"Marriage and Love" in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
Context: Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
“Love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.”
Variant: that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.
Source: City of Fallen Angels
In an 1870 writing making it clear that those wishing for "free divorce" were not associated with Stone's organization, American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA)
A Death in the Desert (1864)
“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1616–18
“The joys of love… last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.”
Source: The Joys of Love
Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Marriage and Love
