Love Notes: The Wondrous Journey of Love
Love Notes: The Wondrous Journey of Love
Love Notes: The Wondrous Journey of Love
Alain de Botton’s novel reads very much like the nonfiction he is known for—so much so that it could almost be called a slim work of nonfiction. Throughout the experience of love, it is filled with reflections and insights about love itself, capable of drawing a knowing smile or provoking long contemplation. Whether the reader is in love or not, this book is a beautiful journey about love. Its beauty is fully evident in its lines and between them; any interpretation or explanation can hardly add to it. So the best way is simply to share some of its wonderful passages.
Below are some quotations:
In Search of Lost Time has a clear theme: “It tells people how to stop wasting life, and how to appreciate the beauty of living.”
I. Romantic Fatalism
In this world, nothing is stronger than the longing for love. Yet more often than not, we must spend our lives with those who cannot understand our souls.
Only when life reaches its end can we know where our love truly belongs.
God died a hundred years ago; now it is computers, not oracles, that predict the future.
II. A Description of the Ideal
“It is not difficult to see through other people, but it is of no use to oneself.” — Elias Canetti
A person’s idealization of another can reach terrifying extremes, to the point that even they themselves cannot bear it—because they cannot bear themselves.
Every instance of falling in love is a great victory of hope over self-knowledge. — Oscar Wilde
The appearance of the beloved is only the second step—our longing for love first casts the shadow of the beloved, and our expectation of love then brings that beloved into being.
III. The Subtext of Temptation
Once we begin looking for signs of mutual attraction, every word and every action of the beloved seems charged with meaning.
IV. The True Self
In the face of someone unattractive, silence suggests that they are boring; in the face of someone attractive, silence makes you believe that it is you who are dull and tiresome.
To lie in order to be loved contains an even more unnatural assumption: if I do not lie, I will not be loved. It is an attitude that assumes one must erase all individuality in order to be charming.
V. Spirit and Flesh
Very few things stand in opposition to sex as much as thinking does.
The loosening of entwined hair or limbs inevitably allows reason to disturb desire.
VI. Marx Brothers–Style Thinking
The mind can never leave the body. To think that spirit and flesh can exist independently is naive. (The danger of unrequited love.)
Being loved makes people realize that others, like themselves, need something to depend on; it was in search of such dependence that people fell in love in the first place. If we lacked nothing, love would never arise. But the contradiction is that others also lack support, and that infuriates us. We had hoped to find an answer in another person, only to discover that they face the same difficulty.
VIII. Love and Freedom
It seems impossible both to be in love and to possess freedom; and even if freedom can be had, love cannot always be.
At times we imagine, idealistically, that romantic love is almost like Christian love—a generous emotion that declares: no matter what you are like, I love you.
Out of politeness and courtesy, friends build an invisible protective membrane between them; this membrane—the unfamiliarity of the body—prevents hostility from arising.
When two people can no longer turn their differences into jokes, that is the sign that they have stopped loving each other.
XI. What Do You Love About Her?
Love refuses to acknowledge the beloved’s innate ordinariness, and therein lies its irrationality. Thus, to outsiders, lovers always seem dull and uninteresting.
XIII. Intimacy
The more familiar two people become, the more the language they use together departs from ordinary, dictionary meanings. Familiarity creates an entirely new language, an intimate indoor speech tied to their shared stories and not easily understood by others.
XIV. The Confirmation of “I”
If love helps us see ourselves clearly, then living in solitude is like no longer using a mirror, leaving us to imagine from nothing the scratches or pockmarks on our own faces.
XV. The Intermittence of Emotion
Language, in its stability, conceals our indecision. The world changes from second to second, yet language allows us to hide within the illusion of something stable and enduring.
The tragedy of love lies in its inability to escape the dimension of time. When we stay with the beloved before us and think that only indifference remains for those we once loved, the cruelty of it is almost unbearable.
XVI. The Fear of Happiness
One of love’s greatest flaws is that, at least for a time, it carries the dangerous possibility of making us happy.
The problem that accompanies happiness comes from its rarity; once we accept it, we become anxious, afraid that it will be brief.
XVIII. Love Terrorism
An angry person is a complicated creature, sending out deeply contradictory signals—pleading for help and attention, yet when they arrive, rejecting them, hoping to be understood without having to speak.
XX. Psychological Fatalism
That I cannot attain a happy love is the greatest misfortune in modern society.
XXI. Suicide
Human beings are creatures who use symbols and metaphors: I cannot express my anger, so I use death to symbolize it.
XXIII. Omitted Time
The material world does not let me forget the past. Life is more cruel than art. The latter often persuades people that the material environment reflects a person’s inner state.
XXIV. The Classroom of Love
We must admit that there are lessons to be learned from love; otherwise, we will repeat our mistakes endlessly and still take pleasure in doing so.
Love is not a wise undertaking. Perhaps it can never rid itself of pain, yet it can never be forgotten either.
