What is love? Poets, novelists, and philosophers have grappled with this question for centuries, offering a kaleidoscope of perspectives on this complex human experience. From the passionate to the pragmatic, from the whimsical to the wise, these literary definitions of love illuminate its many facets. Explore these poetic insights into what it means to love and be loved.
Contents
Love in its Many Forms
Kurt Vonnegut, in The Sirens of Titan, offers a simple yet profound perspective:
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
This sentiment is echoed by Anaïs Nin, whose wisdom on love shines through in A Literate Passion:
What is love but acceptance of the other, whatever he is.
Stendhal, in his 1822 treatise on love, highlights the involuntary nature of this powerful emotion:
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. … there are no age limits for love.
C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, explores the vulnerability inherent in loving:
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken… The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
Love’s Transformative Power
Lemony Snicket, with his characteristic wit, captures the messy reality of love’s transformative power in Horseradish:
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby — awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
Susan Sontag, in As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh, suggests the enduring mystery of love:
Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.
Charles Bukowski, in a video interview, offers a poignant metaphor:
Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning… It’s just a little while, and then it burns away… Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality.
Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reminds us that love transcends the superficial:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
Love’s Paradoxes and Truths
Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, offers a cynical yet relatable definition:
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Katharine Hepburn, in Me: Stories of My Life, emphasizes the selfless nature of true love:
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give — which is everything.
Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness, cautions against overthinking love:
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, presents a stark perspective on the absence of love:
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Love: Evidence and Obsession
Richard Dawkins, in a letter to his daughter, grounds love in tangible evidence:
There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you…looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.
Paulo Coelho, in The Zahir, describes love as a wild force:
Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us.
James Baldwin, in The Price of the Ticket, sees love as a journey of growth:
Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
Haruki Murakami, in Kafka on the Shore, connects love with self-discovery:
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.
Looking Outward, Together
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Airman’s Odyssey, offers a beautiful vision of shared purpose:
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Honoré de Balzac, in Physiologie Du Mariage, suggests a negative correlation between judgment and love:
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Louis de Bernières, in Corelli’s Mandolin, distinguishes between “being in love” and true love:
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.
E.M. Forster, in A Room with a View, affirms the eternal nature of love:
You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
Iris Murdoch, in Existentialists and Mystics, links love to acknowledging the reality of others:
Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
Finally, Agatha Christie, in her autobiography, offers a simple yet profound observation:
It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.