Love of life

“ Retracing in another such recollections, shadowed and mellowed down by time, we feel the wonderful sanctity of human life, we feel what emotions a single being can awake; what a world of hope may be buried in a single grave! And thus we keep alive within ourselves the soft springs of that morality which unites us with our kind, and sheds over the harsh scenes and turbulent contests of earth the colouring of a common love. ”

“ And Life and Love, that seldom satisfied me,
⁠Meet me with lovely faces in my dreams.
Life at his brightest, flushed and crowned with flowers,
⁠Brings gifts no mortal, waking, e'er possessed,
Exquisite Chances, and Enchanted Hours,
⁠While Love,—Love brings me you, to share my rest! ”

“ We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration, both,
Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole. ”

“ Then 'twixt lips of loved and lover
solemn thoughts of us shall rise;
We who once were fools defeated,
then shall be the brave and wise.
There amidst the world new-builded
shall our earthly deeds abide,
Though our names be all forgotten,
and the tale of how we died.
Life or death then, who shall heed it,
what we gain or what we lose?
Fair flies life amid the struggle,
and the Cause for each shall choose.
Hear a word, a word in season,
for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us,
some to live, and some to die! ”

“ Round the heart-strings day by day;
Let the threads of silver shine,
Guiding by the narrow way.
Watch, lest thorns of pleasure’s bower
Tangle in their tender strands;
Guard, lest Mammon’s subtle power,
Fray and loose their gentle bands.
3.
Worldling’s life is love’s decay,
Pleasure’s slave hath joyless end;
Squander not life’s fleeting day
In the paths that downward tend.
Follow truth and yield to love,
Bravely keep the narrow way;
Truth shall greet you from above,
Love shall bring to endless day. ”

“ So it is with Love. It is stirred to life by My breath, but watching too it takes for it to blossom and bear fruit. Bear love in your mind, when action you perform; bear love in your mind in duties or tasks. With eyes of pure love in all things look, even in yourselves. All things love-existence are. Do you respect them as such. Even the beginnings of worlds, the whirling mote of dust, the heart that is fertile and the heart that is barren, on all look with eyes of pure love. ”

“ And what reservoir is more inexhaustible than the love of a heart like hers?—a love born as naturally and unconsciously as life itself—that, when discovered, changes existence by a sudden kaleidoscopic turn, compelling all within and without to pass at once into new arrangement and combination—that inspires heroic, patient effort, self-denial, and even self-sacrifice. ”

“ Attraction He who wills life wills its condition sweet, Having made love its mother, joy its quest, That its perpetual sequence might not rest On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet; For reason moves with cautious, careful feet, Debating whether life or death were best, And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest In many a heart which life hath set to beat. ”

“ Be satisfied, then, with that glory; we only ask to live! Shame on me for that “only”! As if there could be anything more delightful than life. Life, with all its capacities for love and friendship and heroism and self-devotion, for generous actions and noble aspirations! Life to feel life, to know that we are in a sphere specially constructed for the exercise of our senses and the play of our faculties, free to choose the road we would take, and with a glorious reward if our choice be the right one! ”

“ Love sees with faultless vision, judges true judgement, acts in wisdom. Look through the eyes of Love, and you shall see everywhere the Beautiful and True; judge with the mind of Love, and you shall err not. shall wake no wail of sorrow; act in the spirit of Love, and you shall strike undying harmonies upon the Harp of Life.
Make no compromise with self. Cease not to strive until your whole being is swallowed up in Love. To love all and always—this is the Heaven of heavens. ”

“ When my dream of life, from morn till night, Was love, still love. New hope may bloom, And days may come, Of milder, calmer beam, But there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream; No, there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream. Though the bard to purer fame may soar, When wild youth's past ”

“ Embodied Love, like the dew of heaven falling on the dry thirsty heart of man! A Voice cry- ing unto sunken, self-weary man, "Thou must be born again and love!" A Healer from another clime of this strange disease of modern life! ”

“ This emotion of love, which is the furthest reach of the soul, I find to be differentiated when it comes into contact with the material universe into three ultimate ways of taking life; namely, the way which we name the pursuit of beauty, the way which we name the pursuit of goodness, and the way which we name the pursuit of truth. But these three ways of taking life find always their unity and identity in that emotion of love which is the psychic substance of them all. ”

“ For the pure rose of health; to live
For the dear life that Love could give.
Oh, youth may sicken at its bloom,
And wealth and fame pray for the tomb;—
But can Love bear from Love to part,
And not cling to that one dear heart? ”

“ And if thou bidest here, for something new
Will folk begin to cry, and all thy fame
Shall then avail thee but for greater blame;
Thy love shall cease to love thee, and the earth
Thou lovest now shall be of little worth
While still thou keepest life, abhorring it
Behold, in men's lives that so quickly flit
Thus is it, how then shall it be with thee,
Who some faint image of eternity
Hast gained through me?—alas, thou heedest not!
On all these changing things thine heart is hot—
Take then this gift that I have brought from far,
And then may'st thou remember what we are ”

“ True, but not selfish love. ‘The feet of the soul must be washed in the blood of the heart.’ Love to all humanity—to the poor—the sad—the suffering. Love, even to the Fate that gives us sorrow and misfortune. Love to the eternal and immutable. Love for all that is purest and best in each life with which we mingle. Such a love is not sensual—not earthly. ”

