So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in their mission. The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists.
Interpretation
Psychologists struggle to fully understand and articulate love, a task better suited to poets and novelists.
Harry Harlow's quote highlights the limitations of psychology in understanding the complexity of love and affection. Despite scientific observation and analysis, the essence of love is often better captured through art, literature, and poetry, suggesting that emotional experiences transcend rational explanation.
In practice
During a wedding toast to emphasize the power of love beyond scientific understanding.
I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!' 'Don't you?' said the other, in surprise. 'No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do; but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one.
The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.
I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: 'I've crossed oceans of time to find you.' It was worth playing the role just to say that line.
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?
With that strange knowing that comes over me, like a clairvoyance, I know that I am sure of myself and my enormous and alarmingly timeless love for you; which will always be.
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