..still to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher than all those, be they who they may, that have ever known her to love.
Interpretation
Loving someone deeply, even without reciprocation, elevates the spirit beyond those who have experienced mutual love.
This quote by Elizabeth Gaskell reflects the profound and elevating nature of unrequited love. It suggests that even if love is not returned, the act of loving someone genuinely can offer a spiritual uplift and a sense of worth that surpasses even those who have been loved in return. It emphasizes the intrinsic value of love itself over the reciprocity of feelings.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech addressing the complexities of love during a wedding or anniversary celebration.
Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence - every step of which was rich, as each recurring moment that bore him away from her made him recal some fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her character.
It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive." (Mr. Bell)
Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used--not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.
Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but doing never did in all my life....My precept is, do something, my sister, do good if you can; but at any rate, do something.
Mr. Thornton felt that in this influx no one was speaking to Margaret, and was restless under this apparent neglect. But he never went near her himself; he did not look at her. Only, he knew what she was doing — or not doing — better than anyone else in the room. Margaret was so unconscious of herself, and so much amused by watching other people, that she never thought whether she was left unnoticed or not.
Well, He had known what love was-a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of whose flames he was struggling! but, through that furnace he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age,-all the richer and more human for having known this great passion.
He gave her a quick, casual kiss on the cheek first. Then came the hug, and it was the hug that always made Laurel’s heart mush. Serious grip, cheek to the hair, eyes closed, just a little sway. Del’s hugs mattered, she thought, and made him impossible to resist.
Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can't be logical about.
…he glanced over his shoulder at her, regarding her, as he often did before they made love, as if she were a lost continent about to be rediscovered.
The married should not forget that to speak of love begets love.
You need the living, loving heart of living, loving men and women to quicken other hearts, which can live too and love too, and, in their turn, will quicken others which are dying now.
Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.
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