When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the necessity of loving the world despite its challenges, as love is essential for existence.
Mark Van Doren's quote highlights the complexity of love, particularly towards the world. It acknowledges that while there are numerous reasons to find the world difficult to love, it is imperative to cultivate that love as it is fundamental to our existence. In essence, the refusal to love the world equates to a denial of life itself, suggesting that love is a vital force that connects us to our reality.
In practice
In a speech about environmentalism, to inspire a perspective shift towards loving our planet despite its flaws.
It’s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don’t know of any first-rate artist who hasn’t manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better.
Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better.
I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people.
Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.
If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man.
Twenty-seven people sang 'Wind Beneath My Wings' before I got around to it. A lot of people saw the movie that I sang it in, Beaches, and what they came away with was that song. They turned to their loved ones and said, 'You know, you are the wind beneath my wings!' The song expressed how they felt in a way a simple 'I love you' would not have.
When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.
So dear I love him, that with him, all deaths I could endure, without him, live no life.
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