Here are some quotes (which you will probably hate, but hey, I don't want to read a long, thick, hard book on love. Short works only at my age -- brief articles and quotes.

So when you publish your list, remember to put some hay down where us goats can get at it.

The Song of Solomon is not too long, for instance. I have read it. It's not a didactic discussion of love -- it's poetry

The Kamasutra by Vātsyāyana... haven't read it (too long, Sanskrit, Hindu ideas -- way too much work) but Wikipedia assure me that it is actually about love as well as how to perform sex in several different positions.

Here's a sample of quotes from No Sweat Shakespeare. Some of the quotes are more pregnant with meaning than others.

Speaking of Shakespeare, include the Bard in your list.

Sonnet 130:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare. — Bill Shakespeare

I think these quotes are quite good--truthful, not sentimental and flowery.

“Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.” — John Ciardi, professor, editor, author

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it… It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” — Erica Jong (author of Fear of Flying, et al)

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Nietzsche
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
Aristotle
“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”
Bruce Lee
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Where there is love there is life.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
Sam Keen
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu
“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Rumi
“Selfishness doesn’t consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.”
Aristotle
“Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.”
Boethius
“A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.”
Descartes
“Love comes with hunger.”
Diogenes
“Love is a person’s idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to.”
Thomas Hobbes
“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Philip James Bailey
“Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, Hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!”
Joseph Addison
“People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.”
Douglas Yates
“One’s first love is always perfect until one meets one’s second love.”
 Elizabeth Aston
“There is love, of course. And then there’s life, its enemy.”
Jean Anouilh
“In this world of extremes, we can only love too little.”
Richard Cannarella
“Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.”
Voltaire
“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”
John Donne
“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”
Benjamin Franklin
“No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.”
 Mignon McLaughlin
“I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
Jean Pierre Claris De Florian
“Love won’t be tampered with, love won’t go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.”
Louise Erdrich
“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.”
Erich Fromm
“The love we give away is the only love we keep.”
 Elbert Hubbard
“We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
W. Somerset Maugham
“Love is a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.”
Thomas Moore
“Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common-sense.”
 Helen Rowland
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
 Oscar Wilde
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
Janos Arany
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”
Fyodor Dostoevski
“One word frees us
Of all the weight and pain in life,
That word is Love.”
Socrates
“Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”
St. Augustine
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
Aristotle
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
Paul Tillich
“Where there is love there is life.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato
“A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“If you want to be loved, be lovable.”
Ovid
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
Bertrand Russell
“All mankind love a lover.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”
 H. L. Mencken
“Love is the beauty of the soul.”
Saint Augustine
“The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.”
Jiddu
“The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.”
George Edward Moore
“Love is being stupid together.”
Paul Valery
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
 Khalil Gibran
“Fortune and love favour the brave.”
Ovid
“Don’t forget to love yourself.”
Soren Kierkegaard

I'm composing a reading list to start tackling the topic of love in philosophy. Here's what I got so far:

phaedrus
symposium
the nature of things (selections)
conditions of love: the philosophy of intimacy john armstrong
the art of loving erich fromm — Moliere

Omnia vincit Amor! Yay!!! Someone else is interested in the actual study. I feel like Austin Powers right now:



Kierkegaard - Works of love
Blaise Pascal - Discourse on the Passions of Love
Raja Halwani - Virtuous Liaisons: Care, Love, Sex, and Virtue Ethics
Confucius - [concept of Ren]
Hume - Treatise of Human Nature (Sentimentalism)
Guillaume de Lorris - Roman de la Rose
Max Scheler - The Nature of Sympathy
ST Aquinas - Summa Theologiae [God's love]
Ovid - Ars Amatoria (friggin LOVE this, not specifically for the somewhat baffling content, but just the whole way he approaches the subject matter)
Eva Kittay - Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency
Kant - Doctrine of Virtue
Andreas Capellanus - The Art of Courtly Love
Husserl - Phenomenology and the Crises of Philosophy
Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita

There is more, but I would love to share ideas as I have been involved in this study for the last six months? PM me if you are interested in further one-on-one discussions on the subject.

The best thing I ever read on love was in Adriana Cavarero's - Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood; she touches on it only on a couple of pages near the end of the book, but it's just brilliant, if you can get your hands on it.

Otherwise, you might want to check out/add to your list:

Robert Solomon - About Love: Reinventing Romance for Our Times
Mari Ruti - The Summons of Love
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt - Commonwealth (they employ 'love' in this book as a matter of revolutionary politics)
Alain Badiou - In Praise of Love (a very small book <80 pages).

There's also Kelly Oliver's article "The Look of Love" published in Hypatia but avaliable at academia.edu if you have an account.

Hannah Stark has also wrriten on Love in the context of Deleuze's philosophy, you can find her essay 'But We Always Make Love with Worlds' online as well if you look.

Hope this helps.

^Edit: Aboslutely Kierkegaard's Works of Love as well!

Thanks for the suggestions, all!

These were exaclty the sort of recommendations I was looking for so I could begin tracking down books, and then building further lists from that. I was sort of coming up dry, so this is definitely a meaty selection of books that helps a bunch. (I'll keep posting my own suggestions as I come across more too)

How about these?

Understanding Love: Philosophy, Film, and Fiction - Susan Wolf
Love: A History - Simon May
Love's Virtues - Mike Martin

Definitely. Any more suggestions are of course appreciated.

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita — TimeLine

The Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov; It doesn't have anything to do with love, but it's very good.

I and Thou, Martin Buber (Kaufmann's translation)

A reference link to discussions of the various terms for love in Greek -- Agape, Eros, Philia, mainly but also Storge (stor gay) would be helpful

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Carl Rogers, Becoming Partners -- This book is not a study of partnerships or marriage. It is about the search of men and women for relationships in the United States in the 1970s.

