Love?
Why... "Love" is Tom Cruise hopping on Oprah's couch, is it not??
Perhaps not.
Here are some interesting quotes I came across while trying to find some clever love quote to post here (so that I may appear intelligent and thoughtful, of course):
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
-Lynda Barry
Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
-Rabbi Julius Gordon
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-Matt Groening, "Life in Hell"
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
-Morrie Schwartz, 'Tuesdays With Morrie'
I believe love is primarily a choice and only sometimes a feeling. If you want to feel love, choose to love and be patient.
-Real Live Preacher 'Anonymous author of RealLivePreacher.com '
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
-Edna Buchanan
Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.
-Margaret Cho
Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.
-Margaret Cho
If there’s one thing I know it’s God does love a good joke.
Hugh Elliott, ' Standing Room Only weblog'
One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
-Sophocles
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
-William Shakespeare
The things that we love tell us what we are.
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
One is very crazy when in love.
-Sigmund Freud
A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
-Mohandas Gandhi
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
-Gilbert K. Chesterton
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
-Ambrose Bierce
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
-Henry Ward Beecher
..For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
...Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
-Kahlil Gibran, 'The Prophet'
My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love ... and as much as I respond in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that's my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now that's not so easy.
-Bono, 'Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas'
As for my opinion, Love is a choice, not a feeling (Infatuation is a feeling). Love is a mature, responsible and conscious decision to live outside of one's own self and one's own interests for the betterment, the joy, the support, the fulfillment, the 'lifting up' of another human being(s), or of an idea or a cause. It is a gift that expects and asks nothing in return (henceforth.. a "gift", duh!!) and is not given under conditions and expectations.
It is a choice. It is work, sacrifice and surrender.