There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that love is the most important aspect of life, yet many misunderstand and trivialize it.
Guy De Maupassant's quote reflects the essential nature of love as life's greatest treasure, while also critiquing how society often perceives love. He suggests that instead of treating love as a sacred bond or a commodity, we should understand its true essence and cherish it beyond superficial interpretations and practices.
In practice
During a wedding toast, you might quote this to highlight the depth of love shared between the couple.
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.
To love very much is to love inadequately; we love-that is all. Love cannot be modified without being nullified. Love is a short word but it contains everything. Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe the air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us. Love is not a word; it is a wordless state indicated by four letters.
breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.
Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.
We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.
My own observation is: lovers don't surrender to each other, they surrender to something unknown that exists between them. They surrender to love - call it the 'god of love' - they both surrender to the god of love. Hence nobody's ego is fulfilled by your surrender; both the egos disappear in love.
Oh, thou did'st then ne'er love so heartily. If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run inot, Thou has not loved. Of if thou has't not sat as I do now, Wearying they hearer in thy mistress's praise, Thou has not loved. Of if thou hast not broke from company Abruptly, as my passion now makes me, Thou has not loved. (Silvius)
Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.
But to fall in love does not mean to love. One can fall in love and still hate.
I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.
Love alone allows man to forget himself... it alone can still redeem even the darkest hours of the past since it alone finds the courage to believe in the mercy of the holy God.
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