Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Interpretation
Love is about recognizing parts of ourselves in others and finding joy in that connection.
This quote suggests that love is not just an emotion but a profound experience of self-discovery through our relationships. When we love others, we often find reflections of our own identities and values in them, and this mutual recognition brings a sense of joy and fulfillment.
In practice
A couple celebrating their anniversary might share this quote to reflect on their journey together.
Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.
God is to be worshiped as the one Beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.
I can't give you the moon,β the tinker said. βShe doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.
What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.
The outstretched arms of Jesus exclude no one, not the drunk in the doorway, the panhandler on the street, gays and lesbians in their isolation, the most selfish and ungrateful in their cocoons, the most unjust of employers and the most overweening of snobs. The love of Christ embraces all without exception.
a laotong relationship is made by choice...when we first looked in each other's eyes in the palanquin I felt something special pass between us--like a spark to start a fire or a seed to grow rice. But a single spark is not enough to warm a room nor is a single seed enough to grow a fruitful crop. Deep love--true-heart love--must grow.
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