Love
Outline · 2 ›
1.The nature and kinds of love
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales; The Nun's Priest's TaleVol. 40
- p. 23She knows the remedies of love and the old dance of that art.read · scan
Thomas Hobbes, Of Man, Being the First Part of LeviathanVol. 34
- p. 340–342Distinguishes kinds of love: kindness, natural lust, luxury, the passion of love and jealousy.read · scan
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulVol. 24
- p. 56Love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly imagined.read · scan
- p. 90Perfection is not the proper object of love; we love the softer virtues, while the sublime commands respect at a distance.read · scan
- p. 92We love what submits to us and admire what forces us; love attaches to the small and pleasing.read · scan
- p. 125Giants and Achilles cannot be loved; amiable social virtues inspire love.read · scan
- p. 125We love Priam and Hector more than Agamemnon and Achilles.read · scan
Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter ScottVol. 25
- p. 420Those you live with will love you if you are lovable; the famed man has no soul to love freely.read · scan
Edgar Allan Poe, The Poetic PrincipleVol. 28
- p. 383–384Moore's lines embody the all in all of the divine passion of love.read · scan
Robert Louis Stevenson, Truth of IntercourseVol. 28
- p. 277Truth to one's heart and friends, never feigning emotion, makes love possible and mankind happy.read · scan
- p. 280We show ourselves crying on passers-by to come and love us; freedom is the chief ingredient in confidence.read · scan
1a.Love as natural to man and the cosmos
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 267Mutual desire and sympathy draw beings together, yet intelligent animals have forgotten it.read · scan
- p. 279–280The earth and aether love; the universe loves to make what is to be, and I love as it loves.read · scan
Dante Alighieri, PurgatoryVol. 20
- p. 216Virgil explains love as the soul's inclining toward an image that pleases, a spiritual motion that rests only in enjoying its object; not all love is praiseworthy.read · scan
Dante Alighieri, ParadiseVol. 20
- p. 301Beatrice's love-kindled vision seeks the good; lesser loves are traces of the primal beam.read · scan
- p. 423Dante's will is turned like an evenly moving wheel by the Love that moves the sun and the stars.read · scan
Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of PoesyVol. 27
- p. 33–34Love of beauty is defended, since only man discerns beauty and philosophers extolled love.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, Minor WorksVol. 48
- p. 411–412A life beginning with love and ending with ambition is the happiest condition of human nature.read · scan
- p. 412–413We are born with a disposition to love, which develops as the mind is perfected; man could not live a moment without it.read · scan
- p. 413Man cannot dwell with himself and must seek an object of love resembling him, differentiated by sex.read · scan
- p. 414–415Love is the most natural passion, ageless, sustained by intellect and pleasing; eyes interpret the heart.read · scan
- p. 415–416Man alone is imperfect and needs a second to be happy; elevated attachments fill the heart better than common ones.read · scan
- p. 419–420Great souls love strongly, not often; love is the same over all the earth as an attachment of thought.read · scan
Alexander Pope, Solitude; On a Certain Lady at Court; Essay on ManVol. 40
- p. 415Wants, frailties and passions give rise to true friendship and sincere love.read · scan
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human UnderstandingVol. 37
- p. 323–324Compares belief from custom to the natural instinct of feeling love when receiving benefits, as unavoidable as hatred at injuries.read · scan
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34
- p. 192Society, not nature, has given love its fatal impetuous ardour; savages are peaceable in their amours and less subject to jealousy.read · scan
Thomas Gray, PoemsVol. 40
- p. 453–454Loves and Graces dance to music; the bloom of young Desire and Love.read · scan
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulVol. 24
- p. 36Love's passion arises from pleasure; the forsaken lover laments lost pleasures, not positive pain, even when love drives to madness.read · scan
Robert Burns, Poems and SongsVol. 6
- p. 141–143Eden's first lovers shared the soul of love until the devil intruded.read · scan
James Hogg, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 766–768All nature joins in love; none would betray it or choose a crown over his lassie; bird's song has love as its energy.read · scan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 703–704All thoughts, passions and delights are ministers of Love; Friendship and Love are joys of youth; Genevieve loved.read · scan
