Loving someone

One idea from each of the 5 books on this topic.

• Pausanias says there are 2 kinds of love. The common kind wants a body and leaves when youth fades. The heavenly kind loves a person’s mind and character, and it lasts a lifetime. He says a quick attachment is a bad sign, since only time shows which kind you have.

  From The Symposium by Plato

• You study to get a job, take the job to earn money, and want the money for something else again. The chain has to stop somewhere, or all your wanting would be empty. Whatever sits at the end, wanted for itself alone, is the good worth knowing.

  From Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

• A reed flute can sing only because it was cut from the reed bed. The crying inside the music is the memory of the wet ground it grew in. Your ache works the same way. It is proof you were rooted somewhere once, and a pull back toward it.

  From The Essential Rumi by Rumi

• Picture an earthquake swallowing all of China. A kind man in Europe hears, says sad and thoughtful things, then sleeps soundly. Yet “if he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night.” Distant millions move him less than his own small hurt.

  From The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

• Love stories, the judge says, end at the wedding, just where they should begin. Falling in love feels eternal, but it rests on a feeling. He argues that marriage keeps first love alive by adding a promise and a choice made again each day.

  From Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard