Bernard of Clairvaux Quotes

Love is alone sufficient by itself, it pleases by itself and for it's own sake. It is itself a merit, and itself it's own recompense. It seeks neither cause, nor consequences beyond itself. It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness. I love because I love you, I love that I may love.

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

No, no thought to the winnings. One loves because one loves.

True love has no object. It is a state of being.

When you come from 'love,' you do certain things because you are love, not because you want to have love.

for a woman, love is its own reason. "I love you because I love you.

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

The best part of being a mom to me is the unconditional love. I have never felt a love as pure, a love that's as rewarding.

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

There is always something to be grateful for. Pure love has no conditions or boundaries. Love does not restrain itself or hold back. Love gives all the time and doesn't ask for anything in return. Love is a continuous flow without any limits. And all of this is inside you.

Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.

When your love is pure or spiritual, there is no demand, no expectation. There is only the sweetest feeling of spontaneous oneness with the human being or beings concerned.

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature.

Love is free; it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.

Love fills everything. It cannot be desired because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner because it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant.

Be Love; there is nothing greater.

You want to be loved because you do not love; but the moment you love, it is finished, you are no longer inquiring whether or not somebody loves you.

One should think in terms of whether one is loving or not. The question of the object of love does not arise. With your wife, you love your wife; with your children, you love your children; with your servants, you love your servants; with your friends, you love your friends; with the trees, you love the trees; with the ocean, you love the ocean. You are love. Love is not dependent on the object, but is a radiation of your subjectivity - a radiation of your soul. And the vaster the radiation, the greater is your soul.

Real love is love for love's sake. I do not ask health or money or life or salvation.

The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.

Loving, not the beloved, is the joy of love. The beloved, knowing this, most resolutely declines to be grateful.

The lover must often say, "I love because I must, because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me - and incedentally, only - for that joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it also will be good, for I will to love."

Feel good about being someone who loves selflessly. I think someday you’ll find someone who loves you the exact same way.

A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all. If only you could love enough you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.