Love has to spring spontaneously from within and it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; but though love cannot be forced on anyone, it can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self communicative; those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible, and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches. --Meher Baba (in Untitled)

Love is the form that gives life to the process and is itself increased by its own endeavor. Love becomes quite literally all. In states of coherence one is marrying oneself on all levels. Love then takes the next quantum leap and one loves all others in one's immediate reality. This then moves to an all-encompassing love for all and everything. And so loves becomes the most gentle and most powerful agent for the fielding and forming of reality. In love the lenses fall away. In love one forms all formings. In loves one arrives home at last. --Jean Huston (in Lenses Fall Away)

Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (in Untitled)

To love is the greatest thing in life; it is very important to talk about love, to feel it, to nourish it, to treasure it, otherwise it will soon be dissipated, for the world is very brutal. If while you are young you don't feel love, if you don't look with love at people, at animals, at flowers, when you grow up you find that your life is empty; you will be very lonely, and the dark shadows of fear will follow you always. But the moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. --Krishnamurti (in Untitled)

The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. --Ram Dass (in A Victim Treats His Mugger Right)

At the heart of that ancient primordial relationship that existed, there was love. Not the Hallmark variety of love, not even the human variety of love, but a much vaster, more ancient, and simpler form of love. A covenant of love between the human and the living Earth. -- Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (in A Primordial Covenant of Relationship)

We were talking-about the space between us all And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away. We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it To try our best to hold it there-with our love With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew. Try to realize it's all within yourself no-one else can make you change And to see you're really only very small, and life flows on within you and without you. We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold and the people, Who gain the world and lose their soul- they don't know-they can't see-are you one of them? When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind is waiting there- And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you. --George Harrison (in Untitled)

I want to love free and I want to be free to love and I want my love to be free and I want my love to free and I want free to be me. I want to be free. --Kahlil Gibran (in Untitled)

Love After Love The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome, And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. --Derek Walcott (in Untitled)

Love is not a thing to understand. Love is not a thing to feel. Love is not a thing to give and receive. Love is a thing only to become and eternally be. --Sri Chinmoy (in 51-Day Self-Transcendence Race)

Optimism represents the spontaneous flow of love. Also optimism represents trust in love. Therefore it is love trusting love which is optimism. --Hazrat Inayat Khan (in Optimism in the Dark Night)

Love is not patronizing and charity isn't about pity, it is about love. Charity and love are the same -- with charity you give love, so don't just give money but reach out your hand instead. --Mother Teresa (in The Chicken Lady)

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. --T.S. Eliot (in Where Fear Meets Hope: Stories from Around the Globe)

Power without love is brutality, but love without consideration of power is sentimentality. How to make power express love, and love humanize power, is the distinctive task for the next hundred years, --Reinhold Neibuhr (in Mighty in Contradiction: Love Powerfully)

I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you. Charlie and I know people who have buildings named after them, receive great honors, etc., and nobody loves them -- not even the people who give them honors. Charlie and I talk about wouldn't it be great if we could buy love for $1 million. But the only way to be loved is to be lovable. You always get back more than you give away. --Warren Buffet (in Untitled)

Be true to your own self, love your self absolutely. Do not pretend that you love others as yourself. Unless you have realized them as one with yourself, you cannot love them. Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are. --Nisargadatta Maharaj (in Untitled)

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the twin towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. And if you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion that love actually is all around. --from 'Love Actually' (in Love Actually)

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. --Thomas Merton (in Love's Beginning)

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius. --Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in Mozart)

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 (in One-word Sidewalk Sermons)

When the heart breaks open, it marks the beginning of a real love affair with this world. It is a broken-hearted love affair, rather than the conventional kind based on hope and expectation. Only in this fearless love that can respond to life's pain as well as its beauty can we be of real help to ourselves or anyone else in this difficult age. --John Welwood (in Cancelled Wedding Benefits Charity)

The only way love can last a lifetime is if it's unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love. --Stephen Kendrick (in The Present of Being Present)

To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. --Thich Nhat Hanh (in Erich Fromm on the Art of Loving)

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy. --Thomas Merton (in Facing Homelessness)

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. --Wendell Berry (in Removing Weeds, Tending Flowers: Reflections from a Changemaker)

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. --Wendell Berry (in The Bad Kids)

Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close. --Francis Weller (in Gratitude, Grief and Finding Your Yes)

And I love you
as I love the dance that brings you
out of the multitude
in which you come and go.
Love changes, and in change is true. --Wendell Berry (in The Woman Beside Wendell Berry)

Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. --Mother Teresa (in Untitled)

"I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend against its force....My love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day." --Og Mandino (in Untitled)

Love is like a flower Always blooming... Always growing Always showing its beauty Wishing you bouquets of love... --Molly Silliphant, age 15, Special Olympics skier (in Untitled)

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. --William Gladstone (in Untitled)

Love is a living thing, hate is a living thing. If you do not nourish your love, it will die. If you cut the source of nutriment for your violence, your violence will also die. -- Thich Naht Hanh (in Untitled)

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love. --Gandhi's Prayer For Peace (in Untitled)

Where love rules, there is no will to power and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. --Carl Jung (in Untitled)

Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service. --Mother Teresa (in 500 Years of Peace)

There is no way to peace, Peace is the Way. There is no way to happiness, Happiness is the Way. There is no way to love, Love is the Way. --Dan Millman (in Untitled)

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. --Kahlil Gibran (in Work is Love Made Visible)

As all living beings desire to be happy always, without misery, as in the case of every one there is observed supreme love for one's self, and as happiness alone is the cause for love, in order to gain that happiness which is one's nature and which is experienced in the state of deep sleep where there is no mind, one should know one's self. For that, the path of knowledge, the inquiry of the form 'Who am I?' is the prinicpal means. --Ramana Maharishi (in Deep Sleep)

Let your love flow outward through the universe, To its height, its depth, its broad extent, A limitless love, without hatred or enmity. Then as you stand or walk, Sit or lie down, As long as you are awake, Strive for this with a one-pointed mind; Your life will bring heaven to earth. --Sutta Nipata (in A Limitless Love)

Love cannot remain by itself -- it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. --Mother Theresa (in Service Vacation)

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. --The Prayer of St Francis (in The Prayer of St Francis)

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. --Jimi Hendrix (in Smiling Not Allowed)

Out of love, No regrets- Though the goodness Be wasted forever. Out of love, No regrets- Though the return Be never. --Langston Hughes (in No Regrets)

May our lives be ever intertwined, our love keeping us together. We will build a home that is compassionate to all, full of respect and honor for others and each other. May our home be forever filled with peace, happiness and love. --Author Unknown (in Made With Love Café)

It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it. ... The real preparation for education is the study of one's self. --Maria Montessori (in 100 Years of Montessori)

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being. Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves -- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (in The World's Biggest Concert Ever)

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested in? What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? --Dorothy Day (in A Common Word Between Us & You)

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also -- if you love them enough. --George Washington Carver (in Organic Inventiveness)

Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself. -- Leo F. Buscaglia (in The Art of Holding Babies)