Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu is the name attached to the author of the Tao Te Ching, the founding text of Taoism, composed in China around the sixth or fourth century BC. Whether he was a historical person or a collection of several authors has been debated for centuries. The book works through paradox and restraint, and opens by warning that what matters most cannot be put into words.
About this theme: Love
The Greeks had several words for what we cover with one: eros for desire, philia for the affection between friends, storge for family attachment, agape for the kind that asks nothing back. Translate all of that into a single word and the distinctions vanish — yet the distinctions are what most quotes about love are actually about.
More by Lao Tzu
More on Love
- No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.— Charles Dickens
- A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.— Elbert Hubbard
- The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart.— Helen Keller
- One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.— Sophocles
- Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.— Mother Teresa