All for Love

“ All this Earth is Love's affianced; vainly the demon Principle howls to stay the banns. Why round her middle wears this world so rich a zone of torrid verdure, if she be not dressing for the final rites? And why provides she orange blossoms and lilies of the valley, if she would not that all men and maids should love and marry? For every wedding where true lovers wed, helps on the march of universal Love. Who are brides here shall be Love's bridesmaids in the marriage world to come. So on all sides Love allures; can contain himself what youth who views the wonders of the beauteous woman-world? ”

“ They were all alone these two in the mad and beautiful world, which man has created for himself—the world of romance—that world more wonderful than any heaven, where only those may enter who have learned the sweet lesson of love. ”

“ She had not after all built her hopes upon shifting sand; she had not reared an idol in her heart only to have to hurl it from its shrine as false and worthless. Oh, no; her lover was a man to be reverenced—to be proud of, and to be trusted under all circumstances.
She exulted in these facts almost as much as in the knowledge of his love for her, and she dropped to sleep with joy in her heart, smiles on her lips, and tears of gratitude flashing like diamonds on her long brown lashes. ”

“ If for a moment she looked back her life appeared to her as a fruitless quest for something—who knows what?—for beauty, for happiness, for an absolute and harmonious intimacy, for everlasting fulfilment in a love that is the answer to all questions. ”

“ Such love may be blindness, but where are love's eyes?
Such love may be folly, love seldom is wise.
Such love may be madness, was love ever sane?
Such love must be sorrow, for all love is pain.
Love goes where it must go, and in its own season.
Love cannot be banished by will or by reason.
Love gave back your freedom, it keeps me its slave.
I shall walk in its fetters, unloved, to my grave. ”

“ There is a beauty in a golden wedding that truly celebrates a happy union of half a century. But when life is all untried, when perhaps the two young people know nothing of what is before them, it may be are but little acquainted with each other, and have mistaken the thrill of passion for the steady [271] exaltation of love, then it would seem wiser to make the occasion one of most solemn import, free from glitter and show, and full of that deep meaning which makes the heart stand still in reverence for life's deepest mysteries. ”

“ So to this pair of lovers, though their lot in life was but lowly, and the roof that sheltered them humble, came as pure and rich a joy as if they had dwelt in palace halls. Is it not a glorious provision of Providence that love is free for all? ”

“ you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. ”

“ And it is in view of these things that married love is found to have redeeming power. It is one of the lies of the cynic that love must needs burn itself out somewhere about the forties. Thousands of people have found at forty that the best was yet to be. For the fact is that all through the afternoon of life and even when the shadows lengthen towards the end love will still send beams of beauty and romance into daily life, and remaining still passionate will put golden content into the passing hours. ”

“ And the birds sing, 'Love, love, love.' Aye, all the world to-day is softly whispering, 'Love, love, love.' What else should the great world whisper but my love? For my love is greater than the world." And she suddenly [pg 280] hid her face in her hands; and he could kiss no more than her hands, though her eyes gleamed at him from between slim white fingers. ”

“ It is the love I have for you, my own—a love 'beyond all words or sense'—as one of your English poets says. Do you know, with the strange irony of things, when a woman's love for a man rises to the highest point there is in it always an element of the wife? ”

“ There’s nothing else in the world, but love, the great, big, beautiful, all-giving-up kind of love, and bearing children for the man you love; and if you don’t know that yet, Caroline, go down on your bended knees and pray to your God that He will teach it to you before it is too late. ”

“ “Do not grieve for her! Who knows, but she may have found the joy she sought? Love and patience are all that make for happiness in this world; or in the world of the past or of the future; of the living or the dead. She dreamed her dream; and that is all that any of us can ask!” ”

“ The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us—else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. ”

“ I went back to the clanging city,
I went back where my old loves stayed,
But my heart was full of my new love's glory,
My eyes were laughing and unafraid.
I met one who had loved me madly
And told his love for all to hear—
But we talked of a thousand things together,
The past was buried too deep to fear.
I met the other, whose love was given
With never a kiss and scarcely a word—
Oh, it was then the terror took me
Of words unuttered that breathed and stirred.
Oh, love that lives its life with laughter
Or love that lives its life with tears
Can die—but love that is never spoken
Goes like a ghost through the winding years. ”

