- Albert Camus

Some cry:: ‘Love me!!’ Others:: ‘Don’t love me!!’ But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries:: ‘Don’t love me and be faithful to me!!’

- Robert Browning

God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are his children, one family here.

- Anonymous

Love is for fools wise enough to take a chance.

- Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly?

- Comte de Bussy-Rabutin

L'amour vient de l'aveuglement, l'amitie de la connaissance. (Love comes from blindness, friendship from knowledge.)

- George David Birkhoff

The transcendent importance of love and goodwill in all human relations is shown by their mighty beneficent effect upon the individual and society.

- George Albert Smith

With love in my heart for every one of you, may I say I am grateful. I haven't any way of expressing my thanksgiving to the people of this Church and many people out of the Church, for their kindnesses to me, one of the humblest of our Father's sons. I wish I could return in full measure all the good which has been done for me.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.

- Jack H. Goaslind, Jr.

Much of our love is confined to mere lip service and dreams of good deeds accomplished, but true love must be expressed in unselfish acts of kindness that bring others closer to our Heavenly Father.

- Agnes Repplier

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.

- Robert Browning

All’s love, yet all’s law.

-

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

- Anonymous

A love that defies all logic is sometimes the most logical thing in the world.

- Anacreon

I both love and do not love; and am mad and not mad.

- Nora Roberts

Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.

- Joan Collins

Love may be a dream but marriage is a nightmare.

- Zsa Zsa Gabor

A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he’s finished.

- H. L. Mencken

There are two times in every man's life when he is thoroughly happy; just after he has met his first love and just after he has parted from his last one.

- William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove::O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests and is never shaken.It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle’s compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom,If this be error, and upon me prov’d,I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

- William Shakespeare.

Love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

- Henry David Thoreau

It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.

- Tony Snow

Love can achieve unexpected majesty in the rocky soil of misfortune.

- Erich Fromm

Immature love says, "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you."

- Anonymous

If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.

- Daisaku Ikeda

With love and patience, nothing is impossible.

- Anonymous

If you want something very, very badly,Let it go free.If it comes back to you, It’s yours forever.If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with. 

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

- Henry Fielding

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

- Cullen Hightower

Love is what is left in a relationship after all the selfishness has been removed.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

- Empedocles

At one time through love all things come together into one, at another time through strife’s hatred, they are borne each of them apart.

- William Shakespeare

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!O that I were a glove upon that hand,That I might touch that cheek!

-

How does one measure time? No, not in day, months, or years. It is measured by the most precious of all things:: Love. Without which all beings and things whether brave and/or beautiful would perish.

-

Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass. 

- Anonymous

Love may conquer all, but it needs time as its field general.

- Dr. Joyce Brothers

The best proof of love is trust.

- William Shakespeare

Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none.

- William Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:: On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd. But wherefore says she not she is unjust? And wherefore say not I that I am old? O, love's best habit is in seeming trust, And age in love loves not to have years told:: Therefore I lie with her and she with me, And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

- Florence Allshorn

I used to think that being nice to people and feeling nice was loving people. Now I know it isn't. Love is the most immense unselfishness and it is so big I've never touched it.

- Francis Bacon

It is impossible to love and be wise.

- William Shakespeare

. . . but you are wise, Or else you love not, for to be wise and love Exceeds man's might . . .

- Elizabeth Bowen

When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.

- Samuel Butler, the older

All love at first, like generous wine,Ferments and frets until ‘tis fine;But when ‘tis settled on the lee,And from th’ impurer matter free,Becomes the richer still the older,And proves the pleasanter the colder.

- Samuel Butler, the older

For money has a power aboveThe stars and fate, to manage love.

- John Milton

Freely we serve,Because we freely love, as in our willTo love or not; in this we stand or fall.

- Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore

Kind souls, you wonder why, love you, When you, you wonder why, love noneWe love, Fool, for the good we do, Not that which unto us is done!

