“Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”
First Letter to the Corinthians, 1611 · New Testament epistle, King James Version
Chapter 6
On Tenderness
“Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
First Letter to the Corinthians, 1611 · New Testament epistle, King James Version
“O, my luve's like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June: O, my luve's like the melodie, that's sweetly play'd in tune.”
Robert Burns, 1794 · Scottish poet, 1759 to 1796
“Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus begins the record of our hearts. This love between you and me is simple as a song.”
Rabindranath Tagore, 1913 · Bengali poet, 1861 to 1941, Nobel laureate 1913
“To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed willingly and joyfully.”
Kahlil Gibran, 1923 · Lebanese American poet and painter, 1883 to 1931
“However much we describe and explain Love, when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words. Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but Love unexplained is better.”
Rumi, 1907 · Persian poet and Sufi teacher, 1207 to 1273
“Bodies of loveless men are bony framework clad with skin. Then is the body seat of life, when love resides within.”
Tiruvalluvar, 1886 · Tamil poet and moralist, about the first century BC
“Deeds are love, and not fine phrases.”
Spanish proverb, 1857 · recorded in a nineteenth-century collection of European proverbs
Gottman calls the small approaches partners make to each other bids for connection. Following newlyweds for six years, couples who stayed together answered those bids 86 percent of the time. Those who divorced, 33.
John Gottman, 1999 · research finding on bids for connection in newlywed couples
Asked what makes a partner feel loved over decades, long-married Americans did not name grand gestures. Frequent smaller acts of kindness, one said, greatly trump large rare acts of kindness.
Cornell Legacy Project, 2021 · research finding on small daily kindness in long marriages
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
George Eliot, 1872 · English novelist, 1819 to 1880, speaking through Dorothea Brooke
Free to read, always. Liking a verse or leaving a comment happens in the app, so the conversation has a name attached to it.