ax to the prison wall.
Escape.  Walk out
like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side.  Die,
and be quiet.  Quietness is the surest
sign that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon comes out now.
- Rumi

Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice. - Thich Nhat Hanh

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
 - Kahlil Gibran