- Thomas S. Monson

When I opened the door, there I would see a man, sometimes two, ill-clothed, ill-fed, ill-schooled. Generally, such a visitor held in his hand the familiar cap. His hair would be tousled, his face unshaven. The question was always the same:: "Could you spare some food?" My dear mother invariably responded with a pleasant, "Come in and sit down at the table." She would then prepare a ham sandwich, cut a piece of cake, and pour a glass of milk. Mother would ask the visitor about his home, his family, his life. She provided hope and words of encouragement. Before leaving, the visitor would pause to express a gracious thank-you. I would note that a smile of content had replaced a look of despair. Eyes that were dull now shone with new purpose. Love, that noblest attribute of the human soul, can work wonders. 

- David B. Haight

Knowing that we should love is not enough. But when knowledge is applied through service, love can secure for us the blessings of heaven.

- Anonymous

Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.

- Robert Lee Frost

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air.

- Robert Scheid

The only person to whom your love belongs is the one to whom your love belongs.

- Robert Burton

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread.

- Saint Augustine

If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God:: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.

- John Donne

Who ever loves, if he do not proposeThe right true end of love, he's one that goesTo sea for nothing but to make him sick.

- Anonymous

Love can cure heartbreaks, misfortune, or tragedy. It is the eternal companion.

- James P. De Wolfe, D.D.

Some morning it is likely that the headlines of the world will scream forth the news that New York has been bombed. As tragic as this will be, it will nevertheless accomplish the deep unity that Christians should have. It is a sad commentary that our brotherhood, which exists by Christian love, is only truly cemented by Christian suffering.

- Walt Whitman

Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others . . . And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

- Benjamin Franklin

Love your enemies, for they will tell you your faults.

- R. A. Dickson

Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.

- Ed Howe

You needn’t love your enemy, but if you refrain from telling lies about him, you are doing well enough.

- Oliver Goldsmith

I love everything that's old:: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

- Alice Cary

He who loves best his fellow-manIs loving God the holiest way he can.

- William Cowper

Lord, it is my chief complaint, That my love is weak and faint;Yet I love thee and adore,Oh for grace to love thee more!

- George Gordon, Lord Byron

I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week.

- Meher Baba

To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for our own dear ones, we love God.

- Richard Rolle

The commandment of God is, that we love Our Lord in all our heart, in all our soul, in all our thought. In all our heart; that is, in all our understanding without erring. In all our soul; that is, in all our will without gainsaying. In all our their ought; that is, that we think on Him without forgetting. In this manner is very love and true, that is work of man's will. For love is a willful stirring of our thoughts unto God, so that it receive nothing that is against the love of Jesus Christ, and therewith that it be lasting in sweetness of devotion; and that is the perfection of this life.

- Robert Green Ingersoll

Learn to love good books. There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.

- Barbara Cartland

France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door.  

- David B. Haight

Love is a gift of God, and as we obey His laws and genuinely learn to serve others, we develop God’s love in our lives. Love of God is the means of unlocking divine powers which help us to live worthily and to overcome the world.

- William Shakespeare?

Love is a madness most discreet

- Joseph Addison

Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse. Joseph Addison

- David B. Haight

Someone has written, “Love is a verb.” It requires doing — not just saying and thinking. The test is in what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.

- Robert Lee Frost

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. 

- Sir Philip Sidney

Ring out your bells! Let mourning show be spread!For Love is dead.

- Vincent van Gogh

Love is something eternal—the aspects may change, but not the essence. There is the same diflference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is buming. The lamp was there and it is a good lamp, but now it is shedding light, too, and that is its real function.

- Lew Wallace

Riches take wings, comforts vanish, hope withers away, but love stays with us. Love is God.

- Jeremy Taylor

Love is the greatest thing that God can give us; for Himself is love:: and it is the greatest thing we can give to God; for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it the band of perfection; it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments; for it is the fulfilling of the Law.

- Anonymous

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

- Dorothy Parker

Love is like quicksilver in the hand, Leave the fingers open and it stays, Clutch it, and it darts away. Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer and satirist

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all:: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink. 

- Wystan Hugh Auden

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever:: I was wrong.

- Albert Camus

I love life — that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

- Robert Herrick

You say, to me-wards your affection’s strong;Pray love me little, so you love me long.

- Charles Dickens

I love little children—and it is not a slight thing when they, who are fresh from God, love us.

