Quotes to Consider

Whoso loves believes the impossible.
  --Elizabeth Barrett Browning


In dreams and in love, there are no impossibilitys.
  --Janos Arany


Those alone are wise who know how to love.
  --Seneca


Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage.
  --Lao Tzu


What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters
compared to what lies within us.
  --Ralph Waldo Emerson


I love thee. I love but thee
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold
And the stars grow old.
  --William Shakespeare


I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
  --Henry Ward Beecher


Heaven will be no heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there.
  --Andrew Jackson


If I know what love is, it is because of you.
  --Hermann Hesse


Love doesn't make the world go round,
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
  --Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Hindu Marriage Poem

You have become mine forever.
Yes, we have become partners.
I have become your.
Hereafter, I cannot live without you.
Do not live without me.
Let us share the joys.
We are word and meaning, united.
You are thought and I am sound.

May the nights be honey-sweet for us.
May the mornings be honey-sweet for us.
May the plants be honey-sweet for us.
May the earth be honey-sweet for us.

A Marriage

You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms.  It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you.  Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.

But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowering back
to your fingers and arms.
And when you partner's arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.

  --Michael Blumenthal

A History of Love

Love.  What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the humble, fueled national scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings.  How can love's spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable?...Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilization, with taproots stretching deep into dark and mysterious days....
          The heart is a living museum.  In each of its galleries, no matter how narrow or dimly lit, preserved forever like wondrous diatoms, are moments of loving and being loved.

  --Diane Ackerman

Patagonia

I said perhaps Patagonia , and pictured
a peninsula, wide enough
for a couple of ladderback chairs
to wobble on at high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin, looped
in a cat's cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles,
growing worried in the hush, had
paddled off in tiny coracles, till

those restless birds, your actor's hands,
had dropped slack into your lap,
until you'd turned, at last, to me.

When I spoke of Patagonia , I meant
skies all empty aching blue. I meant
years. I meant all of them with you

  --Kate Clanchy

Excerpt from "The Irrational Season"

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take…..It is indeed a fearful gamble…Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take….If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love is not a possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person….When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that is often rejected.

  --Madeleine L'Engle

Photo from 3 West Club