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What some people love is not a person but the experience of being in love. The first is irreplaceable; the second is not.
If sex does not mount to heaven, it descends into hell. There is no such thing as giving the body without giving the soul.
love needs no reasons. Sex asks science to defend it; love never asks “Why?” It says, “I love you.” Love is its own reason.
sex seeks the part; love the totality.
Most sound minds resent flattery, because they see the egotism behind the screen of altruism.
too true.
FREUDIANISM interprets man in terms of sex; Christianity interprets sex in terms of man.
In sex the male adores the female. In love the man and woman together adore God.
the right to self-preservation could become egotism, and the power of generation could become license,
libido, or concupiscence, a tending toward certain things in defiance of rational restraint.
St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish.
As love comes from knowledge, so hatred comes from want of knowledge. Bigotry is the fruit of ignorance.
It is possible to love more than we know. A simple person in good faith may have a greater love of God than a theologian and, as a result, a keener understanding of the ways of God with the heart than psychologists have.
a friendship founded on usefulness or pleasure. In this kind of love, the lover loves himself more than his friend. That is why, if the friend ever prevents him from realizing what he wants, his love turns to hate.
#truefriendship
Weak men in high positions surround themselves with little men, in order that they may seem great by comparison.
These four effects of love are: unity, mutual indwelling, ecstasy, and zeal.
They never loved in the first place, for love never takes back that which it gives, even in unfaithfulness.
The lover of God never knows the words “too much.” Those who accuse others of loving God or religion too much really do not love God at all, nor do they know the meaning of love.
One can yearn for another after knowing flesh unity, but it is impossible to yearn for another after soul unity.
Those who do not yet love one another deeply have need of words; those who deeply love thrive on silences.
The particular spiritual phenomenon of levitation, in which saints in their ecstasies are lifted bodily off the ground, is a still higher manifestation of a love in which matter seems powerless to restrain the spirit.
purging trial, fidelities through storm, perseverance through mediocrities, and pursuit of Divine destiny through the allurements of earth.
#marriage
As Euripides said: “He is not a lover who does not love forever.”
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
#Shakespeare
The basic reason why erotic experiences outside of marriage create psychological strain is because the void between spirit and flesh is more closely felt.
It is a curious psychological fact that those who make their personal love public, and “dear” one another with saccharine epithets, are very often those who when alone quarrel and fight.
The answer to this tension is evident. The human heart was made for the Sacred Heart of Love, and no one but God can satisfy it. The heart is right in wanting the infinite; the heart is wrong in trying to make its finite companion the substitute for the infinite.
Marriage is a vocation to put God in every detail of love. In this way, the dream of the bride and groom for eternal happiness really comes true, not in themselves alone, but through themselves. Now they love each other not as they dreamed they would, but as God dreamed they would. Such a reconciliation of the tension is possible only to those who know that it takes three to make love.
The tragedy of the materialist psychologies of our day comes from trying to make a bodily function satisfy the infinite aspirations of the soul.
It is this that creates complexes and unstable minds and divorce courts.
Eliminate the Divine Third from human love, and there is left only the substitution of cru...
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Those who deny the existence of water are still thirsty, and those who deny God still want Him in their craving for Beauty an...
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“It is all for you, and you for Christ, and Christ for God” (1
Sex understood in the modern way is Eros-love severed from responsibility; it is desire without obligation. Because it is lawless desire, it is therefore Godless desire. That is why eroticism and atheism always go together.
The very fact that a man or a woman seeks a new partner is a proof that there never was any love at all, for though sex is replaceable, love is not.
The youth loves the maiden not because he chooses her from among maidens, but rather he elects and selects her as unique because he loves her.
Some are thought to be learned when they are only confusing.
No one can love himself properly unless he knows why he is living. Love is useless when alone,
the sadness it feels in attaining any happiness less than the infinite—all these constitute the mating call of God to the soul.
Imagine a large circle and in the center of it rays of light that spread out to the circumference. The light in the center is God; each of us is a ray. The closer the rays are to the center, the closer the rays are to one another. The closer we live to God, the closer we are bound to our neighbor; the farther we are from God, the farther we are from one another. The more each ray departs from its center, the weaker it becomes; and the closer it gets to the center, the stronger it becomes.
How can one love self without being selfish? How can one love others without losing self? The answer is: By loving both self and neighbor in God. It is His Love that makes us love both self and neighbor rightly.
In divorce cases, this is called “mental torture” or “domination.” Really, it is egocentricity, in which one ego loves itself in the other ego. The I is projected into the Thou and is loved in the Thou. The Thou is not really loved as a person; it is only used as a means to the pleasure of the I. As soon as the other ceases to exhilarate, the so-called love ceases.
When the “deity” of the other is deflated, either because it is exhausted or because one becomes accustomed to living with a “god” or a “goddess,” there is a terrific sense of ennui and boredom.
A man who makes himself a god must hide; otherwise his false divinity will be unmasked.
Here is the answer to the riddle of love. Love implies relation. If lived in isolation, it becomes selfishness; if absorbed in collectivity, it loses its personality and, therefore, the right to love.
"Here is the answer to the riddle of love. Love implies relation. If lived in isolation, it becomes selfishness; if absorbed in collectivity, it loses its personality and, therefore, the right to love."
The more clearly a man understands anything, the more readily he can summarize it in a few words.
"The more clearly a man understands anything, the more readily he can summarize it in a few words."
Truth never appeals to us unless it is personal.
We can never completely give ourselves to others, nor can others entirely become our own. All earthly love suffers from this inability of two lovers to be one and yet distinct.
THOSE who start with the pagan philosophy of sex must face life as a descent. Associated with a growing old, there is a loss of physical energy and the horrible perspective of death. The Christian philosophy of love, on the contrary, implies an ascension. The body may grow older, but the Spirit grows younger, and love often becomes more intense.
God did not intend that strength in a man and beauty in a woman should endure, but that they should reappear in their children.
In a true marriage, there is an ever-enchanting romance. There are at least four distinct mysteries progressively revealed.