“ How can our love continue to exist except through sacrifice, except by limitation of our desires? Can you change the fact that you are not entirely mine nor I entirely yours? Look out on the beauties of nature, and resign yourself to what must be. Love asks everything, and rightly so. ”

“ Inconceivable, indeed, was any life save the simple life, toil, modest amusement, tender unfolding of love, a "pretty" marriage, squalling children and a succession of mild, equable days leading to a peaceful grave. ”

“ That out of the darkness and the shock of this very discovery, a new and deeper love would spring, which having its birth in human frailty and human repentance, would gain in the actual what it lost in the ideal, bringing to his weary, suffering and yearning man’s nature, the honest help of a strong and loving sympathy, growing trust, and sweetest because wisest encouragement. ”

“ And it is at the centre that the real life of the Spirit aims first; thence flowing out to the circumference—even to its most harsh, dark, difficult and rugged limits—in unbroken streams of generous love. ”

“ I will beautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light of the soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, and where there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst. ”

“ To reduce everything to wretchedness and deprivation is the process which the worldly-minded unconsciously pursue. To live in Love is to work in Joy. Love is the magic that transforms all things into power and beauty. ”

“ I will love you as the gods love, and as the gods we will live and love—it may be for ever. Nothing of high wisdom shall be unrevealed to us. We shall be what the world will be when it nears the close of time. Come to me—trust me—be beside me in all the wonder that I know. But above all, love me, for I love you more than life, and wisdom, and mystery! ”

“ That love, though the very faery breath of life, should by itself, and so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who have felt the sunlight fall from distant friends who think of them ”

“ And who shall doubt, when he contemplates the complicated mechanism by which, everywhere, this God-Nature--blind as to pain and sin and death, but tender and solicitous as to birth and life--makes Love possible, imperative, soulful, overwhelming, that the purposed end and aim of life is Love. ”

“ For as it can only be seen by profoundest passion—and the profoundest are the passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief—then why may not each and all of these passions—when we consider the constitution of this world and this life—be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? ”

“ The swift poise of a head, a flutter of laughter—
And love flows in on him, its vastness pent
Within his narrow life: the pain it brings,
Boundless; for love is infinite discontent
With the poor lonely life of transient things. ”

“ But provision is made not only for the sides and faculties of himself, but for the essential nature of himself. We have seen how hunger was met by bread, the needs of the social nature by power, intellect [298] by truth, will by law, and the æsthetic sense by beauty; but here we come to life, and find that love, timeless and illimitable love, alone corresponds to it. But love can only find its embodiment and its expression in life. Therefore, love has taken the form of life to meet the needs of man as a spirit. ”

“ He makes life touch life at more points, life draw from life more copious inspirations, life cling to life with more affectionate tenacity. He roots and grounds us in love, and that is to root us in the souls of other men ”

“ Lord God, help me to see the beauty of the world, and through my duty may I find the love in the world. May I not spend my life in discontent, but may I remember that thou hast said, "The meek shall inherit the earth." Fill my heart with compassion, that I may love my fellow man as I love myself. ”

“ Can one resolve and hunt it from one's heart?
This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell
Of many a life, in ways no tongue can tell,
No mind divine, nor any word impart.
Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart,
The ice of love's disdain, the wint'ry well
Of love's disfavor, love's own fire would quell?
Or school its nature, too, to its own art. ”

“ And now I firmly propose both to serve and to love thy supreme majesty for the future, not in order to escape from pain, or imprisonment, or hell, nor to obtain of thee consolations, or happiness in the next life, or any thing else that is desirable in this, but that I may seek thee alone, above all things, wish for thee alone, and love thee alone. And surely thou, who art the true and only perfection of all things, alone art sufficient for me. ”

“ This life was deep and strong, because it was a life of all-embracing love and sympathy, and carried the volume and energy of that spirit, receiving also in return, to swell its own current, the tributary recognition of a wider realm than that of the human race. ”

“ Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;
Never fear though it break your heart—
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well,
Though love be heaven or love be hell.
Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel—
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven. ”

“ So shall our lives retain the charm of constant Youth and Hope,—so shall the world seem always beautiful to us,—so shall the Unimaginable glory of the future Real-in-Love shine nearer every day in our faithful, fond pursuit of its flying Shadow! ”

“ Love, that most divine of all our sentiments, the bloom and perfume of the tree of Life, the sun that lights and gladdens the night of existence, the one presents to us as burning with all the voluptuous ardour of the senses, the other, as glowing with the sacred fire of the impassioned soul. ”

“ For term of life thou art assured mine;
And life no longer than thy love will stay,
For it depends upon that love of thine. ⁠4
Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,
When in the least of them my life hath end. ”

“ By its nature, love, the desire for well-being, tends to embrace all that exists. Naturally, it expands its limits by love at first to one's own family – wife, children, then to friends, then to one's fellows, countrymen; but love does not get satisfied with this and seeks to embrace everything existing.
4. In this incessant expansion of the limits of love, which constitutes the essence of the birth of spiritual being, is the essence of true human life in this world. The whole existence of a human in this world, from birth till death, is nothing but the birth of spiritual being in him. ”

“ Between the call to transcendence, to a simple self-loss in the unfathomable and adorable life of God, and the call to a full, rich and various actualization of personal life, in the energetic strivings of a fellow worker with Him: between the soul's profound sense of transcendent love, and its felt possession of and duty towards immanent love—a paradox which only some form of incarnational philosophy can solve. ”