by Mark Lugris
Love quotes can be a double edged sword. In choosing the title of her latest novel, Love, Toni Morrison has said that she was distressed at the thought of using such a hackneyed word.
Perhaps in its essence, love is a word we love to hate, and love quotes suffer a similar fate. Love quotes are the scourge of love cynics, yet popular culture has built a business around love and love quotes. Love quotes inundate greeting cards, valentine keepsakes and romantic gifts.
Love is the most easily recognizable human emotion, and to deny its existence is self-defeating. Thus, love quotes have become a natural expression of these emotions. As D.H. Lawrence noted:
Despite their good intentions, love quotes can unsettle even the most incurable romantics. Fickle, brazen and egocentric, love disappoints as often as it rescues. Love quotes reflect these emotions. As Euripides observed:
Hence, this detested word, misunderstood emotion and mistrustful attachment, and by extension love quotes, must be approached with caution, for we rarely practice what we preach. As Tom Lehrer illustrates,
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