Love Quotes

“This is the feeling that I call ‘ontological rootedness’ – ontology being that branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and experience of existence. My suggestion is that we will love only those (very rare) people or things or ideas or disciplines or landscapes that can inspire in us a promise of ontological rootedness. If they can, we will love them regardless of their other qualities: regardless of how beautiful or good they are; of how (in the case of people we love) generous or altruistic or compassionate; of how interested in our life and projects. And regardless, even, of whether they value us. For love's overriding concern is to find a home for our life and being.”
― Simon May, Love: A History

“Human love, now even more than then, is widely tasked with achieving what once only divine love was thought capable of: to be our ultimate source of meaning and happiness, and of power over suffering and disappointment.”
― Simon May, Love: A History

“By imputing to human love features properly reserved for divine love, such as the unconditional and the eternal, we falsify the nature of this most conditional and time-bound and earthy emotion, and force it to labour under intolerable expectations. This divinisation of human love is the latest chapter in humanity’s impulsive quest to steal the powers of its gods, and the longest-running such attempt to reach beyond our humanity. Like the others it must fail; for the moral of these stories is that the limits of the human can be ignored only at terrible cost.”
― Simon May, Love: A History

“This is how all love works. Like Israel's love for God, love does not need deep knowledge of the other to be evoked and sustained-- through, once inspired, it might seek such knowledge. Love is evoked not by beauty or moral goodness (in the sense of kindness) but by the mysterious promise of the loved one to anchor and sustain one's life, such that one can feel at home in the world. Love can never count on requital or justice- and it is perhaps most genuinely love if it doesn't.”
― Simon May, Love: A History

“The religion of love is no less attractive to the diehard atheist than to the agnostic or the believer. Many atheists find in love a taste of the absolute and the eternal that they rigorously deny to any other realm of life.”
― Simon May, Love: A History

“Minunata consecință a ideii că se contopesc două suflete și două voințe este că celălalt nu mai are de ce să-mi fie recunoscător mie pentru «serviciile ori favorurile pe care i le fac», la fel cum eu nu am de ce să-mi mulțumesc mie pentru faptele pe care le săvârșesc spre propriul meu bine.
Prietenii de suflet nu numai că refuză să calculeze costurile și avantajele prieteniei, dar nu sunt nici măcar conștienți de ele. Însăși ideea de «favoare», «datorie» sau «recunoștință» e separatoare și nu poate decât să le repugne sufletelor cu adevărat contopite într-unul singur.”
― Simon May, Love: A History