“Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Love, Power and Justice (1954), p. 4

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Love (1947), p. 270

[2005, Stations of Wisdom, World Wisdom, 94, 978-0-94153218-1]
God, Reverential fear and love

Ibid., p. 125
Original: Nunca amamos niguém. Amamos, tão-somente, a ideia que fazemos de alguém. É a um conceito nosso — em suma, é a nós mesmos — que amamos.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
Context: The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence — then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.

Letter to Dorothy Day, quoted in Catholic Voices in a World on Fire (2005) by Stephen Hand, p. 180.
Context: Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand