Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

What is love?



Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. … there are no age limits for love. Stendhal in his fantastic 1822 treatise on love.

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” Friedrich Nietzsche

 “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”  ―Anaïs Nin

“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater…The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.” ―Sarah Dessen

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that’s what you’ve given me. That’s what I’d hoped to give you forever.” ―Nicholas Sparks

“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.” ―Shana Abe


“Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.” ―David Byrne

“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.” ―Lisa Kleypas

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”  ―John Green

“When love is not madness it is not love.”  ― Pedro Calderón de la Barca

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, this is the problem I want to have. I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way. Let our scars fall in love.”  ―Galway Kinnell

“Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.”  ―Paulo Coelho

“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” ―Deborah Reber

And now we’re apart and you’re just some stranger who knows all my secrets and all my family members and all my quirks and flaws and it doesn’t make sense. Gaby Dunn

"Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside." - Margaret Walker

"Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature." - Howard Thurman

"Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end." - Anonymous

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria Rilke


"Loves makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." - Zora Neale Hurston

"Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day." - Nicholas Sparks

"To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven." - Karen Sunde

"A love song is just a caress set to music." - Sigmund Romberg


"Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever." - unknown

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." - Erich Fromm


"In the final analysis, love is the only reflection of man's worth." - Bill Wundram, Iowa Quad Cities Times

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. Mother Teresa


Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. Albert Einstein

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.  It is God's finger on man's shoulder. Charles Morgan

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip. Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs. Ovid


Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Erich Fromm


Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière

When love is not madness, it is not love.Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river.Malagasy Proverb


For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
Rosemonde Gerard

Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. Mark Overby

Love is a symbol of eternity.  It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. Author Unknown

Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.Author Unknown


Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly .Proverb

The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods. Theodor Reik, Of Love and Lust, 1957

The art of love... is largely the art of persistence. Albert Ellis


Love one another and you will be happy.  It's as simple and as difficult as that. Michael Leunig

Who would give a law to lovers?  Love is unto itself a higher law. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524


A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it. Frank A. Clark

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. Robert Heinlein

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.  You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.  Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. George Moore

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld


My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self

Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. Jean Anouilh

When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage. Bill Balance

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. Rose Franken

Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. Swedish Proverb

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. Henry Van Dyke


Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses. Lord Dewar

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. Natalie Clifford Barney


Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict. Rabindranath Tagore

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves. John Bulwer

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come. Lord Byron

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. Author unknown, as printed in The Hoosier Farmer

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. Lynda Barry

Love cures people—both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it. Karl Menninger


Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new. Ursula K. Le Guin

Love is not singular except in syllable. Marvin Taylor

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old. John Ciardi


People who are sensible about love are incapable of it. Douglas Yates

While duty measures the regard it owes
With scrupulous precision and nice justice,
Love never reasons, but profusely gives,
Gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all,
And trembles then, lest it has done too little.
Hannah More

Ah me! why may not love and life be one? Henry Timrod

It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken. Marguerite de Valois


Love.... Its eternal goal is life.... No one who has ever brought up a child can doubt for a moment that love is literally the life-giving fluid of human existence. Smiley Blanton, quoted in Woman's Home Companion, 1956

A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Mother Teresa

You don't have to go looking for love when it's where you come from. Werner Erhard


Love me and the world is mine. David Reed

It would be impossible to "love" anyone or anything one knew completely.  Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object. Paul Valéry, Tel quel, 1943

The love game is never called off on account of darkness. Tom Masson

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence. David Byrne


Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. Zora Neale Hurston

An old man in love is like a flower in winter. Portuguese Proverb

Without love, the rich and poor live in the same house. Author Unknown


The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters.  It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it. Francis Quarles, Emblems

Love is like those second-rate hotels where all the luxury is in the lobby. Paul-Jean Toulet

We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack. Marie Ebner Von Eschenbach, Aphorism

True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen. François, duc de La Rochefoucauld

Love, and a cough, cannot be hid. George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651

Poetry spills from the cracks of a broken heart, but flows from one which is loved. Christopher Paul Rubero


A man is not where he lives, but where he loves. Latin Proverb

The arms of love encompass you with your present, your past, your future, the arms of love gather you together. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Southern Mail, 1929, translated from French by Curtis Cate

Be everything with so much love in your heart that you would never want to do it any other way. Amrit Desai


A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be. Nicholas de Chamfort

Love is not consolation. It is light. Friedrich Nietzsche

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked. Erich Segal

[T]here is no hope for us in this painful, mysterious world save in giving ourselves to love. Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens



Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. Elinor Glyn


For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love. Carl Sagan

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. Author Unknown


Love is being stupid together. Paul Valery

In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love. Charles Baudelaire


On a cloudy night, when nothing seems above, still, there is love.  Always love.  For something, from someone.  It's never done.  Never. Jeb Dickerson

Fall not in love therefore; it will stick to your face. Tony Hendra, "Deteriorata"

Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so. Charles du Bos


What an infinity of bliss the possession of your love seemed to me — the future so full of passionate sweet life that my spirit shrank blinded from trying to explore it; I stopped content with the delicious sense of that moment alone. Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens

