Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers.
Interpretation
Love transcends mere feelings; it is an active commitment to care for another person as an equal.
Martin Buber's quote emphasizes that love involves a profound responsibility between individuals, where one person (the 'I') actively engages and commits to the well-being of another (the 'You'). This perspective highlights that true love is not just a feeling but a conscious choice to uphold equality and mutual care between lovers, suggesting that love is rooted in shared responsibility rather than emotional dependency.
In practice
In a wedding ceremony, one might quote this to emphasize the responsibility that partners take for one another.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.
Power at its best is love implementing the demand of justice.
But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
For above all things Love means sweetness, and truth, and measure; yea, loyalty to the loved one and to your word. And because of this I dare not meddle with so high a matter.
To know the pain of too much tenderness
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
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