love is...

i'm humbled by this couple. they epitomize love, hard work, and devotion.

via here

love is... without knowing

love is... weird

love is... yourself

love is...

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"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. "

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~

love is...

 "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

love is... to be vulnerable

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 “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

love is... horrible

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“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” 

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

love is... smart

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Love looks not with the eyes, 

but with the mind.
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

love is... friends

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature. ― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

love is... small things

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Not all of us can do great things. But

we can do small things with great love.

~ Mother Teresa ~ 

love is... courage

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, 

while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
~ Lao Tzu ~

love is... the perk

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“we accept the love we think we deserve.” 

― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

love is...

love is... hopeful.

 

thoughtful thursday: love is awareness

"Awareness born of love is the only force that can bring healing and renewal. Out of our love for another person, we become more willing to let our old identities wither and fall away, and enter a dark night of the soul, so that we may stand naked once more in the presence of the great mystery that lies at the core of our being. This is how love ripens us -by warming us from within, inspiring us to break out of our shell, and lighting our way through the dark passage to new birth." -John Welwood


from here.

love is...

“ Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

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" Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. “  ~Louis de Berniers

love is...

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Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce the love in the loved person.  Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also off little love.  ~Erich Fromm

love is...

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The most powerful symptom of love is a tenderness which becomes at time almost insupportable.  ~Victor Hugo

love is

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                                              there is only one happiness in life, 
                                                                                               to love and be loved. ~george sand

love is...

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you know you're in love when you can't sleep
because reality is finally better than your dreams.
~Dr. Suess