Percy Bysshe Shelley, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 825–827'I love Love'; the Spirit of Delight is love and life, and the poet longs for it to return.read · scan
- p. 829–832Bird's joy exceeds any praise of love or wine, and it never knew love's sad satiety.read · scan
- p. 832–833Love's plea drawn from nature: all things mingle by divine law, so why not I with thee?read · scan
- p. 840–842Love heals all strife with mild brotherhood; hymn to the Life of Life whom the poet feels but never sees.read · scan
- p. 851–852Love is bewailed as fragile, choosing the frailest home; passion and reason fail it.read · scan
- p. 869–870A sustaining Love wove the web of being through man, beast and earth.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, CompensationVol. 5
- p. 96–97Love and you shall be loved; love is mathematically just like an algebraic equation.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, CirclesVol. 5
- p. 157–158No love can be bound by oath against a higher love.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, GiftsVol. 5
- p. 221–222Love is the genius and god of gifts; services are worthless without likeness, but those we love feel and delight in us.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, WorshipVol. 5
- p. 282Love is the cure for blunders and crime and the primal essence of souls: as much love, so much mind.read · scan
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 971–972Regret is deep as first love.read · scan
- p. 977–979In spring a young man's fancy turns to love; the girl watches him mutely.read · scan
Henry David Thoreau, WalkingVol. 28
- p. 415The savage's wildness is a faint symbol of the fierceness with which good men and lovers meet.read · scan
Sidney Lanier, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1397–1398Prince Love sets out with Mind and Sense, personified, to see hell, opening the allegory.read · scan
- p. 1400Love cannot find the hell that Sense and Mind claim to have seen; true loves begin in dreams of hate.read · scan
1b.Love distinguished from desire and lust
Euripides, The BacchaeVol. 8
- p. 377–378He accuses the women of seeking Aphrodite's lust rather than god in the hills.read · scan
Virgil, The AeneidVol. 13
- p. 270Venus seduces Vulcan with her charms; he yields to desire and promises arms, saying no task is difficult to love.read · scan
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus AureliusVol. 2
- p. 198Cured of amatory passions.read · scan
Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. AugustineVol. 7
- p. 31At Carthage he loved loving, defiling friendship with lust and suffering jealousy, suspicion, fears and quarrels.read · scan
Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16
- p. 57–58Ladies' company and beauty draw the porter; talk of men and women's pleasure.read · scan
Sir Thomas Malory, The Holy GrailVol. 35
- p. 145–146Percivale offers love to the lady, but it is a counterfeit of lust used by the fiend.read · scan
Benvenuto Cellini, The Autobiography of Benvenuto CelliniVol. 31
- p. 39–40Cellini feels passionate affection for his beautiful, modest apprentice Paulino and delights him with music.read · scan
- p. 136Cellini spends a night of passionate pleasure with Angelica, greeted with unbounded passion.read · scan
- p. 304He keeps Caterina as art model and for his pleasures, and threatens death to any rival.read · scan
Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, Part IVol. 14
- p. 204Young men's love is often lust, which decays once its delight is gained, unlike true affection; Fernando tires of the country lass.read · scan
Sir Walter Raleigh, PoemsVol. 40
- p. 205–207Bids the soul tell love it is but lust and charity it is cold, cynically unmasking love and charity.read · scan
Ben Jonson, PoemsVol. 40
- p. 293–294True love is distinguished from blind desire: pure, godlike unity of minds rather than tempest and fear.read · scan
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies A-BleedingVol. 47
- p. 682–684Pharamond urges Arethusa to take stolen delights before the wedding, while she withdraws in honour.read · scan
- p. 688He reduces love to a short sentence: love me and lie with me.read · scan
Thomas Hobbes, Of Man, Being the First Part of LeviathanVol. 34
- p. 337–338Love and desire are the same thing, differing only in whether the object is present or absent.read · scan
John Milton, Paradise RegainedVol. 4
- p. 371Belial's sensual view of love as amorous snaresread · scan
William Penn, Some Fruits of SolitudeVol. 1
- p. 330–331Lust is volatile and wastes by enjoyment, love grows; one springs from union of souls, the other of sense.read · scan
