Law of love

“ Thus the great law of love was to be the binding tie, not only among the little brotherhood there assembled but was to be the cementing bond between the regenerate of earth, the Mediator, and the great Father of love, Himself. ”

“ Yes, through love," he repeated, seeing the curiosity in his wife's eyes. "Love is the law that rules the whole creation: the sublime law that unites thy heart to mine is the same that unites all the beings of the universe, and yet keeps them distinct. ”

“ Love, dear, is in my eyes the first principle of all the virtues, conformed to the divine likeness. Like all other first principles, it is not a matter of arithmetic; it is the Infinite in us. I cannot but think you have been trying to justify in your own eyes the frightful position of a girl, married to a man for whom she feels nothing more than esteem. You prate of duty, and make it your rule and measure; but surely to take necessity as the spring of action is the moral theory of atheism? To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman's heart. ”

“ He who so comprehends shall find the Supreme Law of Life, and he shall find that it is Love, that it is imperishable Love. He shall become one with that Love, and loving all, with mind freed from all hatred and folly, he shall receive the invincible protection which Love affords. ”

“ Love one another, for love is, indeed, the fulfilling of the law. But remember that ‘one another’ includes all that live. The law is not fulfilled when you only love those of your own household, or such as minister to your enjoyment. ”

“ We who have a clearer vision of the better way, who are demonstrating our position with such wondrous signs, must realize more and more the importance of the first and only law—the law of love. Judge not. ”

“ He continues without pause: “If it is our right to pursue happiness, it is equally our right to seek our love freely, casting off fetters which love disdains; they chafe his delicate wings—love cannot live bound.”
“But he must be, to some extent,” she almost gasps, frightened at this new and dangerous doctrine. “Society, respectability, require that there should be a marriage bond by which the law can hold either party to the contract. Else what would become of us? So many would escape who have no right to do so.” ”

“ Is the fulfilling of the law love? The apostle Paul says: "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Does it follow that working no ill is love? Love will fulfil the law: will the law fulfil love? No, verily. If a man keeps the law, I know he is a lover of his neighbour. But he is not a lover because he keeps the law: he keeps the law because he is a lover. No heart will be content with the law for love. The law cannot fulfil love. ”

“ As to the new one, not even you can know for certain whether that other man would pan out the soul mate you now imagine him. But the Law of Love, or Attraction, will prove whether or not he is what you think. Your Own will come to you, and all creation can't hinder it--IF you keep that man was NOT what I longed for, a real comrade ”

“ 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." ”

“ Thus to interpret the law of love, is to overstrain its meaning. That law requires us, not to abolish the existing ranks and distinctions of condition in society, but to treat each person in a manner suited to our relative positions ”

“ If we would give the one who does not love the absolute right of repelling the sexual advances of the other, not only the law but morality should in return allow the rejected lover to make another choice, where his desire for love will find an echo. ”

“ It was painful to me to sit so far apart from you, to be unable to approach you and look into your thoughtful eyes with eyes that were not less thoughtful, and kindly too, and talk to you about many a subject far more important than the law which thrusts us apart: the law, known from time immemorial, that love is not everlasting, and that it needs variety. ”

“ Never run the risk of conception, except you be mentally and physically prepared,—not for it—but to utterly banish everything but the pure desire of your soul to give him all the love then—at the marriage—that you can, and wish, will, pray, desire, decree, that the result, if such there be, may be modelled after your soul's loftiest ideal. Keep up this all the time of gestation if possible, and the operation of the law just revealed will convince you and the world that nothing equal to it ever fell from human lips or pen. ”

“ In the beginning love arose in the passion for perpetuation; to-day, the passion for perpetuation arises in love. Just as we put ourselves in the way of natural selection, pitting the microcosm against the macrocosm in a passion of ethical feeling, just so do we reverse for ourselves processes that seem indeed to have [Pg 93] all the force of law. This reversal is civilisation.
The lover is impelled to perpetuate himself in the Here and the Now. The law of life exacts from him the tribute of love. Imagination gives the lover the key to the object of his love. ”

“ So love has its physical and its spiritual nature. Love is rooted in that unconscious law of our nature which God has enacted for the preservation and perpetuity of human life. "Nothing but a spurious delicacy or an ignorance of facts can prevent our full recognition that love looks to marriage, and marriage to offspring, as a natural sequence." ”

“ But it must be a new religion, based upon liberty, justice, and love, not upon authority and law and hell-fire.
A bad effect upon the relations of men and women has been produced by the romantic movement, through directing attention to what ought to be an incidental good, not the purpose for which relations exist. Love is what gives intrinsic value to a marriage, and, like art and thought, it is one of the supreme things which make human life worth preserving. But though there is no good marriage without love, the best marriages have a purpose which goes beyond love. ”

“ You once said that love comes unasked and goes unbidden. Do vows at an altar help matters? Is divorce more decent because lawful? Is love more decent when it has been officially and clerically catalogued? ”

“ LVIII. We do not attach ourselves permanently to any possessions, excepting in proportion to the trouble, toil and longing which they have cost us. All our meditations have revealed to us about the basis of the primordial law of love is comprised in the following axiom, which is at the same time the principle and the result of the law. ”

