Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Interpretation
Love is about recognizing parts of ourselves in others and finding joy in that connection.
This quote suggests that love is not just an emotion but a profound experience of self-discovery through our relationships. When we love others, we often find reflections of our own identities and values in them, and this mutual recognition brings a sense of joy and fulfillment.
In practice
A couple celebrating their anniversary might share this quote to reflect on their journey together.
Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars.
Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.
The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new.
Books are a finer world within the world. (1863)
A man does not plant a tree for himself; he plants it for posterity.
If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.
Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare; And beauty draws us with a single hair.
It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel.
Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing.
If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.
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