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We can trust the flow of the universe. If these rules of love are true, then they are effective whether we agree with them or not, whether or not we use words to talk about them. The reality of love is something you do for yourself, with or without words, and judge the results from your own experiences. Thaddeus Gdas (1924)

The day will come when, after harnessing space the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881)

We must not grow weary of doing little things for the love of God, who looks not on the great size of the work, but on the love in it. Brother Lawrence (1611)

I love them that love me;
and those that seek me
early shall find me.
Proverbs 8.17 (1011 B.C.E.)

Love is not an art like poetry, possible only to the few endowed for it, it is open and accessible to all. Soren Kierkegaard (1813)

And in eternity no mockery will wound the lover because he was foolish enough to make himself a laughing-stock through hoping everything. Soren Kierkegaard (1813)

So the life of love is hidden; but its secret life is itself in motion and has eternity in it. As the quiet lake, however placidly it lies, is really running water -- for is there not a wellspring at bottom? -- so love, however quiet it is in its concealment, is ever flowing. But the quiet lake can become dry if its source sometime fails; the life of love, on the contrary, has an eternal wellspring. This life is fresh and everlasting; no cold can chill it. It is too fervent for that; and no heat can exhaust it, its coolness is too fresh for that. But it is hidden. Soren Kierkegaard (1813)

Love cannot calculate. Soren Kierkegaard (1813)

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

If you want what visible reality can give, you're an employee.
If you want the unseen world, you're not living your truth.
Both wishes are foolish, but you'll be forgiven for forgetting
that what you really want is love's confusing joy.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

And don't look for me in a human shape.

I am inside your looking. No room

for form with love this strong.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

Always check your inner state
with the lord of your heart.
Copper doesn't know it's copper,
until it's changed to gold.

Your loving doesn't know its majesty,
until it knows its helplessness.

If the beloved is everywhere,
the lover is a veil,
but when living itself becomes
the Friend, lovers disappear.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

But believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance and trust that in this love there is a strength and a blessing, out beyond which you do not have to step in order to go very far! Rainer Maria Rilke (1875)

But the body's desires, in another way, are like
an unpredictable associate, whom you must be
patient with. And that companion is helpful,
because patience expands your capacity
to love and feel peace.
Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

I saw you last night in the gathering, but could not take you openly in my arms, so I put my lips next to your cheek, pretending to talk privately. Jalal Al Din Rumi (1207)

Remember Augustine's dictum, amor meus, pondus meum. "My love is a weight, a gravitational force." As one loves temporal things, one gains an illusory substantiality and a selfhood which gravitates "downward," that is to say acquires a need for things lower in the scale of being than itself. It depends on these things for its own self-affirmation. In the end this gravitational pull becomes an enslavement to material and temporal cares, and finally to sin. Yet this weight itself is an illusion, a result of the "puffing up" of pride, a "swelling" without reality. The self that appears to be weighed down by its love and carried away to material things is, in fact, an unreal thing. Yet it retains an empirical existence of its own: it is what we think of as ourselves. Thomas Merton (1915)

If ever two were one, then surly we.
As ever man is loved by God, then truly me.
Anonymous

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. Rainer Maria Rilke (1875)

He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return. Baruch Spinoza (1632)

Thus I was taught that love is our lord's meaning. And I saw most surely in this and in all, that before God made us he loved us, which love was never slaked nor ever shall be. And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had beginning, but the love in which he made us was in him from without beginning. In this love we have our beginning, and all this shall we see in God without end. Dame Julian Of Norwich (1342)

When the next step comes, you do not take the step, you do not know the transition, you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere, and so you do not know the way by which you got there or the way by which you come back afterwards. You are certainly not lost. You do not fly. There is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference. The next step is not a step. You are not transported from one degree to another. What happens is that the separate entity that was you suddenly disappears and nothing is left but a pure freedom indistinguishable from infinite Freedom, love identified with love. Not two loves, one waiting for the other, striving for the other, seeking for the other, but Love Loving in Freedom. Thomas Merton (1915)

To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with God above sense and experience in the darkness of a pure and perfect love. Thomas Merton (1915)

My servant does not cease to come near Me until I love him; and when I love him, I am the sight he sees with and the hearing he hears with and the hand he receives with and the foot he walks with. Muhammed (570)

So hath God by rational methods enabled us to love others better than ourselves, and thereby made us the most glorious creatures. Had we not loved ourselves at all, we could never have been obliged to love anything. So that self-love is the basis of all love. But when we do love ourselves, and self-love is satisfied infinitely in all its desires and possible demands, then it is easily led to regard the Benefactor more than itself, and for His sake overflows abundantly to all others. So that God by satisfying my self-love, hath enabled and engaged me to love others. Thomas Traherne (1637)