But the one thing that has power completely is love, because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.
Interpretation
Love is the ultimate source of true power that negates the need for control or dominance.
This quote emphasizes the transformative nature of love, suggesting that when a person is motivated by love, they transcend the need for external power or control. Love empowers individuals in a profound way, fostering strength that comes from selflessness rather than dominance, indicating that true power lies in understanding and connectivity rather than authority.
In practice
In a wedding speech to highlight the importance of love in their relationship.
Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.
Ask yourself not if this or that is expedient, but if it is right.
One day in Johannesburg, and already the tribe was being rebuilt, the house and soul being restored.
What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation.
If you wrote a novel in South Africa which didn't concern the central issues, it wouldn't be worth publishing.
To all, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love...
If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.
She did not speak for speech was unknown to her.
He does not refuse sustenance to the one who speaks ill of Him. How then could He refuse sustenance to the one whose soul is over flowing with love for Him?
I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.
For was that all, she thought bleakly, that love ever was? Something that saved one from loneliness? A sort of insurance policy against not counting?
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