- Franklin P. Jones

Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

- Walter Lippmann

Love endures only when the lovers love many things together and not merely each other.

- Anonymous

A self-centered man admitted:: "Sure, I know that the Bible says to love our neighbors as ourselves. But frankly, I don't believe that my neighbors can stand all that affection." 

- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.

- Anonymous

Ah, some love Paris,And some Purdue.But love is an archer with a low I.Q.A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity.So I’m in love withNew York City.

- John Donne

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. 

- Anonymous

Love is not blind, it sees more not less; But because it sees more it chooses to see less.

- William Goldman

But love is many things, none of them logical.

- Anonymous

If you fear nothing, you love nothing. If you love nothing, what joy can there be in life?

- Josh Billings

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.

- Felix Adler

Love of country is like love of woman — he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.

- George Bernard Shaw

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

- Jean Baptiste Moliére

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.

- Ben Jonson

Who falls for love of God, shall rise a star.

- Rex C. Reeve, Sr.

If men and nations did reach up to God with all their hearts, war would cease. If love of God were in the heart of man, a man would have no desire to destroy his brother.There would be no dishonesty if the love of God were in the heart. If God came first in his life, a man would love his neighbor as himself, and instead of taking from him, he would feel to give.

- Sterling W. Sill

That man loves God who puts his own life in harmony with him, and who serves his fellow men as though his life depends upon it, as indeed it does.

- Joseph Smith, Jr.

A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.

- Delbert L. Stapley

Keeping the commandments of God is not a difficult burden when we do it out of love of him who has so graciously blessed us.

- George F. Richards

If such love obtained in the world today as the Lord intended that it should, love of God and love of fellow men, there would be no wars, contentions, and strife among the children of men. And that there is such, is due to an indifference by men to heed the admonitions and teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

- Reginald John Campbell

It is no strain of metaphor to say that the love of God and the wrath of God are the same thing, described from opposite points of view. How we shall experience it depends upon the way we shall come up against it:: God does not change; it is man's moral state that changes. The wrath of God is a figure of speech to denote God's unchanging opposition to sin; it is His righteous love operating to destroy evil. It is not evil that will have the last word, but good; not sorrow, but joy; not hate, but love.

- Francis Bacon

Why should a man be in love with his fetters, though of gold?

- Charles Dickens

In love of home, the love of country has its rise.

- Jan van Ruysbroeck

The love of Jesus is at once avid and generous. All that He has, all that He is, He gives; all that we are, all that we have, He takes.

- Confucius

He who remembers from day to day what he has yet to learn, and from month to month what he has learned already, may be said to have a love of learning.

- Dr. Samuel Johnson

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

- Hester Lynch Piozzi

The tree of deepest root is found Least willing still to quit the ground:: 'T was therefore said by ancient sages, That love of life increased with years So much, that in our latter stages, When pain grows sharp and sickness rages, The greatest love of life appears. 

- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another:: and they have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.

- Anacreon

Cursed be he above all others Who's enslaved by love of money. Money takes the place of brothers, Money takes the place of parents, Money brings us war and slaughter. 

- John Maynard, Baron Keynes of Tilton

The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

- Ayn Rand

Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know its nature. To love money is to known and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money — and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

- William Cullen Bryant

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language.

- Edward Young

The love of praise, howe'er conceal'd by art, Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.

- Gibbon

The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day and hour with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

- Jerome Klapka Jerome

"Nothing, so it seems to me," said the stranger, "is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. . . . The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of — of things longer." 

- Ayn Rand

I sat there beside him till morning — and as I watched his face in the starlight, then the first ray of the sun on his untroubled forehead and closed eyelids, what I experienced was not a prayer, I do not pray, but that state of spirit at which a prayer is a misguided attempt:: a full, confident, affirming self-dedication to my love of the right, to the certainty that the right would win and that this boy would have the kind of future he deserved. . . . I did not expect it to be as great as this — or as hard.

- Susa Young Gates

We must love one another. Only [by doing] so can our long years of toil and struggle reach full reward and we be crowned with life everlasting.

- Mother Teresa

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. 

