The language of love

Ah, the French! Connoisseurs of food, of wine, and, of course, of love. Those of us who live in British cultures live in societies deprived of love. What with all the time we must devote to getting and spending, we simply don’t have time for as childish and as…French a sentiment as love!

To understand the joy of love, to understand its wondrous benefits and, above all, its essence, we must turn to the French. Here is a collection of inspiring thoughts about love from the great minds of French culture.

• Love is a simple thing, a desire followed by a brief act, and there you have it reduced to its exact proportions; all the rest is literature. (Maurice Donnay)
  
• Love, as it exists in society, is merely the exchange of two fantasies, and the contact of two skins. (Nicolas Chamfort)
  
• In love one begins with rhetoric and finishes with philosophy. (Jacques Dyssord)
  
• If we judge love by its effects, it resembles hate more than friendship. (La Rochefoucauld)
  
• Love, like everything else which lives, begins to degenerate as soon as it is conceived. (Jean Rostand)
  
• Love is like those hotels where all the luxury is in the lobby. (Paul-Jean Toulet)
  
• Love is a punishment for not being able to keep to ourselves. (Marguerite Yourcenar)
  
• Love is the only passion which is paid for with a currency which it manufactures itself. (Stendhal)
  
• In love it is easier to abandon a sentiment than a custom. (Proust)
  
• The love which one hails as the source of our pleasures is at most only a pretext for them. (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos)
  
• In love, the only victory is retreat. (Napoléon Bonaparte)
  
• What is annoying about love is that it is a crime in which you must have an accomplice. (Baudelaire)
  
• The most beautiful moment of love comes when you climb the stairs. (Georges Clemenceau)

Ah, the French!

The Language of Love ©
John FitzGerald, 2007