Love

The fullness of the law, then, is love, as Christ is—that is, the presence of the Lord who loves us, and our loving teaching and conduct according to Christ.

For there is the people that loves with the lips, and there is another who gives over his body to be burned.

"Love your enemies," He says, "bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you," and the like;

The exposition of this is that whoever knows God — and God is beautiful and needed — and everyone, when he looks upon the beauty of one who is beautiful and knows his own need of him, loves him.

The first and greatest is the commandment of the Lord, who said plainly, "By this shall all know that you are My disciples, if you love one another";

For the Lord has separated the islands from the mainland by the sea, but He has bound the islanders to the men of the mainland by love.

For I have heard from God — who for this very reason consented to His sojourn in the flesh, that by examples of what we ought to do He might give rule to our life, and by His own voice announce to us the gospel of the kingdom — that "By this shall all know that you are My disciples, if you love one another";

But that whole thing which is commonly called love — nor, by Hercules, do I find by what other name it could be called — is of so great a levity that I see nothing which I think comparable to it.

But if there is any love — as there certainly is — which is nothing absent, or not much, from madness, such as is in the Leucadia:

But that, above all of them, Ibycus of Rhegium burned with love, appears from his writings.

In both commandments, then, He introduces love, but has divided it by rank;

Behold the mysteries of love, and then thou shalt gaze upon the bosom of the Father, whom the only-begotten God alone declared.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole soul and with thy whole strength—that there is no commandment greater than this, and very fittingly.

Wherefore I tell you now that every man should honor Love, as I myself do honor all love-matters with especial devotion, and exhort all other men to do the same;

since all are beset by this eagerness and this love with a view to immortality.

From what has been admitted, we needs must yearn for immortality no less than for good, since love loves good to be one’s own for ever.

For love, the highest sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the apostle commends with all the powers of the Holy Spirit — by what but the disciplines of patience is it schooled?

How then, pray, said Cyrus, if falling in love is a matter of free will, is it not possible for any one to stop whenever he pleases?

Now in this same way, the beautiful do not compel people to fall in love with them nor to desire that which they should not, but there are some miserable apologies for men who are slaves to all sorts of passions, I think, and then they blame love.

for you came away perhaps in less time than love takes, as its nature is, to get a man ensnared.

For my part, Socrates, said Hermogenes, I do not regard it as at all like you to countenance such a mad passion of love in Critobulus.

and as a result, Callias has become more amorous than ever, because he finds it impossible to forget any beauty he sees.

and there is nothing more terribly potent than this at kindling the fires of passion.