Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.

Let us love this distance which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

Among human beings, only the existence of those we love is fully recognized. Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love.

Love for our neighbor, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius.

There are two forms of friendship: meeting and separation. They are indissoluble. Both of them contain some good, and this good of friendship is unique, for when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation. As both forms contain the same good thing, they are both equally good.

To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love.

Love needs reality. What is more terrible than the discovery that through a bodily appearance we have been loving an imaginary being. It is much more terrible than death, from death does not prevent the Beloved from having lived. That is the punishment for having fed love on imagination.