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The Big Question: What Is Love?

Love is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can be devastating, uplifting, life-changing. It can move mountains and part seas. But what is love? Browse the musings of famous authors, poets and other sources of wisdom for potential answers to this eternal question.
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Love is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It can be devastating, uplifting, life-changing. It can move mountains and part seas. But what is love? Browse the musings of famous authors, poets and other sources of wisdom for potential answers to this eternal question.

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1 John 4:8

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”


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Victor Hugo, author

“Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.”

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Oswald Chambers, minister

“God and love are synonymous. Love is not an attribute of God, it is God; whatever God is, love is.”


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Emily Dickinson, poet

“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”


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Emanuel Swedenborg, theologian

“The Divine of the Lord in heaven is love, for the reason that love is receptive of all things of heaven, such as peace, intelligence, wisdom and happiness.”


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Paulo Coelho, novelist

“In love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we are to the spiritual experience.”


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Dalai Lama XIV

“Love is the absence of judgment.”

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Rabindranath Tagore, poet

“Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.”


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M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled

“Love is too large, too deep ever to be truly understood or measured or limited within the framework of words.”


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Peace Pilgrim

“Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return.”


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Mother Teresa

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.”


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Dolly Parton

“Love is something sent from heaven to worry the hell out of you.”

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bell hooks, author of All About Love: New Visions

“Love is the only force that allows us to hold one another close beyond the grave. That is why knowing how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to die.”


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Rumi, poet

“Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces.”


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Saint Augustine

“Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”


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C. S. Lewis

“God loves us: not because we are lovable, but because He is love, not because He needs to receive, because He delights to give.”


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Euripides, playwright

“Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.”

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1 Corinthians 13:4-8

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”


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Elizabeth Gilbert, author

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow—this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

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