Alfred, Lord Tennyson on love

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

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

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”

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.

Henry van Dyke1852–1933Time Is

• Time