All you need is Love

Ohh, love, love, love.

How can I not think of it with Valentine's Day peeking at me coyly from around the corner of the coming weekend? Truth be told, I've been thinking of it lately anyhow. What it means, how we show it, how there are different "loves" that we feel for different people at different times, what makes us feel loved; love for family, friends, past loves, lost loves, my one and only "true love.". Lots to think about, really.

I've thought about a college course I took long ago. It was called The Love and Morality Seminar, a 2 credit course in the Child Development and Family Sciences Dept (or whatever it was called), put on by 2 very well liked professors, Dr. Scoresby and Dr. Price, only about once every 4 yrs. I had taken a child development class by Dr. Price, which to this day is one of my very favorite classes I ever took. So. I knew I had to get into this seminar. It was very popular, love and morality being particularly popular and relevant topics to our college-aged and mostly love-struck peers. It turned out I had to take another class at the same time this one was offered, much like Miss Hermione Granger. But somehow I made this work out without the help of a time-turner. I can't even remember how I did it. But I think it involved sending a tape recorder every other week to each class and some tricky maneuvering. But I did it. And it was worth it. :)

This may have been the last year the seminar was ever offered, since I think one or both of these professors soon after retired.

But anyway - one of the things we talked about was the classical Greek forms of "love":

Affection (storge, στοργή) - a fondness through familiarity

Friendship (philia, φιλία) - a strong bond existing between people who share a common interest or activity

Eros (ἔρως) - love in the sense of 'being in love'

and Charity (agapē, ἀγάπη) - the love that brings forth caring regardless of circumstance

I have all my notes somewhere in a box, our grade being based pretty much solely on a final project of turning in our typed notes from the semester (awesome 2 credit class, I tell you.) :)

One quote from the class that I wrote in my journal was this:

"Be able to say I love you, deeply, thoroughly, and without limit."

This and many other various and sundry quotes from all sorts of sources (and on all sorts of topics) then made their way into a "quote book" I compiled. Just of the quotes that for some reason meant something special to me at the time when I jotted them down in my journal entries. Many from songs I was listening to at the moment, some from things said to me, classes, books, and who knows what else.

But in celebration of this, our holiday of love, I thought I would share some of my favorite "love quotes" from this aforementioned little book of mine. I think they address just some of the many varied forms of love. Hope you like them, too.

The very thought of you

and I forget to do

those little ordinary things

that everyone ought to do

- Billie Holiday

All I really want our love to do
is to bring out the best in me
and in you, too

- Joni Mitchell

I
can't conceal it . . .
don't you see?
can't you feel it?
I love you . . .
I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

-ABBA

If you let me take your heart
I will prove to you
We will never be apart
if I'm part of you

- The Beatles

If I
wasn't shy
I'd ask you if you
don't mind
to kiss you
a hundred times

- They Might Be Giants

No matter where you go

I will always be here

Any place you go

I will find you

on heaven or earth

- Clennad

All romance belongs to the past,
not the present
- a past transfigured by imagined memory.
- Fitzgerald

We are moulded and remoulded by those who have loved us, and though the love may pass, we are nevertheless their work, for good or ill.

- Francois Mauriac

I hope that you will think of me
in moments when you're happy
and you're smiling.

- John Denver

Rain and Sun for everyone, I finally
know that she's the one,
as sure as gold.

- The Ocean Blue

The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one person.
- Vil Putnam

Home . . . where my thoughts escape in

Home . . . where my music's playing

Home . . . where my love lies waiting,

silently for me.

- Simon and Garfunkel

The decision to have a child is to accept that your heart will forever walk about outside your body.
- Katharine Hadley

Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties in all the others.

- C.S. Lewis

What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

- George Eliot

My heart is fixed
I cannot range
I like my choice
too well to change.

- from a decorative pot we had in the kitchen


How to handle a woman . . . ?

There's a way, said the wise old man

The way to handle a woman,

is to love her

. . . simply love her

. . . merely love her

. . . just, love her.

- Camelot Musical Soundtrack

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day, filled with love of all kinds.

And do you have any favorite love quotes?? Do share . . .

(all photos borrowed from Flickr)