- John Tillotson

Are we not all members of the same Body and partakers of the same Spirit and heirs of the same blessed hope of eternal life? . . . Why do we not, as becomes brethren, dwell together in unity, but are so apt to quarrel and break out into heats, to crumble into sects and parties, to divide and separate from one another upon every trifling occasion? Give me leave . . . in the name of our dear Lord . . . to recommend to you this new commandment of his, that ye love one another. Which is almost a new commandment still, and hardly the worse for wearing, so seldom is it put on, and so little hath it been practiced among Christians. 

- Bill Balance

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

- Robert Browning

Might she have loved me? just as wellShe might have hated, who can tell!

- Woody Allen

I was nauseous and tingly all over. . . . I was either in love or I had smallpox.

- Mary Martin

When you love others you aren't nervous.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

For one human being to love another:: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We can't form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the abyss of annihilation.

- George Albert Smith

We are commanded to love the Lord with all our heart, with all our might, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our love should pass beyond the borderlines of the Church with which we are identified.

- George Matthew Adams

The difficult tasks to be performed are not the ones that mean physical and mental labor, but the ones that you dislike, are the ones that you do not love. There are unpleasant angles to nearly every important job to be done in this world, but there must be an over all love for doing each, else precious time and effort are uselessly wasted. I shall never forget noting a sign above a construction job that read:: "Builder of Difficult Foundations." That man must have loved that calling, else he would not have made a point of advertising the fact!

- William Penn

We are apt to love praise, but not to deserve it. But if we would deserve it, we must love virtue more than than.

- Sophie Tucker

From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five, she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.

-

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

- Anonymous

A wise old owl lived in an oak; The more he saw the less he spoke; the less he spoke the more he heard:: Why can't we all be like that bird?

-

Life owes me nothing

- Anonymous

LIFE OWES ME NOTHING Life owes me nothing. One clear morn is boon enough for being born; And be it ninety years or ten No need for me to question when. While life is mine, I'll find it good, And greet each hour with gratitude

- EMILY DICKINSON

THE LIFE WE HAVE IS VERY GREAT The Life we have is very great. The Life that we shall see Surpasses it, we know, because It is Infinity. But when all Space has been beheld And all Dominion shown The smallest Human Heart's extent Reduces it to none.

- SAROJINI NAIDU

LIFE Children, ye have not lived, to you it seems Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams, Or carnival of careless joys that leap About your hearts like billows on the deep In flames of amber and of amethyst. Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist Till some resistless hour shall rise and move Your hearts to wake and hunger after love, And thirst with passionate longing for the things That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings. Till ye have battled with great grief and fears, And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years, Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife, Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.

- ROBERT BROWNING

LIFE IN A BOTTLE Escape me? Never! Beloved, While I am I, and you are you, So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue. My life is a fault at last, I fear: It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed. But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And, baffled, get up and begin again, So the chace takes up one's life, that's all. While, look but once from your farthest bound At me so deep in the dust and dark, No sooner the old hope goes to ground Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark, I shape me, Ever

