Charlotte Brontë on love

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

‘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”