He had lived alone all his adult life, in a vacuum. He had contributed to the sum of human knowledge; that was his vocation, it was the way he had found to express his talents; but love was something he had never known.
Atomised
Michel Houellebecq
Category: LOVE
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The world is full of people suffering from the effects of their own unlived life. They become bitter, critical, or rigid, not because the world is cruel to them, but because they have betrayed their own inner possibilities.
The artist who never makes art becomes cynical about those who do.
The lover who never risks loving mocks romance.
The thinker who never commits to a philosophy sneers at belief itself.
And yet, all of them suffer, because deep down they know: the life they mock is the life they were meant to live.
attributed to Carl Jung
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…you’re committing to forgiving or to letting go of something, some resentment, hoping that your emotional part of self would come and follow the action—the right action that you made…And so I go and do that [forgive] even though I don’t want to do it. I have no desire to do it, no inclination to do it. My feelings are actually in opposition to that action. But once I act in accordance with love, then love starts to take root in my heart.
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It is true that love cannot be forced, that it cannot be made to order, that we cannot love because we ought to, or even because we want to. But we can bring ourselves into the presence of the lovable.
We can enter into friendship through the door of discipleship; we can learn love through service, and the day will come to us also when the Master’s word will be true: “I call you no longer servant, but I call you friend.” His love will take possession of us until all else will seem as hatred in comparison.
The Art of Being a Good Friend
Hugh Black -
Everyone who enters into the covenant knows the world to be a spiritual arena in which the love of God manifests itself. He walks no longer on a sodden earth and under a gray sky, for he knows that, although all people misunderstand him, he is understood, and followed with loving sympathy, in Heaven.
The Art of Being a Good Friend
Hugh Black -
Love is the center of a circle that broadens out in ever-widening circumference.
Dante tells us in La Vita Nuova that the effect of his love for Beatrice was to open his heart to all and to sweeten all his life. He speaks of the surpassing virtue of her very salutation to him in the street. “When she appeared in any place, it seemed to me, by the hope of her excellent salutation, that there was no man mine enemy any longer; and such warmth of charity came upon me that most certainly in that moment I would have pardoned whomsoever had done me an injury; and if anyone should then have questioned me concerning any matter, I could only have said unto him ‘Love,’ with a countenance clothed in humbleness.” His love bred sweetness in his mind and took in everything within the blessed sweep of its range.
The Art of Being a Good Friend
Hugh Black -
It is always a temptation, which grows stronger the longer we live, to look back instead of forward, to bemoan the past, and thus deride the present and distrust the future. We must not forget our present blessings, the love we still possess, the gracious influences that remain, and, most of all, the duties that claim our strength.
The Art of Being a Good Friend
Hugh Black -
For one thing, it must mean the hallowing of memory. The eclipse of love makes the love fairer when the eclipse passes. The loss of the outward purifies the affection and softens the heart. It brings out into fact what was often only latent in feeling. Memory adds a tender glory to the past. We think of only the virtues of the dead; we forget their faults. This is as it should be. We rightly love the immortal part of them; the fire has burned up the dross and left pure gold. If it is idealization, it represents that which will be, and that which really is.
We do not ask to forget; we do not want the so-called consolations that time brings. Such an insult to the past, as forgetfulness would be, means that we have not risen to the possibilities of communion of spirit afforded us in the present. We would rather that the wound should be ever fresh than that the image of the dear past should fade. It would be a loss to our best life if it would fade. There is no sting in such a faith. Such remembrance as this, which keeps the heart green, will not cumber the life. True sentiment does not weaken, but becomes an inspiration to make our life worthy of our love. It can save even a squalid lot from sordidness; for however poor we may be in the world’s goods, we are rich in happy associations in the past, and in sweet communion in the present, and in blessed hope for the future.
The Art of Being a Good Friend
Hugh Black -
The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not those who belong to the “more perfect state,” but those who love and suffer most. This is why they can move ahead of so many others whose lives, apparently, were more successful.
VIRGINITY
A Positive Approach to Celibacy for the Sake of the Kingdom of Heaven
Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap
