Child," she said placing her head to mine and her callused fingers on my cheek, "you can whip it and beat it senseless, you can drag it through the streets and spin on it, you can even dangle it from a tree, drive spikes trough it, and drain the last breath from it, but in the end, no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try to kill it, love wins.

Love fills the empty places and flows from what was once the epicenter of the wound. And it's the flowing that washes out the residue of the pain and makes us whole again. That's the crazy miracle that is love. The more you pour out, the more you have to pour.

The heart is not only the most unselfish of organs, it is also the most courageous and faithful.

Love is an amazing thing. It takes the brokenness, the scars, the pain, the darkness, everything, and makes it all new.

But love is a difficult thing to kill. Actually, it's the only thing in this universe or any other that you can't kill. No weapon that has ever been made can put a dent in it. You might punch it, stab it, whip it, and hang it out to dry—you can even drive a spear through it, pierce its very heart. But all you're going to get is blood and water, because love gives birth to love.

"Adam... My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love..." What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

In marriage, each partner is to be an encourager rather than a critic; a forgiver rather than a collector of hurts; an enabler rather than a reformer.

In all the world I have no one but you. Help me to follow you, even though it seems impossible. Help me to trust you as much as I long to love you.

He is such all the more in that through this—concretely, through his Cross—he can demonstrate his infinite gratitude to the Father. And in doing precisely that, he will be allowed to prove to the creatures that God, despite all appearances, is the love that goes all the way "to the end" (Jn 13:1) of its possibilities.

To be a husband or wife, to be a parent, is inevitably to be aware of so many disappointing, exasperating things about your mate or child, but at the same time to see those people in depth, to see them with both eyes, and to be reminded of why you still love them.

Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lie's man's only promise.

Love is not a thing, it is not lost when given. You can offer your love completely to hundreds of people and still retain the same love you had originally.