sang the Beatles. I would offer “All you need is God” for God is love and much, much more. God is all of it and is available 24/7.
Saturday is Valentine’s Day – a day of promises, a little illusion, romance and lots and lots of chocolate! It is a day when we are expected to openly express our love for the significant others in our lives – our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our children, our friends and of course our lovers. What about the other 364 days? Shouldn’t that love be expressed during the rest of the year? Certainly. Even though I appreciate Valentine’s Day, it is more a day for card shops and candy stores to make extra money. But I still like it. And it forces a lot of men to remember how much their partners mean to them. That can’t be a bad thing.
Valentine history lesson from the Internet:
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and–most importantly–romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.
Some wonderful quotes regarding love:
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~Erich Fromm
Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. ~Khalil Gibran
Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford — but you’ll take him anyway. ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. ~W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook, 1949
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière
When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Do I love you because you’re beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella
For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard
Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. ~Mark Overby
Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. ~Author Unknown
Who, being loved, is poor? ~Oscar Wilde
Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame. ~Henry David Thoreau
Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely. ~Laurence Marks, M*A*S*H, “Love Story,” original air date 7 January 1973, spoken by the character Hawkeye
A baby is born with a need to be loved — and never outgrows it. ~Frank A. Clark
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~Robert Heinlein
We loved with a love that was more than love. ~Edgar Allan Poe
If I love you, what business is it of yours? ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. ~Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self
Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. ~Jean Anouilh
When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage. ~Bill Balance
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. ~Rose Franken
Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. ~Ben Hecht
A bell is no bell ’til you ring it,
A song is no song ’til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay –
Love isn’t love
‘Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, “You Are Sixteen (Reprise)”
(Thanks, Krystel)
Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. ~Swedish Proverb
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. ~Henry Van Dyke
I leave you now with these wonderful thoughts on love. Happy Valentine’s Day. Give love and freely to those who mean the most to you. (That includes animals, by the way.) :))