- JOHN ASHBERY

MY PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE Just when I thought there wasn't room enough for another thought in my head, I had this great idea- call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly, it involved living the way philosophers live, according to a set of principles. Okay, but which ones? That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be like. Everything, from eating watermelon or going to the bathroom or just standing on a subway platform, lost in thought for a few minutes, or worrying about rain forests, would be affected, or more precisely, inflected by my new attitude.I wouldn't be preachy, or worry about children and old people, except in the general way prescribed by our clockwork universe. Instead I'd sort of let things be what they are while injecting them with the serum of the new moral climate I thought I'd stumbled into, as a stranger accidentally presses against a panel and a bookcase slides back, revealing a winding staircase with greenish light somewhere down below, and he automatically steps inside and the bookcase slides shut, as is customary on such occasions. At once a fragrance overwhelms him--not saffron, not lavender, but something in between.He thinks of cushions, like the one his uncle's Boston bull terrier used to lie on watching him quizzically, pointed ear-tips folded over. And then the great rush is on.Not a single idea emerges from it.It's enough to disgust you with thought.But then you remember something William James wrote in some book of his you never read-it was fine, it had the fineness, the powder of life dusted over it, by chance, of course, yet still looking for evidence of fingerprints. Someone had handled it even before he formulated it, though the thought was his and his alone. It's fine, in summer, to visit the seashore. There are lots of little trips to be made. A grove of fledgling aspens welcomes the traveler.Nearby are the public toilets where weary pilgrims have carved their names and addresses, and perhaps messages as well, messages to the world, as they sat and thought about what they'd do after using the toilet and washing their hands at the sink, prior to stepping out into the open again.Had they been coaxed in by principles, and were their words philosophy, of however crude a sort? I confess I can move no farther along this train of thought- something's blocking it.Something I'm not big enough to see over.Or maybe I'm frankly scared. What was the matter with how I acted before? But maybe I can come up with a compromise-I'll let things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies and preserves, against the winter cold and futility, and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well. I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks, or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part, as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea of two people near him talking together. Well he's got to be flushed out so the hunters can have a crack at him- this thing works both ways, you know. You can't always be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself at the same time.That would be abusive, and about as much fun as attending the wedding of two people you don't know. Still, there's a lot of fun to be had in the gaps between ideas. That's what they're made for!Now I want you to go out there and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too. They don't come along every day. Look out!There's a big one...

- William Shakepeare

SO ARE YOU TO MY THOUGHTS AS FOOD TO LIFE So are you to my thoughts as food to life, or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground; and for the peace of you I hold such strife as 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found. Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon doubting the filching age will steal his treasure; now counting best to be with you alone, then bettered that the world may see my pleasure; sometimes all full with feasting on your sight, and by and by clean starvèd for a look; possessing or pursuing no delight save what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, or gluttoning on all, or all away.

- THOMAS HARDY

TO LIFE O life with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, and thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, and thy too-forced pleasantry! I know what thou would'st tell of Death, Time, Destiny; I have known it long, and know, too, well what it all means for me. But canst thou not array thyself in rare disguise, and feign like truth, for one mad day, that Earth is Paradise? I'll tune me to the mood, and mumm with thee till eve; and maybe what as interlude I feign, I shall believe!

- THOMAS MOORE

IN THE MORNING OF LIFE In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown, and its pleasures in all their new lustre begin, when we live in a bright-beaming world of our own, and the light that surrounds us is all from within; oh 'tis not, believe me, in that happy time we can love, as in hours of less transport we may; of our smiles, of our hopes, 'tis the gay sunny prime, but affection is truest when these fade away. When we see the first glory of youth pass us by, like a leaf on the stream that will never return, when our cup, which had sparkled with pleasure so high, first tastes of the other, the dark-flowing urn; then, then in the time when affection holds sway with a depth and a tenderness joy never knew; love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they, but the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true. In climes full of sunshine, though splendid the flowers, their sighs have no freshness, their odour no worth; 'Tis the cloud and the mist of our own Isle of showers that call the rich spirit of fragrancy forth. So it is not 'mid splendour, prosperity, mirth, that the depth of Love's generous spirit appears; to the sunshine of smiles it may first owe its birth, but the soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears.

- CARL SANDBURG

still life Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car. Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour. Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun. A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post- office never blink an eye. A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye. A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.

- VICTOR HUGO

THE GENESIS OF BUTTERFLIES The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings, That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide, With muffled music, murmured far and wide. Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays, Of the fond hearts within a billet bound, Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound, The messages of love that mortals write Filled with intoxication of delight, Written in April and before the May time Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime, We dream that all white butterflies above, Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love, And leave their lady mistress in despair, To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair, Are but torn love letters, that through the skies Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies.

- DAVID WAGONER

LOST Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you, If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.

- BERTRAND RUSSELL

THREE PASSIONS Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, And unbearable pity for the suffering [of humankind]. Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. In the union of love I have seen In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts [of people]. I have wished to know why the stars shine. Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, But always pity brought me back to earth; Cries of pain reverberated in my heart Of children in famine, of victims tortured And of old people left helpless. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, And I too suffer. This has been my life; I found it worth living.

- PAUL BODET