Alan Watts on love

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

It must be obvious… that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

This is the real secret of life⁠—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

‘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”