313 Quotes About Love

Divine love is perfect peace and joy, it is a freedom from all disquiet, it is all content and happiness; and makes everything to rejoice in itself.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal, how can you hope to find inward peace.

Love is a gift of God.

In biblical thinking, genuine love exists only when good works are done in a context where God rather than the doer gets the credit.

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

Love is not only something you feel, it is something you do.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever. Hence, eternal life is inextricably bound up with love... Love must be eternal. It is what God is.

I cannot love you as I love myself until I love God as I ought to love Him.

Fight hate with love, persecution with prayer, indifference with compassion, and bad with good.

Everything God does is love -- even when we do not understand Him.

[Spiritual friendship] is eagerly helping one another know, serve, love, and resemble God in deeper and deeper ways.

Being loved is life's second greatest blessing; loving is the greatest.

In sharp contrast with our culture, the Bible teaches that the essence of marriage is a sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. That means that love is more fundamentally action than emotion. But in talking this way, there is a danger of falling into the opposite error that characterized many ancient and traditional societies. It is possible to see marriage as merely a social transaction, a way of doing your duty to family, tribe and society. Traditional societies made the family the ultimate value in life, and so marriage was a mere transaction that helped your family's interest. By contrast, contemporary Western societies make the individual's happiness the ultimate value, and so marriage becomes primarily an experience of romantic fulfillment. But the Bible sees GOD as the supreme good - not the individual or the family - and that gives us a view of marriage that intimately unites feelings AND duty, passion AND promise. That is because at the heart of the Biblical idea of marriage is the covenant.

Self-love is, no doubt, the usual foundation of human jealousy...the fear lest another should by any means supplant us.

I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Woman was taken out of man; not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled underfoot; but out of his side to be equal to him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be loved.

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that "God is love." But they seem not to notice that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.

The great thing in prayer is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent love.

Where love is the compelling power, there is no sense of strain or conflict or bondage in doing what is right: the man or woman who is compelled by Jesus' love and empowered by His Spirit does the will of God from the heart.

"Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself." Get these ingredients into your life. Then everything that you do is eternal. It is worth doing. It is worth giving time to.

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.

God, harden me against myself!

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Only with time do we really learn who the other person is and come to love the person for him- or herself and not just for the feelings and experiences they give us.

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.

God's people must not love their soul life even to the point of death. Unless self-love or self-pity is committed to the cross they shall surely be defeated by the adversary.

Logically, faith comes first, and love next; but in life they will spring up together in the soul; the interval which separates them is impalpable, and in every act of trust, love is present; and fundamental to every emotion of love to Christ is trust in Christ.

The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God's love. If it does not bring more love, it is simply a counterfeit.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

The one who will be found in trial capable of great acts of love is ever the one who is always doing considerate small ones.

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.

We must say to ourselves something like this: 'Well, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn't think 'I am giving myself to you because you are so attractive to me.' No, he was in agony, and he looked down at us - denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him - and in the greatest act of love in history, he stayed. He said, 'Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing.' He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely. That is why I am going to love my spouse.' Speak to your heart like that, and then fulfill the promises you made on your wedding day.

For human beings self-worship is the worst sin, for God it is the epitome of His righteousness. The Unity of the Bible

We trust as we love, and where we love. If we love Christ much, surely we shall trust him much.

[The] humanistic cornerstone of self-love has become a new doctrine within evangelical Christianity, taught from many of the most popular pulpits. Sermons more often than not quote psychologists and teach their unbiblical psychological concepts for credibility.

When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

We want people to understand that we're not just an organization about creation and evolution; we're not just talking about the age of the Earth and fossils -- of course we talk about those things. But we're Christians -- and as Christians, we wanted to show love to them.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

Love refuseth nothing that love sends.

The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe. God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.

Love, and do what you will.

Nature teaches us to love our friends, but religion our enemies.

We know but little now about the conditions of the life that is to come. But what is certain is that Love must last. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet, therefore, that everlasting gift.

