Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Andre GideRead
It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.
Interpretation
Love inherently requires growth and cannot stagnate; it must continuously evolve or it risks fading away.
In this quote, AndrΓ© Gide emphasizes the dynamic nature of love, suggesting that it cannot remain static. Love is an ever-growing entity that demands nurturing and progression; if it does not expand, it will inevitably decline. This perspective frames love as an active force that requires engagement and effort to thrive, highlighting the necessity of continuous emotional investment in relationships.
In practice
In a wedding toast, you might say this quote to highlight the evolving nature of love between partners.
Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.
At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.
What were all the world's alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen's arms?
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
'Twas not my lips you kissed but my soul.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
Love simply is. That is the testament of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia - love is. No definitions. Love and don't ask too many questions. Just love.
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