The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God’s help to do just that.
It is not enough for us to say: I love God, but I do not love my neighbour. St. John says you are a liar if you say you love God and you don't love your neighbour. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbour whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live.
The truth about love is that you don't always fall in love with whom you are supposed to fall in love with. Love just hits you. It is a transcendent thing. Sometimes it is your best friend's husband and sometimes it's your father. It's weird. But that's a fact of life.
Judging people for whom they love (a same sex partner) rather than by whom they harm, should in itself merit a psychiatric diagnosis.
Whatever character our theology may ascribe to him, in reality God is the infinite ideal of Man, towards whom men move in their collective growth, with whom they seek their union of love as individuals, in whom they find their ideal of father, friend and beloved.
A FRIEND IS A PERSON . . . With whom you can be sincere. . . . To whom you never need to defend yourself. . . . On whom you can depend whether present or absent. . . . With whom you never need pretend. . . . To whom you can reveal yourself without fear of betrayal. . . . Who does not feel she owns you because you are her friend. . . . Who will not selfishly use you because she has your confidence. I WOULD HAVE SUCH A FRIEND. . . AND I WOULD BE SUCH A FRIEND. I DO HAVE SUCH A FRIEND!
You may not be able to help whom you are attracted to, but you can choose to whom you love and how. That is to say that love is a commitment that your heart and your mind make. It is an active and ever-evolving process, a conscious choice that takes effort and maintenance.
Every moment of life brings an opportunity for being conscious of human feeling, in prosperity, in adversity, in all conditions. It costs very little; only a little thought is necessary. There is no greater religion than love. God is love; and the best form of love is to be conscientious regarding the feelings of those with whom we come in contact in everyday life.
A 'gossip partner' is someone you love and trust, with whom you may go through the day's events with impunity, and with whom you may air your feelings, without them falling asleep.
Whether you believe in a creed, or what you call religion, or not, there is something in Socialism that must move you. How can you love God, whom you have not seen, if you do not love your fellow man, whom you have seen?
Life is about love. It's about whom you love and whom you hurt. Life's about how you love yourself and how you hurt yourself. Life's about how you love and hurt the people close to you. Life is about how you love and hurt the people who just cross your path for a moment. Life is about love.
A friend is more than a therapist or confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness. A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.
Dare to love and to be a real friend. The love you give and receive is a reality that will lead you closer and closer to God as well as those whom God has given you to love.
A friend is one with whom you are comfortable, to whom you are loyal, through whom you are blessed, and for whom you are grateful.
I will suppose that you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life — that you cannot look back to those to whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection; but it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty — for your active exertions are due not only to society, but in humble titude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to serve yourself and others.
You can love a person deeply and sincerely whom you do not like. You can like a person passionately whom you do not love.
Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life--not so much with the woman, whom he didn't even know, but with the moment.