Love.
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Love is often described as the most profound human emotion, transcending time, culture, and circumstance. It brings joy, inspires creativity, and fosters connection, yet can also evoke pain and longing.
Throughout history, thinkers, poets, and visionaries have sought to articulate the complexities of love, offering wisdom that resonates across generations. This collection of quotes explores the many facets of love—from passionate romance to deep friendships and familial bonds—inviting reflection on its significance in our lives.
As you journey through these insights, may you find echoes of your own experiences and a deeper understanding of this universal emotion.
Editors Pick
In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.
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Augustine of Hippo
Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
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Augustine of Hippo
I leave you, to go the road we all must go. The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other
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Murasaki Shikibu
All Quotes on Love
If what the heart approves conforms to proper patterns, then even if one's desires are many, what harm would they be to good order?
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Xunzi
Sacrifice is a state of mind in which our thoughts turn with longing [toward Heaven, the Ancestors], It is the supreme expression of loyalty, love, and respect.
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Xunzi
If the rulers sincerely desire the empire to be wealthy and dislike to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it chaotic, they should bring about universal love and mutual aid. This is the way of the sage-kings and the way to order for the world, and it should not be neglected.
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Mo Zi
When we try to develop and procure benefits for the world with universal love as our standard, then attentive ears and keen eyes will respond in service to one another, then limbs will be strengthened to work for one another, and those who know the Tao will untiringly instruct others. Thus the old and those who have neither wife nor children will have the support and supply to spend their old age with, and the young and weak and orphans will have the care and admonition to grow up in. When universal love is adopted as the standard, then such are the consequent benefits. It is incomprehensible, then, why people should object to universal love when they hear it.
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Mo Zi
Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards — it will be unpreventable in the world.
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Mo Zi
Universal love is really the way of the sage-kings. It is what gives peace to the rulers and sustenance to the people. The gentleman would do well to understand and practise universal love; then he would be gracious as a ruler, loyal as a minister, affectionate as a father, filial as a son, courteous as an elder brother, and respectful as a younger brother.
So, if the gentleman desires to be a gracious ruler, a loyal minister, an affectionate father, a filial son, a courteous elder brother, and a respectful younger brother, universal love must be practised. It is the way of the sage-kings and the great blessing of the people.
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Mo Zi
If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial — if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly.
Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love?
So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.
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Mo Zi
Anger begets more anger, and forgiveness and love lead to more forgiveness and love.
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Mahavira
In order to discover the character of people we have only to observe what they love.
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Augustine of Hippo
Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
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Augustine of Hippo
I’ve traveled
That dark path to the world
Which comes down from this mountain
Just to see you
One last time.
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Ono no Komachi
Is this love reality
Or a dream?
I cannot know,
When both reality and dreams
Exist without truly existing
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Ono no Komachi
The color of the flower has faded,
while I lost myself in
idle thought in this long rain
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Ono no Komachi
What is it about this twilight hour? Even the sound of a barely perceptible breeze pierces the heart.
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Ono no Komachi
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.
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Rumi
I leave you, to go the road we all must go. The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other
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Murasaki Shikibu
The world know it not; but you, Autumn, I confess it: your wind at night-fall stabs deep into my heart
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Murasaki Shikibu
You are here to remind me of someone I long for, and what is it you long for yourself? We must have been together in an earlier life, you and I.
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Murasaki Shikibu