Is there any one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one's whole life? Surely the maxim of loving read more

Is there any one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one's whole life? Surely the maxim of loving kindness is such: Do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you.

The uncommitted life isn't worth living.

The uncommitted life isn't worth living.

Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in read more

The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now read more

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) --to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to read more

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. [Ephesians 5:25].

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. [Ephesians 5:25].

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, read more

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.