God, the Eternal God, is Love. Covet therefore that everlasting gift, that one thing which it is certain is going to stand, that one coinage which will be current in the universe when all other coinages of all the nations of the world shall be useless and unhonored.

If you love your 'Truths' more than you love people, then you are an out-and-out Pharisee. Nothing less. And you will create condemnation and death in people, rather than 'conviction' and LIFE.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

If we want the advantages of love, then we must be willing to take the risks of love. And that requires vulnerability. Of course, we can refuse this path and trod another one devoid of openness. But the toll on such a road is extremely high.

Self-love vitiates all relationships. Diotrephes (3 John 9-10) slandered (the Apostle) John, cold-shouldered the missionaries and excommunicated loyal believers-all because he loved himself and wanted to have pre-eminence. Personal vanity still lies at the root of most dissensions in every local church today.

It is not this earth, nor the men who inhabit it, nor the sphere of our legitimate activity, that we may not love; but the way in which the love is given, which constitutes worldliness.

We have within us a self that has its poison from Satan--from hell--and yet we cherish and nourish it. What do we not do to please self and nourish self--and we make the devil within us strong. ... Look at your own life. What are the works of hell? They are chiefly these three: self-will, self-trust, and self-exaltation.

And then, what is grace? Grace is love. But grace is not love simply, and purely, and alone. Grace and love are, in their innermost essence, one and the same thing.

Love is PATIENCE. This is the normal attitude of Love; Love passive, Love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

Love, and do what you like.

Nothing humbles and breaks the heart of a sinner like mercy and love. Souls that converse much with sin and wrath, may be much terrified; but souls that converse much with grace and mercy, will be much humbled.

Love never reasons, but profusely gives; it gives like a thoughtless prodigal its all, and then trembles least it has done to little.

Oh, thrice fools are we, who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle, know not that there is a kingdom before them; then, let our Lord's sweet hand square us, and hammer us, and strike off the knots of pride, self-love, and world-worship, and infidelity, that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.

Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creature's will.

Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit - that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back - then we 'cut our loses' and drop the relationship. This has also been called 'commodification,' a process by which social relationships are reduced to economic exchange relationships, and so the very idea of 'covenant' is disappearing in our culture. Covenant is therefore a concept increasingly foreign to us, and yet the Bible says it is the essence of marriage.

I love my country better than my family; but I love humanity better than my country.

It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.

Here is a spiritual principle: We cannot exercise love unless we are experiencing grace. You cannot truly love others unless you are convinced that God's love for you is unconditional, based solely on the merit of Christ, not on your performance. Our love, either to God or to others, can only be a response to His love for us.

But the soul renounced shall abide in the boundlessness of God's life. This is liberty, this is prosperity. The more we lose, the more we gain.

Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.

First John 3:16 shows that true love is climaxed by our being willing to lay down our lives for fellow believers.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

Both men and women today see marriage not as a way of creating character and community but as a way to reach personal life goals. They are looking for a marriage partner who will 'fulfill their emotional, sexual, and spiritual desires.' And that creates an extreme idealism that in turn leads to a deep pessimism that you will ever find the right person to marry.

All real, life-changing love is costly, substitutionary sacrifice

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

Beware you are not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.

Love precedes discipline.

I make myself, in a host of ways, the center of the universe.

To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness - especially in the wilderness - you shall love him.

Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image, but the living essence of the divine nature which beams full of all goodness.

He loved us not because we are lovable, but because He is love.

Self-love may lead us to prayers, but love to God excites us to praises.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Love is the overflow of joy in God! It is not duty for duty's sake, or right for right's sake. It is not a resolute abandoning of one's own good with a view solely to the good of the other person. It is first a deeply satisfying experience of the fullness of God's grace, and then a doubly satisfying experience of sharing that grace with another person.

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.

