What is love? This has been explained for 400 years

Love is one of the most difficult terms to explain, along with art, science or philosophy. But despite their difficulty, many have tried to approach an explanation that will satisfy everyone, even though each one has a more or less complex or intense perception.

That is why we leave you some memorable and timeless ideas about love, culled from several hundred years of literary history:

• Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Titan's Sirens that "to love is everyone who is near to be loved."
• Anaïs Nin, in Correspondence of Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, wrote that "love is nothing but the acceptance of the other, whoever."
• Stendhal (pseudonym Henri Beyle) wrote in his book Of Love that "love is like a fever that comes and goes independently of the will ... there are no age limits for love."
• In The Four Loves of CS Lewis you can read that "to love is to be vulnerable. If you love anything, your heart will twist and possibly break. If you want to make sure you keep it intact, you should not give your heart to anyone, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully with hobbies and little luxuries; Avoid entanglements, lock him in the coffin or the coffin of his selfishness. In that chest-safe, dark, motionless, airless-was about to change. It will not break; It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is condemnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and disturbances of love is hell. "
• In her book Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can not Avoid, Lemony Snicket states that "love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - clumsily, and often disorderly."
• One of the most philosophical phrases is the one put forward by Susan Sontag in her book Consciousness Unity to the Flesh: "There is nothing mysterious in human relations. Except love. "
• Charles Bukowski, in A Dog From Hell, states that "love is something like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun rises. Just a little time ... and it vanishes. Love is a fog that burns with the first light of day of reality. "
• The well-known Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night's Dream gives one of the most beautiful phrases: "Love is not seen with the eyes, but with the mind."
• Ambrose Bierce, in Dictionary of the Devil, says that "love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage."
• Myself: Stories of My Life is an autobiographical book by Katharine Hepburn. In it we read that "love has nothing to do with what you are hoping to achieve - only with what you are hoping to give - that is all".
• The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell, in The Conquest of Happiness, states that "of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most deadly of true happiness."
• Fedor Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov gives a somewhat pessimistic but equally beautiful definition: "love is the suffering of not being able to love".
• Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in a letter to his ten-year-old daughter explains the importance of evidence in science and in life: "People sometimes say that you have to believe in feelings, which you could never Rely on things like 'my wife loves me'. But it is a bad argument. There can not be much evidence that someone loves you. Throughout the day, when you are with someone who loves you, you see and hear a lot of small pieces of evidence, and they all add up. It is not the inside of a feeling, something like what the priests call revelation. There are things that are outside to support the sensations of the interior: look into the eyes, notice the voice, the small favors and goodness; All this is evidence of love. "
• The Spanish author Paulo Coelho in El Zahir: A Novel of Obsession states that "love is a wild force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to trap him enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it makes us feel lost and confused."
• Haruki Murakami, on Kafka on the shore: "Anyone who falls in love is searching for lost pieces of himself. So anyone who is in love becomes sad when he thinks of his lover. It's like stepping back inside a room that has fond memories of a person you have not seen in a long time. "
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in The Aviator Odyssey: Night Flight / Wind Arena and Stars / War Pilot: "Love does not consist of looking at each other, but looking together in the same direction."
• Finally, Louis de Bernières in Corelli's Mandolin states that "love is a temporary madness, erupts like a volcano and then disappears. And when it collapses, you have to make a decision. You have to return to your roots for what you have intertwined, because that is love. Love is not a lack of air, it is not emotion, it is not the promulgation of the eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second and minute of the day, it is not to be awake at night imagining kissing all the corners from her body. No. That's just 'being in love', something anyone can do. Love is what remains when love has burned, and is both art and a lucky accident."

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Source: Nosabesnada
Translation: @arielpr