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:
“The question that’s probably uppermost in the child’s mind is: Why do my parents want to have a baby? Don’t they love me? And if they love me, why do they need another one? Aren’t I enough? Imagine for a minute yourself in a similar situation. Your husband comes home and says: “Honey I love you so much, I’ve decided to go get another wife so I can have two.” How would you feel?”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“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)
“I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)