Often it is hard. So hard, in fact, that Jesus' decree to love and pray for our opponents is regarded as one of the most breathtaking and gut-wrenching challenges of his entire Sermon on the Mount, a speech renowned for its outrageous claims. There was no record of any other spiritual leader ever having articulated such a clear-cut, unambiguous command for people to express compassion to those who are actively working against their best interests.

The world's smallest package is a man wrapped up in himself.

The great thing in prayer is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent love.

Those who think too much of themselves don't think enough.

Love is not just a sentiment. Love is a great controlling passion and it always expresses itself in terms of obedience.

Love is commitment; love is a relationship that never gives up.

Supreme and abiding self-love is a very dwarfish affection, but a giant evil.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

We may force our Lord to punish us, but we will never have to force Him to love us. That's His nature.

Normally when I've been in the position where I've felt little love for God, it's because I haven't understood how much He loves me. The more I understand how much He loves me, I mean it's unbelievable, it's almost parallel the more I come to love Him, that's been my response.

The nature of God's love is unchangeable. Ours alternates all to readily. If it is our habit to love God with our own affection we shall turn cold towards Him whenever we are unhappy.

He who sows, even with tears, the precious seed of faith, hope, and love, shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him, because it is the very nature of that seed to yield a joyful harvest.

Love is the river of life in the world.

Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creature's will.

In Ephesians 5, Paul shows us that even on earth Jesus did not use his power to oppress us but sacrificed everything to bring us into union with him. And this takes us beyond the philosophical to the personal and the practical. If God had the Gospel of Jesus' salvation in mind when he established marriage, then marriage only 'works' to the degree that approximates the pattern of God's self-giving love in Christ.

He wants you all to Himself to put His loving, divine arms around you.

Love deems this world worth rescuing.

You learn to love by loving.

For loving draws us more to things than knowing does, since good is found by going to the thing, whereas the true is found when the thing comes to us.

Love is indeed heaven upon earth; since heaven above would not be heaven without it; for where there is not love, there is fear; but, "Perfect love casteth out fear." And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most love.

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about compatibility and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for.

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever.

Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks - love, and the contemplation of the Deity.

This principle - that your spouse should be capable of becoming your best friend - is a game changer when you address the question of compatibility in a prospective spouse. If you think of marriage largely in terms of erotic love, then compatibility means sexual chemistry and appeal. If you think of marriage largely as a way to move into the kind of social status in life you desire, then compatibility means being part of the desired social class, and perhaps common tastes and aspirations for lifestyle. The problem with these factors is that they are not durable. Physical attractiveness will wane, no matter how hard you work to delay its departure. And socio-economic status unfortunately can change almost overnight. When people think they have found compatibility based on these things, they often make the painful discovery that they have built their relationship on unstable ground. A woman 'lets herself go' or a man loses his job, and the compatibility foundation falls apart.

God does not love en masse. He loves you individually and independent of all others.

Love, and a cough, cannot be hid.

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.

To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God.

And then, what is grace? Grace is love. But grace is not love simply, and purely, and alone. Grace and love are, in their innermost essence, one and the same thing.

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood.

The love from our Lord is pure and never fails.

Love is the sum of all virtue, and love disposes us to good.

Love should be the supreme thing--because it is going to last; because in the nature of things it is an Eternal Life. It is a thing that we are living now, not that we get when we die; that we shall have a poor chance of getting when we die unless we are living now.

Love, the itch, and a cough cannot be hid.

When I say, "God is love," what do I mean by it? Why this, that God sent His only-begotten Son that we might have life in Him. We still carry about the old nature; but, blessed be God, many a time as Satan has caught me, he has never destroyed me; there is the propitiation,--I am inside, sheltered by the blood, and forgiven.

There is an old joke that went around - it goes, in the beginning God made man in His own image, and since the fall, man has been seeking to return the compliment.

The final test of religion at that great Day is not religiousness, but Love; not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life.

Love is a verb.

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did.

