Do not be small minded. Do not pray for gourds and pumpkins from God, when you should be asking for pure love and pure knowledge to dawn within every heart.
I envision someday a great, peaceful South Africa in which the world will take pride, a nation in which each of many different groups will be making its own creative contribution.
Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.
Let us have love and more love; a love that melts all opposition, a love that conquers all foes, a love that sweeps away all barriers, a love that aboundeth in charity, a large-heartedness, tolerance, forgiveness and noble striving, a love that triumphs over all obstacles.
True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.
There are two gods. The god our teachers teach us about, and the God who teaches us. The god about whom people usually talk, and the God who talks to us. The god we learn to fear, and the God who speaks to us of mercy. The god who is somewhere up on high, and the God who is here in our daily lives. The god who demands punishment, and the God who forgives us our trespasses. The god who threatens us with the torments of Hell, and the God who shows us the true path.
There are two gods. A god who casts us off because of our sins, and a God who calls to us with His love.
You become so intense that you are not there, because if you are there then the intensity cannot be total; then two are there. If you love and the lover is there, then love cannot be intense. Love so deeply, so totally, that the lover disappears. Then you are just an energy moving. Then you will know love, you will know life, you will know death.
And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams!
Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.