a gift

"Love is always bestowed as a gift-- freely, willingly, and without expectation... We don't love to be loved; we love to love."
Leo Buscaglia

endless

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end."
Germaine De Stael

a resting place

"We find rest in those we love, and we provide a resting place in ourselves for those who love us."
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

reason

"The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."
Jacques Benigne Bossuel

worthwhile

"Love doesn't make the world go 'round.
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."
Franklin P. Jones

the heart's friend

Fair is the white star of twilight,
And the sky clearer
At the day’s end;
But she is fairer, and she is dearer,
She, my heart’s friend!

Fair is the white star of twilight,
And the moon roving
To the sky’s end;
But she is fairer, better worth loving,
She, my heart’s friend.

Shoshone Love Song

openness

“your slightest look
easily will unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal
myself as spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)
her first rose.”
E. E. Cummings

topsy-turvy

“Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.”
Marguerite DeValois

dignity

“The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity-—love. And the story of a love is not important—-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.”
Helen Hayes

worth the wait

First Kiss

The first daffodil peaks
through the remnants of winter snow;
touchable sunshine,
token of life,
the witness that at last
spring has come.
Joyous spring, warm, bright;
you are worth the wait.

The first kiss,
tenderly placed on eager lips,
this long time yearning;
token of honor,
the witness that at last,
love has come.
Joyous love, warm, bright;
You are worth the wait.

Francesca

ecstasy

“A sunbeam filtering through the blind shed a gentle light on her soft golden hair, on her pure throat, on her tranquil breast… It seemed to me that I had known her for a long time, and that before her I had known nothing and had not lived… ‘And here I am sitting opposite her,’ I was thinking, ‘I have met her; I know her. God, what happiness!’ I almost leapt from my chair in ecstasy…”
Ivan Turgenev

independent

“We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence.”
Fred Rogers

daring

“We are the dupes of myth when we upbraid
Ourselves because we love; for we are made
For loving: all the sweets of living are
For those that love. Be joyful, unafraid!”
Omar Khayyam

joy

“Submit to love faithfully and it gives a person joy. It intoxicates, it envelops, it isolates. It creates fragrance in the air, ardour from coldness, it beautifies everything around it.”
Leos Janacek

complete

Double Wedding

Let’s have a double wedding,
You and me
And Eros and Agape.

Let us post
Interchangeable notes
On bedroom wall
And refrigerator:
“Love thy lover”
And “Love they neighbor.”

Let us hold hands
In movies
And in the hospital.

Let us kiss
Shoulders and eyelids
And the cut fingers
Of small children.

Let us serve one another
Apple blossoms in vases
And quartered fruit
On trays.

Let us write poems
And wills to each other.

Let us have nights
As friendly lovers
And days as loving friends.

And let the four of us,
You and me
And Eros and Agape,
Stand in line together,
At the grocery store
And at a golden
Anniversary.

Carol Lynn Pearson

inevitable

“Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty humming along beneath our ignorance that insured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.”
Robert James Waller

a witness

“All these promises that we make and break--—Why is it, do you think, that people get married?”
“Passion.”
“No.”
“That’s interesting, because I would have taken you for a romantic. Why then?”
“Because we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on this planet, I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything; the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed, I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.’ You can quote me on that if you like.”

from "Shall We Dance"

creation

“Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man’s only promise.”
Leo Buscaglia

color

“…In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.”
Marc Chagall

timeless

“Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock. Across the barriers of time and the ultimate destiny, love persists, for the home of the beloved, absent or present, is always in the mind and heart. Absence does not diminish love.”
Mary Parrish

richness

“Who, being loved, is poor?”
Oscar Wilde

“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love.
His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows,
the water passed through his shoes,--
And the stars through his soul.”
Victor Hugo

infinite

“Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re ‘equally infinite.’ Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.”
Fred Rogers

strong

“Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility… It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrants them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down. Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not. Though weary, it is not tired; though pressed, it is not straightened; though alarmed, it is not confounded; but, as a lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards and securely passes all.”
Thomas A’ Kempis

all along

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Jalalu’ddin Rumi

fortification

“…I never see beauty without thinking of you or scent happiness without thinking of you. You have fulfilled all my ambition, realized all my hopes, made all my dreams come true. You have set a crown of roses on my youth and fortified me against the disaster of our days.”
Duff Cooper

beautiful friendship

“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps… perhaps… love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”
L. M. Montgomery

clouds

“Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out. You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.”
Annie Sullivan

true love

“When two souls, which have sought each other for however long in the throng, have finally found each other, when they have seen that they are matched, are in sympathy and compatible, in a word, that they are alike, there is then established for ever between them a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are, a union which begins on earth and continues for ever in heaven. This union is love, true love, such as in truth very few men can conceive of, that love which is a religion, which defies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.” Victor Hugo