Love is kindled in a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true Christian experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything rather than a feeble flame; but when the surrounding atmosphere is frigid or lukewarm, it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals. True prayer must be aflame.

It is this unquiet self-love that renders us so sensitive. The sick man, who sleeps ill, thinks the night long. We exaggerate, from cowardice, all the evils which we encounter; they are great, but our sensibility increases them.

My life is a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though I were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing, but can fully depend on the love and protection of Him who guides me.

It is not hard to obey when we love the one whom we obey.

For where love is wanting, the beauty of all virtue is mere tinsel, is empty sound, is not worth a straw, nay more, is offensive and disgusting.

On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never faileth and life never faileth so long as there is love.

If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there's a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in "straw poverty"; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me.

Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ's love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ's love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.

Loving others in a biblical manner involves your thoughts, words, and actions and is a sign of your being a disciple of Christ. Loving others biblically is dependent on your commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and is not dependent on people, circumstances, or your feelings.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.

Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won't matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

The Christian on his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe. God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.

Love is proportional to hurt. God is love, so He is enormously grieved by our sins.

I have come across black men and women who remembered the only white man they ever saw before - David Livingstone; and as you cross his footsteps in that dark continent, men's faces light up as they speak of the kind Doctor who passed there years ago. They could not understand him; but they felt the Love that beat in his heart.

Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for whosoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.

There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love - every man works his oar voluntarily!

Love is hope when reason despairs.

Love cannot think any evil of God, nor endure to hear any speak evil of him, but it must take God's part.

The more you learn to love, the fewer people you will have to love you as you love them.

The essential question is not, however, how love began, but whether it is growing.

This is Divine love - a love that is willing to lay down its life in order to save the one it loves.

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 bond of perfection; it is the old, the new, and the great commandment, and all the commandments, for it is the fulfilling of the law. It does the work of all the other graces without any instrument but its own immediate virtue.

Chivalry in love has nothing to do with the sweetness of the appearance. It has everything to do with the tenderness of a heart determined to serve.

Give pleasure. Lose no chance in giving pleasure. For that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit.

The more you lead me up to Christ in all things, the more highly shall I esteem you, and if it be possible to love you more than I do now, the more shall I love you.

The pampering of the flesh, is the quenching of God's spirit.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

Love is not blind; that is the last thing it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace.

All is vanity but to love and serve Him.

Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God.

We have within us a self that has its poison from Satan--from hell--and yet we cherish and nourish it. What do we not do to please self and nourish self--and we make the devil within us strong. ... Look at your own life. What are the works of hell? They are chiefly these three: self-will, self-trust, and self-exaltation.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive.

In short, the enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any 'broader good' such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture.

Love more persons more -- love them more impersonally, more unselfishly, without thought of return. The return, never fear, will take care of itself.

By prayer, the ability is secured to feel the law of love, to speak according to the law of love, and to do everything in harmony with the law of love.

Those dreaming of the perfect match are outnumbered by those who don't really want it at all, though perhaps they can't admit it. After all, our culture makes individual freedom, autonomy and fulfillment the very highest values, and thoughtful people know deep down that any love relationship at all means the loss of all three. You can say, 'I want someone who will accept me just as I am,' but in your heart of hearts you know that you are not perfect, that there are plenty of things about you that need to be changed, and that anyone who gets to know you up close and personal will want to change them.

We trust that their hearts will be melted by that love, and that they'll listen to the gospel.

Humility and love are precisely the graces which the men of the world can understand, if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery, and they are within reach of all classes. The poorest Christian can every day find occasion for practicing love and humility.

Since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving.

Logically, faith comes first, and love next; but in life they will spring up together in the soul; the interval which separates them is impalpable, and in every act of trust, love is present; and fundamental to every emotion of love to Christ is trust in Christ.

As the furious hate which the devil bears us is termed the roaring of a lion, so our vehement love may be termed crying after God.

Real love, the Bible says, instinctively desires permanence.

God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.