Love is an electric blanket with somebody else in control of the switch. Cathy Carlyle

Ah, lady, when I gave my heart to thee,
It passed into thy lifelong regency.
Gilbert Parker



The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy. George Jean Nathan

Love makes time pass; time makes love pass. French Proverb

The past is behind us, love is in front and all around us. Terri Guillemets

It is not that love is blind. It is that love sees with a painter's eye, finding the essence that renders all else background. Robert Brault


I love you as you are, but do not tell me how that is. Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Platonic love is love from the neck up.Thyra Smater Winsolow

The music may have stopped but my heart beats to another tune, this rhythm called love.A.C. Van Cherub


She stole a piece of my heart but I couldn't ask for a better place I'd rather be imprisoned. Craig D. Slovak

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.Tom Robbins


The eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. Margaret Atwood

Love touches the soul and awakens a desire so powerful that even the most vigilant heart is lured by its radiance. Jamie Lynn Morris

Love is not a matter of what happens in life.  It's a matter of what's happening in your heart. Ken Keyes

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Tzu



The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have penetrated the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet. What philosophy can calculate the vibrations of the heart before it can distinguish the colours of love? Pisistratus Caxton, What Will He Do With It?

In the midst of pain and urgent trouble we can not realize the supreme happiness of being loved — sweetest and deepest of all meditations.... Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens

Love is the law of life. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi


Men love because they are afraid of themselves, afraid of the loneliness that lives in them, and need someone in whom they can lose themselves as smoke loses itself in the sky. V.F. Calverton

To lovers! — the have-been's, the are-now's, and the may-be's. Minna Thomas Antrim, A Book of Toasts, 1902

Love is a Mystery.  You can't find it; it has to find you. Author Unknown


The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
             
The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous. Aldous Huxley
             
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise. Victor Hugo

Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. Franklin P. Jones

If you love something let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever. Douglas Horton
             

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death. Julius Caesar
             
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. Baruch Spinoza

The things that we love tell us what we are. Thomas Aquinas
             
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. Soren Kierkegaard
             
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. Bertrand Russell
             
The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile. Denis Waitley
             
Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law. Rabindranath Tagore
             
Love has no age, no limit; and no death. John Galsworthy

Falling in love is the best way to kill your heart because then it's not yours anymore. It's laid in a coffin, waiting to be cremated. Ville Valo
             
We live in the world when we love it. Rabindranath Tagore
             
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. Henry Ward Beecher
             
The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship. Amelia Earhart
             
People everywhere love Windows. Bill Gates
             
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Soren Kierkegaard
             

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all. Rita Mae Brown

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'. Sydney J. Harris

             
There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more. Dave Grohl
             
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present. Marianne Williamson
             
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it. Al Lopez
             
I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. George Eliot
             
We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. Walter Anderson
             

Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Jack Kingston
             
Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree. Richard Dawkins
                         
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. Charles M. Schulz
             
I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

             
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market. Erich Fromm
             
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness. Thomas Carlyle

I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for. W. C. Fields

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau
             
 Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
Josh Billings
             
Love knows how to form itself. God will do his work if we do ours. Our job is to prepare ourselves for love. When we do, love finds us every time. Marianne Williamson
             
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Alan Watts
             

 Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. Thomas Carlyle
             
Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love. Ray Bradbury

             
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

             
The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous. Aldous Huxley
             
Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise. Victor Hugo

Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile. Franklin P. Jones


If you love something let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever. Douglas Horton
             
I love the name of honor, more than I fear death. Julius Caesar


             
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. Baruch Spinoza

The things that we love tell us what we are. Thomas Aquinas
             
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. Soren Kierkegaard
             

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. Bertrand Russell
             
The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile. Denis Waitley
             
Love is not a mere impulse, it must contain truth, which is law. Rabindranath Tagore
             

Love has no age, no limit; and no death. John Galsworthy

Falling in love is the best way to kill your heart because then it's not yours anymore. It's laid in a coffin, waiting to be cremated. Ville Valo
             


We live in the world when we love it. Rabindranath Tagore
             
It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship. Henry Ward Beecher

             
The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship. Amelia Earhart
             
People everywhere love Windows. Bill Gates
             
Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. Soren Kierkegaard
             

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all. Rita Mae Brown

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'. Sydney J. Harris
             
There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more. Dave Grohl
             

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present. Marianne Williamson
             


Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it. Al Lopez
             
I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross


It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. George Eliot
             
We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. Walter Anderson
             
Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. Jack Kingston
             

Nothing is wrong with peace and love. It is all the more regrettable that so many of Christ's followers seem to disagree. Richard Dawkins
                         
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand. Charles M. Schulz
             

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
             
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market. Erich Fromm
             

Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness. Thomas Carlyle

I was in love with a beautiful blonde once. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm indebted to her for. W. C. Fields

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau


             
 Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
Josh Billings
             
Love knows how to form itself. God will do his work if we do ours. Our job is to prepare ourselves for love. When we do, love finds us every time. Marianne Williamson
             
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Alan Watts
             
 Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. Thomas Carlyle
             
Love is easy, and I love writing. You can't resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you're in love. Ray Bradbury