Tom Lehrer on love

I’ve occasionally heard that I was kicked out of Harvard for being a Communist, for dealing drugs, for corrupting minors, or for diverse other infractions of local decorum. Unfortunately, none of these rumors are true. The one I’ve heard more often is that I am dead. That one I encouraged, hoping it would cut down on the junk mail. It didn’t.

Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

I’d like to take you now, on wings of song as it were, and try and help you forget for a while your drab, wretched lives.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)In contextOften credited to Augustine of Hippo

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare1564–1616Twelfth Night (1601), Act I, scene i.In context

• Music

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Four Loves (1960), Ch. VI: “Charity”