Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.
Interpretation
In love, we often overlook our partner's flaws and selfishness as long as they desire us.
This quote highlights the unconditional nature of love, suggesting that when we are the object of a lover's affection, we tend to forgive their shortcomings and selfish behaviors. It points to the deep emotional connection that can allow individuals to overlook negative traits if the love is genuine, even hinting at the complexity of love and the challenges of translation between cultures, where profound feelings may not be easily conveyed.
In practice
During a Valentine's Day speech about the complexities of love and forgiveness.
When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.
I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.
The bones of the story of 'War Horse' is a love story. That's what makes it universal.
I believe that marriage isn't between a man and woman; but between love and love.
But words are vain; reject them all— They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.
Writers are great lovers. They fall in love with other writers. That's how they learn to write. They take on a writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the writer moves, pauses, and sees. That's what being a lover is: stepping out of yourself, stepping into someone else's skin.
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
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