Neel Burton M.D.
Plato on True Love
Plato's account of true love is still the most subtle and beautiful there is.
Posted Jun 23, 2012 PSYCHOLOGY TODAY blog

A General Theory of Love
January 9, 2001
by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon

Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.

JOURNAL ARTICLE
The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium
Donald Levy
Journal of the History of Ideas
Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1979), pp. 285-291
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
DOI: 10.2307/2709153
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709153
Page Count: 7

Philosophy Now, Issue 81
Question of the Month: What is Love
https://philosophynow.org/issues/81/What_Is_Love]

The Ascent of Love: Plato, Spinoza, Proust
Martha Nussbaum
http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/nussbaum/The%20Ascent%20of%20Love%20Plato,%20Spinoza,%20Proust.pdf

2 items in a Google Search

[PDF]Treatise on Love - Islamic Philosophy Online
www.muslimphilosophy.com/sina/works/avicenna-love.pdf
its position in the development of the philosophical Arabic doctrines of love, ... Risalah fi'l 'ishq had no predecessors in the field of Arabic philosophy. As a matter ...

[PDF]John Donne's Poetic Philosophy of Love
https://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/donne_philosophy_love.pdf
Donne's poetry is “the work of one who has tasted every fruit in love's orchard. ... philosophy of love in which he deals with what he called “the central problem in ...

If you need to give your eyes a rest, the Partially Examined Life has a discussion of Fromm on Love here. That link is Part 1 (Part 2 is here). The linked page of Part 1 contains links to their discussions on Buber's 'Ich und du' and Plato's Symposium.

I second StreetLight's recommendation of Works of Love, but I would recommend the introductory essay to Gordon Marino's "The Quotable Kierkegaard" before you read it. It's the best explanation of Kierkegaard I've ever read (an interesting thinker who's not very understood well imo. And I'm a thorough Atheist.)

The Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov; It doesn't have anything to do with love, but it's very good. — Bitter Crank

I actually haven't read it, but the Master and Margarita is one of my favourite books because it is somewhat a literary triptych and contains a framed narrative that uses imaginative descriptions to discuss concepts like unconditional love, divine love, and brotherly or social love politically and socially. It is ridiculously intelligent.

Existential literature tackles the subject of love in the philosophical sense; Anna Karenina is a perfect example of a narrative that exemplifies the 'moral' vs. the 'immoral' through the two relationships in the book. Its actually one of the best books ever written, in my opinion. You are also spot-on with Shakespeare, but Rumi is an exquisite example on the subject.

Art can do this also. In my house, I have a massive "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt sitting above my couch and I actually - quite literally - became physically enamoured when I was at the Villa Borghese in Rome and saw the statue of L'abisso - Particolare that I believe that I stared at it for over an hour.

Baroque - my favourite period - is filled with artists especially Caravaggio because of the biblical or moral vs. sexual tensions, and even going back to statues, Bernini' Apollo and Daphne as well as the Rape of Proserpina are stunning examples that question the morality that is required to convey 'love'.


L'abisso - Particolare


"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt


Caravaggio Narcissus

"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt — TimeLine

Klimt has become quite popular, seems like. It's been a long time since I read Anna Karenina. I should reread it. (It's on my list.)

I hate to mention this in the present company of high art, but there is a children's story that I think makes a quite good point about love: The Velveteen Rabbit. I first heard it as a middle age'd adult. The Velveteen Rabbit wants to know how to become real. The rocking horse explains that one becomes real by being loved. Adults who prefer sucking lemons won't like the book.

The book doesn't explain how people becomes loved if they are not loved already. That problem is dealt with elsewhere--or it isn't, depending on one's perspective.

I hate to mention this in the present company of high art, but there is a children's story that I think makes a quite good point about love: The Velveteen Rabbit. I first heard it as a middle age'd adult. The Velveteen Rabbit wants to know how to become real. The rocking horse explains that one becomes real by being loved. Adults who prefer sucking lemons won't like the book. — Bitter Crank

That is actually a great point, I will certainly read it and with the recent banning of a children's movie in Russia, a focus on the subject vis-a-vis sexuality is pretty interesting.

https://philpapers.org/rec/VELLAA

(Velleman, Love as a Moral Emotion)

If you go to philpapers you can search on various philosophical aspects of love, e.g.:

https://philpapers.org/browse/philosophy-of-love/

Try St. John Chrysostom on Love - and Marriage. Best to sample him first, if you can.

I think poetry would be one of your best sources.

I Sing the Body Electric
by Walt Whitman

Love III
by George Herbert (16th century poet)

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe (16th century)

You, Therefore
by Reginald Shepherd

Turbidophilia
by Peter Pereira

A Birthday
by Christina Rossetti

American Wedding
by Essex Hemphill
In america,
I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs...

A Poem for the Old Man
by John Wieners

Federico García Lorca
Frank O’Hara

Please Master... and other poems
by Allan Ginsberg

But I thought I'd post to see if other folks have already read papers or books on the topic, and could share to help compile a list of reading material on the topic. — Moliere

I was thinking if I know any writings that you might find interesting. The only things that came to mind immediately were wedding vows for different religions and denominations, maybe because I went to a wedding recently. Their point is to lay it all out for everyone to see in the shortest possible manner. Those vows can be really moving. They are also very short. You can probably do all the research you need in an hour, unless you find value in going deeper.

I'll see if I can think of anything else.

I think poetry would be one of your best sources. — Bitter Crank

I very much agree. To not include poetry or prose would, I think, miss a lot of good thoughts and perspectives on love. (And, actually, the philosophy books I've been reading do the same. i.e. use literature to reflect on the topic)