Love

Has the inner eye of the soul lost its power? I have seen her, but it is as if I had seen a heavenly revelation—so completely has her image vanished again for me. In vain do I summon all the powers of my soul in order to conjure up this image. If I ever see her again, I shall be able to recognize her instantly, even though she stands among a hundred others. Now she has fled and the eye of my soul tries in vain to overtake her with its longing. I was walking along Langelinie, seemingly nonchalantly and without paying attention to my surroundings, although my reconnoitering glance left nothing unobserved—and then my eyes fell upon her. My eyes fixed unswervingly upon her. They no longer obeyed their master’s will: it was impossible for me to shift my gaze and thus overlook the object I wanted to see—I did not look, I stared. As a fencer freezes in his lunge, so my eyes were fixed, petrified in the direction initially taken. It was impossible to look down, impossible to withdraw my glance, impossible to see, because I saw far too much. The only thing I have retained is that she had on a green cloak, that is all—one could call it capturing the cloud instead of Juno; she has escaped me … and left only her cloak behind … The girl made an impression on me … (Soren Kierkegaard, writing about Cordeilia)

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
SK

Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all.
SK

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

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.

The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
Percy Shelley

Do you love me because I am beautiful,
or am I beautiful because you love me?
Cinderella

You are the most beautiful girl that has ever lived, and it is worth dying to have kissed you.
Dylan Thomas

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
Leo Tolstoy

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods.

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
Plato

It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
E. M. Forster, A Room With a View