“We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Edward Bulwer-Lytton photo
Edward Bulwer-Lytton 31
English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician 1803–1873

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“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep”

General sources
Source: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621
Context: The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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“Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

[I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love, 2005, 9781418515812, http://books.google.com/books?id=lhWCB2v3UlQC&pg=PA30&dq=%22Love+is+a+command%22, 39]
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“You know, actually we have no love — that is a terrible thing to realize.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Varanasi 5th Public Talk (28 November 1964), The Collected Works, Vol. XV
1960s
Context: You know, actually we have no love — that is a terrible thing to realize. Actually we have no love; we have sentiment; we have emotionality, sensuality, sexuality; we have remembrances of something which we have thought as love. But actually, brutally, we have no love. Because to have love means no violence, no fear, no competition, no ambition. If you had love you will never say, "This is my family." You may have a family and give them the best you can; but it will not be "your family" which is opposed to the world. If you love, if there is love, there is peace. If you loved, you would educate your child not to be a nationalist, not to have only a technical job and look after his own petty little affairs; you would have no nationality. There would be no divisions of religion, if you loved. But as these things actually exist — not theoretically, but brutally — in this ugly world, it shows that you have no love. Even the love of a mother for her child is not love. If the mother really loved her child, do you think the world would be like this? She would see that he had the right food, the right education, that he was sensitive, that he appreciated beauty, that he was not ambitious, greedy, envious. So the mother, however much she may think she loves her child, does not love the child. So we have not that love.

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“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

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“The beautiful is not that which we love and because we love it, but that which by its objective value obliges us to love it.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2006, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, World Wisdom, 96, 978-1-933316-28-4]
God, Beauty

“All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

“Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge”, p. 57
The Journey Home (1977)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

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