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Love, Romance and
You Know What!
Mature Lovers
Love,
with very young people, is a heartless business.
We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk;
it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with
the individuality of our wine.
Isak Dinesen
Immature
love says, I love you because I need you.
Mature love says, I need you because I love you.
Erich Fromm
Love
is more pleasant once you get out of
your twenties. It doesn't hurt all the time.
Andrew A Rooney
Sensual
pleasure passes and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, but the friendship between us, the mutual confidence, the delights of the heart, the enchantment of the soul, these things do not perish and can never be destroyed. I shall love you until I die.
Voltaire - to Mme Denis
Love
seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
Mark Twain - Notebook
We've
been together now for forty years,
An' it don't seem a day too much;
There ain't a lady livin' in the land
As I'd swop for my dear old Dutch.
Albert Chevalier - popular song, 1900s
At
the end of a tiring day when he was feeling his aches
a little more than usual, an elderly man retired to bed
with his wife, turned off the light and settled comfortably
on his pillow.
He was just beginning to feel rested
when his wife said, "Henry, you didn't kiss me good
night." He turned over, kissed her on the cheek and
once more settled himself for the night. He was just
starting to doze off when his wife chided, "Henry, dear,
you didn't kiss me on the neck." With a sigh, he turned
over again and kissed her on the neck. He was almost
asleep when his wife said plaintively, "Henry, dearest,
you didn't nibble my ear."
At this, the old man threw back
the bed covers, leaped out of bed and began rummaging
wildly on the dressing table … books thudded to the floor,
perfume bottles crashed about and hair brushes bounced
noisily off the walls.
"Henry! Henry!" his wife shouted
anxiously above the din, "what on earth are you doing?"
Still threshing around, he replied tersely, "For the sake of
peace, woman, I'm trying to find my dentures!"
Source unknown
It
is love in old age, no longer blind, that is true love. For love's highest intensity doesn't necessarily mean its highest quality. Glamour and jealousy are gone: and the ardent caress, no longer needed, is valueless, compared to the reassuring touch of a trembling hand. Passers-by commonly see little beauty in the embrace of young lovers on a park bench, but the understanding smile of an old wife to her husband is one of the loveliest things in the world.
Booth Tarkington
That
quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first
moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger.
George Eliot - Silas Marner
In
the huge mysteries of time and space I feel
your arm about my shoulder and am not afraid.
Pam Brown
Photographer
James Vander Zee says of a youthful photograph of his wife displayed in his home: "When she was young I loved her because she was beautiful. When she got old I loved her because I knew her."
Source unknown
There
is a romance appropriate for every age and stage, and it is vital that we keep romance in marriage if it is to succeed and if we are to achieve happiness for ourselves and our children. We must take real care, lest "moonlight and roses" become "daylight and dishes"! A movie star has been quoted as saying that "marriage kills romance". That ought not be and is not true if romance is understood rightly.
Someone has defined romance as "a long story of love". The dictionary defines it as "a dreamy imaginative habit of mind tending to dwell on the ./picturesquely unusual." Both of these definitions are realistically true! Romance in marriage is to be found in the long story of love that began before marriage and found fulfilment after marriage.
It is to be found in the wonder of relationships that are colourful, thrilling and practical. The romance of marriage includes all the joys of marriage as well as the hazards. It is a way of life for a couple within the bounds of responsible marriage.
T Cecil Myers - Happiness Is Still Home Made
Theirs
was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality … The feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death-that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.
Thomas Hardy - Far from the Madding Crowd
A
woman of 47 who has been married 27 years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: "Love is what you've been through with somebody."
James Thurber - in, 'Life' 14 March 1960
"How
stupid people are to say that the honeymoon is the best
time," said Natasha. "On the contrary, now is far better."
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace
Our
love is like the misty rain that
falls softly - but floods the river.
African proverb
Life
has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each
other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Wind, Sand, and Stars
Love
isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you. It's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures-when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love-well, I'll tell you what love is: It's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.
Brian Moore - The Luck of Ginger Coffey
He
will grow old and you will grow old,
He will love you and you love him.
May your sun set in a blaze of gold
And the night creep in.
Source unknown
Gentlemen,
to the lady without whom I should never have survived to eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thirty years. Her smile has been my lyric, her understanding the rhythm of the stanza. She has been the spring where from I have drawn the words. She is the poem of my life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (attrib.)
Love,
let us live as we have lived, nor lose
The little names that were the first night's grace,
And never come the day that sees us old,
I still your lad, and you my little lass.
Let me be older than old Nestor's years,
And you the Sibyl, if we heed it not.
What should we know, we two, of ripe old age?
We'll have its richness, and the years forgot.
Ausonius - To My Wife, tr. by Waddell
We
break the line with stroke and luck,
The arrows run like rain,
If you be struck, or I be struck
There's one to strike again.
If you befriend, or I befriend,
The strength is in us twain
And good things end, and bad things end
And you and I remain.
G K Chesterton -
A Marriage SongThe seasons swiftly come and go,
The
seasons swiftly come and go,
And still we two remain,
Standing amid the changeful flow
Of joy and pain.
The joy we claim; the pain, not small,
We dimly understand;
But oh, thank God, we live through all
Still hand in hand.
H S Sutton
John
Anderson my jo, John,
We clamb the hill thegither;
And mony a jolly day, John,
We've had wi'ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
And hand in hand we'll go;
And sleep thigither at the foot,
John Anderson my jo.
Robert Burns - John Anderson
How
many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false and true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
W B Yeats - When You Are Old
Young
love is a flame; very pretty, often very
hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering.
The love of the older and disciplined heart is
as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
Henry Ward Beecher
The
question is asked, "Is there anything more beautiful in life than a boy and a girl clasping clean hands and pure hearts in the path of marriage? Can there be anything more beautiful than young love?" And the answer is given. "Yes, there is a more beautiful thing. It is the spectacle of an old man and an old woman finishing their journey together on that path. Their hands are gnarled, but still clasped; their faces are seamed, but still radiant; their hearts are physically bowed and tired, but still strong with love and devotion for one another. Yes, there is a more beautiful thing than young love. Old love."
Source unknown
Many
waters cannot quench love,
neither can the floods drown it.
Old Testament - Song of Songs 8:7
Epitaph
(engraved on memorial in a Bronx cemetery) for Isidor and Ida Straus who died when the
Titanic sank. Ida (63) twice had the opportunity to take a place on a lifeboat but chose to stay with her husband instead. She insisted that her maid take her place on the lifeboat and handed the young woman her fur coat saying, "I won't need this anymore."
CONTENTS
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