“ And then all at once love turns up, and you’re done for, done for,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said with weary despair. ”

“ Having begun to love you, I love you for ever—in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. ”

“ Love when felt at all deeply has an element of transcendentalism in it, which makes it the most natural thing in the world for the two lovers—even though drawn together by a passing sex-attraction—to swear eternal troth to each other; but there is something quite diabolical and mephistophelean in the practice of the Law, which creeping up behind, as it were, at this critical moment, and overhearing the two thus pledging themselves, claps its book together with a triumphant bang, and exclaims: "There now you are married and done for, for the rest of your natural lives." ”

“ Only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder—but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. ”

“ LOVE IS ENOUGH: draw near and behold me
Ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter,
And are full of the hope of the dawn coming after;
For the strong of the world have bought me and sold me
And my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter.
—Pass by me, and hearken, and think of me not! ”

“ If ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me: For, such as I am, all true lovers are; ”

“ He envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. These people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes. ”

“ No popular respect will I omit
To do thee honor on this happy day,
When every loyal lover tasks his wit
His simple truth in studious rhymes to pay,
And to his mistress dear his hopes convey.
Rather thou knowest I would still outrun
All calendars with Love's,—whose date alway
Thy bright eyes govern better than the Sun,—
For with thy favor was my life begun;
And still I reckon on from smiles to smiles,
And not by summers, for I thrive on none
But those thy cheerful countenance complies:
Oh! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine. ”

“ For though any of these accidents would have marred the ending, love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy. ”

“ For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy? ”

“ Miss Sullivan touched my forehead and spelled with decided emphasis, "Think."
In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head. This was my first conscious perception of an abstract idea.
For a long time I was still—I was not thinking of the beads in my lap, but trying to find a meaning for "love" in the light of this new idea. The sun had been under a cloud all day, and there had been brief showers; but suddenly the sun broke forth in all its southern splendour.
Again I asked my teacher, "Is this not love?"
"Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out," ”

“ The Great Lover I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. ”

“ but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. ”

“ Love is free: To promise for ever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all enquiry. ”

“ “’Tis quite true. If I had gone for love o’ you, if I had ever sincerely loved you, if I loved you still, I should not so loathe and hate myself for my weakness as I do now!... My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.” ”

“ It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,—the ties that have made others dependent on us,—and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom—I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see—I feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; ”

“ "Is it really for love he is going to marry you?" she asked.
I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my eyes.
"I am sorry to grieve you," pursued the widow; "but you are so young, and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard. It is an old saying that 'all is not gold that glitters;' and in this case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or I expect." ”

“ What could make her happier than the knowledge that she must surrender her will to his from the day of her wedding until the day of her death? She embraced her circumscribed lot with a passion which glorified its limitations. The single gift which the ages permitted her was the only one she desired. Her soul craved no adventure beyond the permissible adventure of being sought in marriage. Love was all that she asked of a universe that was overflowing with manifold aspects of life. ”

“ For love is but the heart's immortal thirst To be completely known and all forgiven, Even as sinful souls that enter Heaven: So take me, dear, and understand my worst, And freely pardon it, because confessed, And let me find in loving thee, my best. ”

“ "But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all—without any place even for a heart to live in."
"I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty, mistaking her for the lady of the marble—another kind altogether, I should think. But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; ”

“ To love, to be beloved again, and know
A gulf between us:—aye, 'tis misery!
This agony of passion, this wild faith,
Whose constancy is fruitless, yet is kept
Inviolate:—to feel that all life's hope,
And light, and treasure, clings to one from whom
Our wayward doom divides us. Better far
To weep o'er treachery or broken vows,—
For time may teach their worthlessness:—or pine
With unrequited love;—there is a pride
In the fond sacrifice—the cheek may lose
Its summer crimson; but at least the rose
Has withered secretly—at least, the heart
That has been victim to its tenderness,
Has sighed unechoed by some one as true, ”

“ This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened.
“Thank you,” was all that he permitted himself. ”