“ I do not charge spiritists as a class with being advocates of the doctrines of free love. On the contrary, I am aware that, as a class, they hold the marriage relation in sacred regard. I cannot forget, however, that but a few years ago some of their leading advocates and mediums proclaimed the doctrine of free love in all its hideous deformity from every platform in the land. ”

“ The ever clearer consciousness that love can dispense with marriage yet marriage cannot dispense [ 18 ] with love, is already partially recognized in modern society, by the facility of divorce. And it is only a question of time when the law which gives to one person the power to constrain the other to remain with him against his will, will be abrogated, so contrary is this possibility to that developed conception of the freedom of love—which is not at all the same as so-called "free love!" ”

“ Seeing then that there are these three sorts of love, ought the law to prohibit and forbid them all to exist among us? Is it not rather clear that we should wish to have in the state the love which is of virtue and which desires the beloved youth to be the best possible ”

“ The persons so questioned may laugh or may get angry, according to their dispositions, but, at any rate, they will declare that no change in the laws could change their relation; that it is not the law which holds them together, but love, comradeship, habit, common interest and common memories, all those tender little bonds of intimacy that make up married life. ”

“ When we reflect what the true foundations of the marital relations should be,—love, affection, sympathy,—it would appear wholly foreign to its character that it should be made an obligatory fetter and a continued curse by any law, civil or religious. The moral sense, personal affection, parental feeling, and the sentiment of society, would seem to be sufficient to preserve all those unions which should be preserved. ”

“ Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes.—Lucretius.
5. 189:—
Even love is sold.
Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. ”

“ Ye who are interested in the art of Love, who do faithfully maintain the customs and usage of his court, who never failed to obey his law, whatever the result might be, tell me if there is anything that pleases because of love without causing us to tremble and grow pale. ”

“ One may indulge in it not recognizing any religious or moral law, but the recognition of the lawfulness of falling in love is incompatible with the recognition of love as the law of life. Love is only love when it is self-denying, and does not seek its own gratification. And such love you can find in your wife and this feeling will give you true bliss; the feeling for the other person, however, if you give yourself up to it, will give you nothing except a lowering of your moral level and the suffering resulting from it. ”

“ "Love is the Law, Love under Will." ”

“ On the other hand we are obliged to think of love as able to confer its favors only in accordance with the principle of righteousness. Even in its supreme exhibition, in the salvation of men, in giving its gifts, it could only act through a way that declared the divine righteousness while granting forgiveness to those that repent and forsake wrong. In human life, the love that in its own degree and order helps to the fulfillment of the law is not alone,91 or unregulated, or superior to the principle of duty, of truth, purity and holiness. ”

“ What is the existing code and creed about marriage and the family?
It is held that if a man and woman want to marry, and if they are of the minimum age fixed by law, no one is warranted in interfering with them. The novels have sedulously taught that marriage should be founded only on love; that love is some emotional state or experience that is not subject to reason and conscience ”

“ The law represents material rights--it can't go beyond. If we don't recognize an inner law...the obligation that love creates...being loved as well as loving... there is nothing to prevent our spreading ruin unhindered...is there? ”

“ And the difference seems to be accounted for by the reversal of ideals, by a new direction of affections. "I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou hast set my heart at liberty,"
A true conversion is, perhaps, signified, more than in any other way, by the liberty of the heart,--by this change in the object of our love. That has been the constant exhortation to us, to love that which is worthy of love. "Set your affection on things above." "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." And we, loving the world and the things that are in the world, listen impatiently. ”

“ Those who dread the dissolution of society through the insistence upon the rights of love, do not reflect that its right to break up marriage is allowed to the feeling, which has not only the red glow of passion, but also the clearness through which two people have become conscious of each other as a revelation of the whole unsuspected richness of life. ”

“ It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life. ”

“ Then marriages might seem to have been made in heaven, and the blessing of God would sanctify a happy union, instead of being impiously pronounced in order to ratify a business transaction, or sanction the indulgence of a passing fancy. But only the love that lasts can sanctify marriage, and a marriage without such love is an immoral contract. ”

“ We have a right to say, 'He loves all, therefore He loves me.' And we have a right to say, 'He loves me, therefore He loves all.' For surely the love that has stooped to me can never pass by any human soul. ”

“ And then, fifthly, at some point in its growth love summons passion into life. What has been hitherto an emotion of the heart becomes also a tumultuous activity of the whole being, and love having mastered the whole incarnate nature of each in turn drives the two together in that oneness of the flesh which is the decree of God. No doubt it is just here that the compulsions of civilized society set a serious problem for ardent lovers. ”

“ I believe in you, and you in me—I find in you all that you find in me—every possible human security for our future happiness. But this love must yet be consecrated; and in the eyes of the world, in which we are called upon to live, marriage is the only consecration, and marriage enchains one’s whole life. ”

“ The ideal of love is enduring faithfulness. But when that ideal is not only unfulfilled, but marriage brings, instead of happiness, only misery, shall the bond be indissoluble, difficult, or easy to loose? ”