The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.

The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right here, right now, is a choice for personal empowerment.

My sole occupation is love.

Every saint in heaven is as a flower in that garden of God, and holy love is the fragrance and sweet odor that they all send forth, and with which they fill the bowers of that paradise above. Every soul there, is as a note in some concert of delightful music, that sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together blend in the most rapturous strains in praising God and the Lamb forever.

We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.

Marcel, I know I'm an old woman and as you say a bit of an actress. But please go on pretending. As long as we pretend we escape. Pretend that I love you like a mistress. Pretend that you love me like a lover. Pretend that I would die for you and that you would die for me.' I read the message again now; I thought it movingly phrased . . . And he had died for her, so perhaps he was no comédien after all. Death is a proof of sincerity.

The central mark of a maturing Christian, and of a maturing congregation, is that they increasingly love others as Christ loves them.

God of the living and the dead, let our lives sing your praise. Make us the fragrance of your love. Rise in us, and awaken us from our slumber that we might live in your light. Amen.

if this boat were sinking, I'd give my life to save you. Not because it's any kind of duty. Only because I like you, for reasons and standards of my own. I could die for you. But I couldn't and wouldn't live for you.

Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world... Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feeling to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world.