To love is the greatest gift of all

A few thoughts on love...

From the novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers:
"'Love,' this English word: like other English words it has tense. 'Loved' or 'will love' or 'have loved.' All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ai. It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.
If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite."

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone."
- C.S. Lewis

"Love—is anterior to Life—
Posterior—to Death—
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Earth—"
- Emily Dickinson

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
- Henry David Thoreau

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
-Ingrid Bergman (This quote is a personal favorite)

"In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person."
- Margaret Anderson

"Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...
You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."
-Rose Walker (This is for anyone who's ever had their heart broken.)

And now a few thoughts of my own:
Without love we are nothing. When a human is deprived of the giving and receiving of love it stunts their physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional growth. It is necessary to human survival. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest opportunity in this world and the world to come. Don't take that opportunity for granted.