On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.
Emma GoldmanRead
If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is about selfless giving and mutual understanding, not transactional exchanges.
Emma Goldman's quote emphasizes that true love involves an unconditional flow of giving and receiving, devoid of the expectations and calculations typical of transactions. If love is based on a tally of what one gives or receives, it loses its essence and becomes merely a business exchange rather than a deep emotional connection.
Themes
LoveGivingTransactionRelationshipsEmotional Connection
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding speech, to emphasize the importance of selfless love.
More from Emma Goldman
All quotes βNo one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
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To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
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John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
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Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
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There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.
Emma GoldmanRead
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