Many who say “I love you,” mean that they want the other to love them.
The confusion between love and desire, between Agape and Eros, gives rise to most of the tragedy and pain in human relations.
Desire’s gift is a baited hook.
The emotion produced by desire is stronger but more transient than that produced by beneficence.
The strength of desire’s emotion deceives both the one desired and the one desiring.
The opposite of desire is hate. The opposite of beneficence is indifference.
Eros’s intensity is more peremptory than Agape’s joy.
Desire, in emotional terms, more closely resembles hate than beneficence resembles indifference. Thus the ease with which desire and hate can merge into one another.
Hate differs from indifference in that hate at least implies engagement, whereas indifference is total negation.
Many would rather feel strongly than feel happy.
Love can give by receiving, since accepting a gift attributes worth to the giver.
Love is willing to receive in order to give, while desire will only give in order to receive, or rather ensnare.
“If it doesn’t break your heart it isn’t love.” Love accepts suffering in hope: not hope of its own good but the good of the beloved.
Love is astounding presumption: it assumes it has something to give that the beloved will be better off having.
Agape can embrace and exalt Eros, but Eros must die to make room for Agape.
Love is creative: it does not simply love the lovely; it engenders loveliness.
To give being to another is the most astonishingly wonderful and beautiful thing one can do for that person. That to many this does not seem evident is also astonishing.
Only the rich can give; one who loves thereby shows himself rich.
One can always rightly love another person, since at worst true beneficence does no harm.
A paradox of love: To offer love in order to receive love is not really offering love. To offer love without offering to receive love is not really offering love.
Desire is competitive and exclusive, but there is an apotheosis of Eros as it is taken into Agape where it loves all for the sake of the beloved.