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That someone depends on us may be enough to save us.
Love is the instrument with which we perceive the unmistakable individuality of others.
When a person loves with a certain intensity, his love letters possess a kind of tension and fullness that not only raises them to a literary category, but universalizes them in such a way that despite differences of time, place, and language, the style of great love correspondence is the same.
The intimacy between a man and a woman begins with love and ends in complicity.
Parental love is the scandal of this world. It would be possible to build a coherent universe without it, but its existence reveals an unmistakable reality at the center of a universe of indifference. Calling out to God, Father, we cannot contemplate enough the enormity of the claim or the magnificence of the promise.
Each of life’s insults that are endured by our beloved only nurture our true love.
The perfections of the one we love are not fictions of love.
To love, on the contrary, means to have the privilege of perceiving those perfections invisible to the eyes of others.
Love is the act that transforms the object of love from a thing into a person.
The smile of the one we love is the only effective remedy for tedium.
Let us reject the abominable suggestion that we renounce friendship and love in order to banish misfortune.
On the contrary, let us mingle our souls just as we weave our bodies.
May our beloved be the soil of our wounded roots.
In love, human problems disappear for a time, finding a particular and mysterious solution. Just as in the mystical union, the problems of the universe dissolve in an ineffable harmony.
The most incredible thing about women is that in spite of everything, they can bear and love men.
Let us learn to accompany those we love in their errors, without becoming their accomplices.
True love is not a love of attributes, but of an entire being. The loved one is not analyzed in terms of qualities and defects- everything in them is love. What an indifferent glance may detect as a flaw in the one we love is, to us, a new reason to love them. All love begins by loving what you prefer, and ends up with you preferring what you love.
To be unsure if your love is justified is not a betrayal, but an introduction.
Love is not a mystery, but a place where mystery dissolves.
The happiness of the one we love is the only earthly good that fulfills us.
There is no truth that is not lawful to strangle if it would hurt the one we love.
To the happiness of those we love most, we are able to contribute only a silent tenderness and a helpless compassion.
We are commanded to love our neighbor. But the Gospel is the love that awaits us.
It is not so bad if we don’t find those we need; what is awful is not finding those who need us.
Nothing surpasses the beauty of a loyal love-
not loyalty-with-love, but the loyalty of love itself.
All heroism performed at the expense of love seems, to me, despite the vulgarity of the opinion, just a sign that our love is dying.
To love is to hover restlessly around the mystery of another.
Our own cross burdens us less than the one we cannot help our beloved to carry.
Note: Dávila was a Colombian political philosopher and in the Latin church. His aphorisms are presented here for the purposes of enjoyment, study, and historical record, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this writer. For more information on Dávila, see this introductory post. For information on how to live your life, go to church and read the Church Fathers/Saints.
Featured image: Antique book cover, from the British Library
