What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion.

To love is to act.

If no one loved, the sun would go out.

What a transfiguration it is to love! And the little shrieks, the pursuits in the grass, the waists encircled by stealth, the jargon that is melody, the adoration that breaks through in the way a syllable is said, those cherries snatched form one pair of lips by another - It all catches fire and turns into celestial glories.

He kissed the handkerchief, inhaled its perfume, put it over his heart, against his flesh in the daytime, and at night went to sleep with it on his lips. I feel her whole soul in it! he exclaimed. The handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply dropped it from his pocket.

Christmas means giving. The Father gave his Son, and the Son gave his life. Without giving there is no true Christmas, and without sacrifice there is no true worship.

If love was a crime, God would encourage us all to go to prison.

to dedicate oneself as a Victim of Love is not to be dedicated to sweetness and consolations; it is to offer oneself to all that is painful and bitter, because Love lives only by sacrifice . . . and the more we would surrender ourselves to Love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering.

Love lives only by sacrifice

Love will consume us only in the measure of our self-surrender.

THE science of love! Sweet is the echo of that word to the ear of my soul. I desire no other science. Having given all my substance for it, like the spouse in the Canticles, I think that I have given nothing. (Cant. 8:7).

The mark of Christian discipleship is love—love of the kind that Jesus exercised toward his followers, love visible enough that men will recognize it as belonging to those people who follow Jesus.