One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
StendhalRead
Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love requires investment and reflection to fully appreciate and understand.
This quote by Stendhal emphasizes the idea that love is a reciprocal relationship; the depth and quality of love we experience is directly proportional to the effort and emotions we contribute to it. Just as a well provides water only when it is filled, love thrives on our emotional input, and the beauty we perceive in love mirrors our own inner feelings and perspectives.
Themes
LoveInvestmentEmotionsRelationshipReflection
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech to highlight the importance of nurturing love.
More from Stendhal
All quotes βTrue love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.
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In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
StendhalRead
A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
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Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
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Similar quotes
I think that anyone who lives in New York, who's lived here, who's spent any time here, knows that it's basically a love-hate relationship, you might say. Even though I still think it's the greatest city in the world and I wouldn't live anywhere else, there're still things about it one doesn't like. The love far outweighs the negative.
Spike LeeRead
They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.
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Deep within us-no matter who we are-there lives a feeling of wanting to be lovable, of wanting to be the kind of person that others like to be with. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.
Fred RogersRead
For anew Self to be born, hardship is necessary. Just as clay needs to go through intense heat to become strong, Love can only be perfected in pain.
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There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.
Erich FrommRead
Your love to me was like an unread book.
Countee CullenRead