Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke

~ Lynda Barry

Published on February 7, 2007 By Sugar High Elf In Personal Relationships

What is Love?
As the dreaded 14th comes ever closer, it leaves people wondering, "what is love?" Is it chocolates and flowers (aka dead plant life and sugar-and-fat blocks)? Is it being hit in the heart by one of the naked, fat boy's arrows? Is it candlelight? Is it friendship? Is it unconditional? Is it forever or can it fade? Is there only one love, or can a person have many? Is it true, or illusion? Does it exist in real life, or only in the movies? Are there soul mates, or love at first sight? Does "the one" exist for us all?

Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Is love an exploding cigar we willingly smoke?

I don't have the answers. I'm too young and I can admit that. I'm a romantic, so I believe love exists -- that is all I know. So I turn to the wiser-than-I for a little advice, guidance and laughter.

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox,

What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)

When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2005

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)

But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 6

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Comments

Dr Guy

on Feb 07, 2007

The best one by FAR is the one by Robert Frost. I had never read that one, but I am going to keep it with me now!

Sugar High Elf

on Feb 07, 2007

Not to be cynical, but this one's my favorite:

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening

Dusk411

on Feb 07, 2007

I think friendship is a huge part of love. Without it, there is nothing substantial. It will pass. It should be unconditional. Any love that has conditions to is one-sided.

"Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?" Hmmm...I've been in love twice in my life. First time, I learned from it and I took a lot of positives from it. As for the second time, It's still too early and raw for me to say. However, I do know it is better that I lost.

I do think it's best to love. It's a chance to learn about yourself in a different way. Love is the biggest risk we take.

Sugar High Elf

on Feb 07, 2007

I am recently, well, kinda recently, out of love. I wasn't sure for a while if I could have gone back in time, would I have done it all again. I still wonder sometimes, but I know how much I learned from that relationship. I learned to open up and be vulnerable, even if it could hurt me. I learned that I am a strong person, and whatever relationship I end up in, I can work out problems. I don't give up easy. I am supportive and loyal.

I also learned that I hide the truth from myself. When things were really wrong, I was so determined to make it work that I missed the obvious signs. I even missed what I was telling myself in my own journal posts and blogs.

So, I'm amending the quote: "Tis better to have loved, lost and learned, than never to have loved at all."

Texas Wahine

on Feb 07, 2007

You had me at sugar-and-fat blocks.

Good to see you around, SHE. The Matt Groening quote is great.

Sugar High Elf

on Feb 07, 2007

You had me at sugar-and-fat blocks.

I'm so glad.

I think my next article will be titled "Beware the Ice Weasels"

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