We are afraid of love because Love is a small death. Love requires that we should surrender, and we don't want to surrender at all. We would like the OTHER to surrender, we would like the other to be a slave. But the same is the desire from the other side: man wants the woman to be a slave; and of course the woman also wants the same, the SAME desire is there. Their methods of enslaving each other may be different, but the desire is the same.
Love is a religion, and its rituals cost more than those of other religions. It goes by quickly and, like a street urchin, it likes to mark its passage by a trail of devastation.
Actors, we like stories, we like storytelling, we love being a part of the story, and if you give us a story that's interesting then we'll want to do it.
Love is not of the mind, it is not in the net of thought, it cannot be sought out, cultivated, cherished; it is there when the mind is silent and the heart is empty of the things of the mind.
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
And so when the essential idea of love is lost there comes talk of fidelity. Actually, the only possible basis for two beings, male and female, to relate to each other is to grant each other total freedom.
If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.