Quotes on Love

"Let your love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be mutually hospitable without complaining. As generous distributors of God’s manifold grace, put your gifts at the service of one another, each in the measure he has received. The one who speaks is to deliver God’s message. The one who serves is to do it with the strength provided by God. Thus, in all of you God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ."

1 Peter 4:8-11

 There is only one thing for us to do during the night of this life: to love, to love Jesus with all the strength of our heart, and to save souls for Him that He may be loved. Oh! the joy of causing Jesus to be loved!

St. Therese of Lisieux, as quoted in Sermon in a Sentence, Volume 1

"It is essential to be conformed ever more closely to Christ. In this way one becomes really free; in this way the Law's deepest core is expressed within us: love for God and neighbor. Let us pray the Lord that he will teach us to share his sentiments, to learn from him true freedom and the evangelical love that embraces every human being."

Pope Benedict XVI, St. Paul

"The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that  never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love." 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church #25, quoting the Catechism of the Council of Trent

"Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect, beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him."

from a sermon by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (as found in the Liturgy of the Hours)