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality among MankindVol. 34
- p. 191–192Distinguishes physical love, a general desire, from moral love, a fictitious social sentiment fixing on one object that savages lack.read · scan
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulVol. 24
- p. 38Lust merely generative; love adds social qualities and attaches men to particular persons by beauty.read · scan
- p. 45–46Love of sex mixes lust; general love for man and animals has none and arises from positive pleasure.read · scan
- p. 74Love as satisfaction in contemplating the beautiful is distinguished from desire or lust.read · scan
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Tragedy of Faust, Part IVol. 19
- p. 116–118In Margaret's room Faust's lust softens into pure love-dream and reverence before her innocence, then guilt.read · scan
Friedrich von Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of ManVol. 32
- p. 292–293Desire rises to love as it sees humanity in its object; pleasure may be stolen but love must be a gift.read · scan
John Boyle O'Reilly, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1198Red rose means passion, white rose love; the purest love has a kiss of desire on the lips.read · scan
1c.Self-love and its relation to love of others
See also: Charity 1b
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of ChristVol. 7
- p. 268–269Loving oneself amiss loses the self; loving God alone finds both.read · scan
Francis Bacon, Essays, Civil and MoralVol. 3
- p. 31–32Charity admits no excess; love of neighbor is the portraiture of love of self.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48
- p. 98–99The heart naturally loves the Universal Being and itself, and hardens itself against either at will.read · scan
- p. 111–112We never love a person, only perishable qualities; beauty, judgment or memory lost would end love, so the self is not loved.read · scan
- p. 156Others should spend their life pleasing or seeking God, not attaching themselves to me.read · scan
- p. 156–157Love we owe ourselves is regulated by seeing ourselves as members of a whole; love God only and hate self only.read · scan
- p. 159Coming to know itself, the member loves itself only for the body.read · scan
- p. 160Each thing loves itself most; in loving the body we love ourselves as members of Christ, all one.read · scan
- p. 161We cannot love any object but ourselves.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, LettersVol. 48
- p. 335–336Man made with two loves, of God and of self, the latter subordinate to the former.read · scan
Alexander Pope, Solitude; On a Certain Lady at Court; Essay on ManVol. 40
- p. 422All creatures love themselves and their race; in man reason and sympathy extend love into benevolence.read · scan
- p. 428–430Charity is all mankind's concern; self-love and social love are the same, and the good of each depends on all.read · scan
- p. 430Self-love widens outward to friend, parent, neighbor, country and all creatures; faith, law and morals end in love of God and man.read · scan
Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel PepysVol. 28
- p. 294–295He loves himself with knowledge and so loves his neighbors; charity begins at home; he appreciates every person's quality.read · scan
1d.Disordered and ordered love
Euripides, HippolytusVol. 8
- p. 313–315Nurse loves Phaedra and reflects that love should be a light thing with gentle ties, not rooted deep in the heart.read · scan
Saint Augustine, The Confessions of St. AugustineVol. 7
- p. 22He failed to keep the measure of love, friendship's boundary, confusing love's brightness with the fog of lust.read · scan
Dante Alighieri, PurgatoryVol. 20
- p. 212Argument: gloominess proceeds from defective love, which is either natural or of the soul.read · scan
- p. 212Virgil teaches that all creatures have love, natural (never erring) or of the free spirit, which errs by bad object or excess or defect.read · scan
- p. 212–215Love wrongly aimed at neighbour's evil, or given with disordered measure to lesser goods, versus lax love of the true good.read · scan
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of ChristVol. 7
- p. 314–315Where one's treasure is, there is the heart; thought and meditation follow what one loves.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48
- p. 151Apparent love among men is at bottom hate.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, LettersVol. 48
- p. 336Self-love originated as natural and just in Adam, became infinite and disordered.read · scan
John Ruskin, Sesame and LiliesVol. 28
- p. 156–157Instinct of love, rightly disciplined, maintains life's sanctities; misdirected, undermines them.read · scan
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