LIFE LESSON IN QUOTES- LOVE

Life is said to be an empty bottle filled with love. Life is filled with relationships from parent child to many nurturing, rivalling and challenging relationships. One among these which is defined by choice is friendship. Elbert Hubbard while defining a friend said,

" A friend is someone who knows everything about you 

and 

still loves you."

To drive home the point that every relationship thrives on love, Martin Luther King Jr said,

" Darkness cannot drive out darkness; 

only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate; 

only love can do that"

Elie Wiesel drew out the cause of falling apart while highlighting the indifference in these words,

" The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference."

It could not have been put better. Just look around at any of your troubling relationships and you will find it is the indifference of one or both to the other that troubles them. Love in essence means going the extra mile to make that difference, empathize and relate or to simply put be able to think from the other's shoes and then resolve an issue. The presence of this feature is love and the absence of it becomes indifference which over a period of time could translate into hate.

Robert Heinlein summed the above into simple words

" Love is that condition 

in which the happiness of the other person

 is 

essential to your own."

William Shakespeare in his play All is Well that ends well, scripted

" Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."

The question as to whether the feeling of love being natural must die somewhere naturally is answered by Anais Nin

" Love never dies a natural death. 

It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source. 

It dies because of blindness and errors and betrayals. 

It dies of illness and wounds; 

it dies of weariness; of witherings, of tarnishings."

The Buddha highlighted the need for love and more so self love by saying

" You yourself, 

as much as anybody else in the entire universe, 

deserve your love and affection"

Anna Taylor laid out the boundaries for people who refuse to love in these words

"  Love yourself to set boundaries. 

Your time and energy are precious. 

You get to choose how you use it. 

You teach people how to treat you by deciding 

what you will and won't accept"

Thus, the elixir of love is what life is about and it becomes the life lesson in quotes for this post