The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
Interpretation
True love flourishes when it is shared, both in giving and receiving.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes the reciprocal nature of love, suggesting that the more we share love with others, the more we cultivate it within ourselves. Love is not a finite resource; rather, it grows and strengthens through acts of giving and receiving, creating a profound connection between individuals.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a wedding ceremony to highlight the importance of love in marriage.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Love is familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love." -
Love is created and preserved by intellectual analysis, for we love only that which is unique, and it belongs to contemplation, not to action, for we would not change that which we love.
And I, a materialist who does not believe in the starry heaven promised to a human being, for this dog and for every dog I believe in heaven, yes, I believe in a heaven that I will never enter, but he waits for me wagging his big fan of a tail so I, soon to arrive, will feel welcomed.
Nothing else is necessary but these - love, sincerity, and patience.
Love had always issued out of the places that hurt the most.
Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.
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