The 10 Best Quotes About Love (They’re Not What You Expect!)

The general focus on Valentine’s Day is romantic love, but love is so much more than that. My favorite love is the expansive love that causes you to smile like a fool and feel fuzzy all over. It’s love for the little things – moments, smiles, scents, touches. It’s love that is so overwhelming you feel you could burst.

In that spirit, here are my 10 favorite quotes about (non-romantic) love:

10.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

– Buddha

9.

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

– Arthur Rubinstein

8.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

– Oscar Wilde

7.

He who treads the path of love walks a thousand meters as if it were only one.

– Japanese proverb

6.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.

– Paulo Coelho (from The Alchemist)

5.

A loving heart, a heart full of love, is the precious essence of human life.

– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (from Love and God)

4.

…love is no individual’s experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal…

– Henry David Thoreau (from Love)

3.

Your task is not to seek love, but to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

– Rumi

2.

Love, and you shall be loved.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

1.

Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.

– Rumi

Bonus round! I’m big on the idea that when you love yourself, you have that much more natural capacity and inclination to love others. When it comes down to it, that is why I continue practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique. It makes me feel good, and it helps me love myself, which in turn helps me love everything else. Here are some words from Maharishi on love and the TM technique:

“The fortunate one uses the instrument of deep meditation and probes deep into his heart. Then the waves of love gain the depth of the ocean, and the ocean of love flows and fills the heart and thrills every particle of being. Every wave of life then flows in the fullness of love, in the fullness of divine glory, in the fullness of grace, in bliss and peace.” (From Love and God)

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