In math, if you divide an infinite number by any number, no matter how large, you still have an infinite quotient. So Jesus' love, being infinite, even though it is divided up for every person on earth, is still infinitely poured out on each one of us!

In any relationship, there will be frightening spells in which your feelings of love dry up. And when that happens you must remember that the essence of marriage is that it is a covenant, a commitment, a promise of future love. So what do you do? You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions you must be tender, understanding, forgiving and helpful. And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love.

The only greatness is unselfish love... There is a great difference between TRYING TO PLEASE and GIVING PLEASURE.

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is Love.

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.

Love is success, Love is happiness, Love is life. God is Love. Therefore LOVE.

Our culture says that feelings of love are the basis for actions of love. And of course that can be true. But it is truer to say that actions of love can lead consistently to feelings of love.

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.

Just to love, that's enough; being loved, that's a bonus.

He alone loves the Creator perfectly who manifests a pure love for his neighbor.

The sad truth is that among today's evangelicals it is not loving and esteeming God but self-love and self-esteem that are presented as the pressing need!

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.

The best thing I can do for you is to love you.

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

It is when a man has no one to love him that he commits suicide. So long as he has friends, those who love him and whom he loves, he will live, because to live is to love. Be it but the love of a dog, it will keep him in life; but let that go and he has no contact with life, no reason to live. He dies by his own hand.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of envy.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.

The four absolutes we all have in our minds: love, justice, evil, and forgiveness.

God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love.

Those who love to be feared, fear to be loved.

Love every man in spite of his falling into sin. Never mind the sins, but remember that the foundation of the man is the same - the image of God.

If I have ever loved you, I will always love you.

On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him.

We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love.

Perfect love will never want the preeminence in everything, it will never want to take the place of another, it will always be willing to take the back seat.

Pure, spiritual, intellectual love shot form their faces like barbed lightning. It was so unlike the love we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

In some way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering. Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it. In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.

We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ spoke much of peace on earth.

The two poles could sooner meet, than the love of Christ and the love of the world.

How vast a memory has love!

Love fasts when it can, and as much as it can. It leads to all the ordinances of God, and employs itself in all the outward works whereof it is capable. It flies, as it were, like Elijah over the plain, to find God upon his holy mountain.

Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character - the Christ-like nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice.

Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.

Love is the opener as well as closer of eyes.

Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.

If we do not love one another, we certainly shall not have much power with God in prayer.

He Who can love as no man can love can hurt as no man can hurt.

He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

He that is jealous is not in love.

The simple heart that freely asks in love, obtains.

Love deems this world worth rescuing.

Love is the only thing in which we can retaliate with God. If God be angry with us, we must not be angry again; if He chide us, we must not chide Him again; but if God loves us, we must love Him again. There is nothing in which we can answer God again, but love. We must not give Him word for word, but we must give Him love for love.

This old world's dying for the want of love. There are more people die for the want of a bit of it than with over much of it. Don't stifle it--let it out.

The very thought that he could entice the Lord, his Creator, to "fall down and worship" him (Matthew 4:9) demonstrates not only his egotistic ambition but also just how self-absorbed and self-deceived he is. This is a major trait of humanity as well.

Love is the hardest lesson in Christianity; but, for that reason, it should be most our care to learn it.

Love is a heavenly quality that is given to prepare men to enjoy the heavenly city more.

In Jesus and for Him, enemies and friends alike are to be loved.

We have within us a self that has its poison from Satan--from hell--and yet we cherish and nourish it. What do we not do to please self and nourish self--and we make the devil within us strong. ... Look at your own life. What are the works of hell? They are chiefly these three: self-will, self-trust, and self-exaltation.

The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved.

If you love them and their addicted--you've got to do something about it. You have to show them tough love.

The test of Religion, the final test of Religion, is not Religiousness, but Love.

The one who loves knows better than anyone else how to conduct himself, how to serve the one he loves. Love prescribes an answer in a given situation as no mere rule can do.

Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.

The history of the world suggests that without love of God there is little likelihood of a love for man that does not become corrupt.

Without love, benevolence becomes egotism.

Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.

The things that we love tell us what we are.

I do verily believe that when God shall accomplish [unity], it will be the effect of love, and not the cause of love. It will proceed from love, before it brings forth love.

I want the love that cannot help but love; Loving, like God, for very sake of love.

You can only afford to be generous if you actually have some money in the bank to give. In the same way, if your only source of love and meaning is your spouse, then anytime he or she fails you, it will not just cause grief but a psychological cataclysm. If, however, you know something of the work of the Spirit in your life, you have enough love 'in the bank' to be generous to your spouse even when you are not getting much affection or kindness at the moment.

I believe that life is given us so that we may grow in love, and I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the color and fragrance of a flower.

We love others, we love everybody, we love our enemies, because He first loved us... And that is how the love of God melts down the unlovely heart in man, and begets in him the new creature, who is patient and humble and gentle and unselfish.

Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all.

We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another.

Agape is disinterested love. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both.

He who begins by seeking God within himself may end by confusing himself with God.

How shall I do to love? Believe. How shall I do to believe? Love.

God's love is unconditional, but His promises aren't.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

We should be the same in our spirit man at all times and in every setting.

Within this Christian vision of marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of what God is creating, and to say, I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, 'I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!

Love is thinking.

The affections, like conscience, are rather to be led than driven. Those who many where they do not love, will be likely to love where they do not marry.

Love as distinct from "being in love" is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

Because God is love, the most important lesson he wants you to learn on earth is how to love.

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

Cast off all bonds of prejudice and custom, and let the love of Christ, which is in you, have free course to run out in all conceivable schemes and methods of labor for the souls of men.

Discipline is difficult, painful, and often heartrending. It is not that we should not love the offenders, but that we should love Christ, His church, and His Word even more. Our love to the offenders is not to be sentimental tolerance but correcting love.

Falling in love in a Christian way is to say, 'I am excited about your future and I want to be part of getting you there. I'm signing up for the journey with you. Would you sign up for the journey to my true self with me? It's going to be hard but I want to get there.

All forms of love are necessary, and none are to be ignored, but all of us find some forms of love to be more emotionally valuable to us. They are a currency that we find particularly precious, a language that delivers the message of love to our hearts with the most power. Some types of love are more thrilling and fulfilling to us when we receive them.

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.

We instinctively tend to limit for whom we exert ourselves. We do it for people like us, and for people whom we like. Jesus will have none of that. By depicting a Samaritan helping a Jew, Jesus could not have found a more forceful way to say that anyone at all in need - regardless of race, politics, class, and religion - is your neighbor. Not everyone is your brother or sister in faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.

The great thing in prayer is to feel that we are putting our supplications into the bosom of omnipotent love.

He who loveth God with all his heart feareth not death, nor punishment, nor judgment, nor hell, because perfect love giveth sure access to God. But he who still delighteth in sin, no marvel if he is afraid of death and judgment.

Two things create love perfection and usefulness, to which answer, on our part, admiration and desire; and both these are centered in love.

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

It was a deep true thought which the old painters had, when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like.

Why is Love greater than faith? Because the end is greater than the means. And why is it greater than charity? Because the whole is greater than the part.

The sinful emotions are stirred most deeply by self-love.

Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.

Whom should we love, if not Him who loved us, and gave himself for us?

Lavish Love upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all.

Learning how to love your neighbor requires a willingness to draw on the strength of Jesus Christ as you die to self and live for Him. Living in this manner allows you to practice biblical love for others in spite of adverse circumstances or your feelings to the contrary.

To love God does not mean to meet His needs, but rather to delight in Him and to be captivated by His glorious power and grace, and to value Him above all other things on earth. All the rest of the commandments are the kinds of things that we will do from our hearts, if our hearts are truly delighted with and resting in the glory of God's grace.

We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do we want to live tomorrow? It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back.