Love is an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also said to be a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection —"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.
In English, love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure ("I loved that meal") to interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship, or to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love, or to a concept of love that encompasses all of those feelings. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.
Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.
Love may be understood as part of the survival instinct, a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.
Read more about Love: Definitions, Impersonal Love, Interpersonal Love, Philosophical Views
Famous quotes containing the word love:
“At first your mother said . . . why me! why me!
But she got over that. Now she enjoys
her dull daily care and her hectic bravery.
You do not love anyone. She is not growing a boy;
she is enlarging a stone to wear around her neck.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It is perverse that a nation so rich should neglect its children so shamefully. Our attitude toward them is cruelly ambivalent. We are sentimental about children but in our actions do not value them. We say we love them but give them little honor.”
—Richard B. Stolley (20th century)
“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)