Love

And now, let me show you the most excellent way.

If I speak in tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prphecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always procects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where thre are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongeus, they will be stifled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a chid, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

-1Corinthians Ch. 13

Never be embarrassed to talk about hallowed things, like love and death. We Americans are a little finicky about both. We reduce love to sex and talk about it clinically as in Kinsey and the sex books, or grossly as in Playboy and Penthouse, or sentimentally as in the popular songs. There´s very little talk about the tragic side of love, the comic side of love, love as a discipline, love as a means of education, love as the end and aim of education, the very reason we´re here today.
And as for death, wie hide from it, pretty it up, pack it away in hospitals, spend millions every year on lavish funerals, or get so glutted with it over the media that we hear or read, with hardly a tremor, about hundreds of thousands dying in Vietnam, or Africa, or Bangladesh.

Lately the lad learnt, that longer than love lasts it leaves you lonely.

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

(Willa Cather)

»Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.«
-Matt Groening

Love ... Love can be so beautiful!!!
But love can also cause the hardest pain you ever had :-(

If you cannot be with the one you love, love the one you are with.

»Ah but he doesn't care for her--not, I mean, it appears, after all, in the sense I'm speaking of. He's NOT in love with her.«

If you cannot be with the one you love,
love the one you are with.

Love is. It just is. Metaphorically speaking, it's one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It brings people together. Nobody knows why. It hurts, and it is fantastic at the same time. Feathers of lead, bright smoke.

Well, sex is in the database, so I thought love should be there also.

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.

(John Ciardi)