Part 4 Book 5 Chapter 4 A Heart beneath a Stone

The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.

Love is the salutation of the angels to the stars.

How sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!

What a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.

The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.

God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.

Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.

The future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.

Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.

Oh Love! Adorations! Voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! Strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of men.

God can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.

You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.

All of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.

On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.

What love commences can be finished by God alone.

True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.

If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.

Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.

Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.

"Does she still come to the Luxembourg?" "No, sir." "This is the church where she attends mass, is it not?" "She no longer comes here." "Does she still live in this house?" "She has moved away." "Where has she gone to dwell?"

"She did not say."

What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one's soul!

Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child of him!

There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away.

Oh! Would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,--that would suffice for my eternity!

Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.

Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.

Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing.

Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.

Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.

I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.

What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.

If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

把宇宙缩减到唯一的一个人，把唯一的一个人扩张到上帝，这才是爱。

爱，便是众天使向群星的膜拜。

灵魂是何等悲伤，当它为爱而悲伤！

不见那唯一充塞天地的人，这是何等的空虚！呵！情人成上帝，这是多么真实。人们不难理解，如果万物之父不是明明为了灵魂而创造宇宙，不是为了爱而创造灵魂，上帝也会伤心的。

能从远处望见一顶紫飘带白绉纱帽下的盈盈一笑。已够使灵魂进入美梦之宫了。

上帝在一切的后面，但是一切遮住了上帝。东西是黑的，人是不透明的。爱一个人，便是要使他透明。

某些思想是祈祷。有时候，无论身体的姿势如何，灵魂却总是双膝跪下的。

相爱而不能相见的人有千百种虚幻而真实的东西用来骗走离愁别恨。别人不让他们见面，他们不能互通音讯，他们却能找到无数神秘的通信方法。他们互送飞鸟的啼唱、花朵的香味、孩子们的笑声、太阳的光辉、风的叹息、星的闪光、整个宇宙。这有什么办不到呢？上帝的整个事业是为爱服务的。爱有足够的力量可以命令大自然为它传递书信。

呵春天，你便是我写给她的一封信。

未来仍是属于心灵的多，属于精神的少。爱，是唯一能占领和充满永恒的东西。对于无极，必须不竭。

爱是灵魂的组成部分。爱和灵魂是同一本质的。和灵魂一样，爱也是神的火星；和灵魂一样，爱也是不可腐蚀的，不可分割的，不会涸竭的。爱是人们心里的一个火源，它是无尽期、无止境的，任何东西所不能局限，任何东西所不能熄灭的。人们感到它一直燃烧到骨髓，一直照耀到天际。

呵爱！崇拜！两心相知、两情相投、两目相注的陶醉！你会到我这里来的，不是吗，幸福！在寥寂中并肩散步！美满、光辉的日子！我有时梦见时间离开了天使的生命，来到下界伴随人的命运。

上帝不能增加相爱的人们的幸福，除非给予他们无止境的岁月。在爱的一生之后，有爱的永生，那确是一种增益；但是，如果要从此生开始，便增加爱给予灵魂的那种无可言喻的极乐的强度，那是无法做到的，甚至上帝也做不到。上帝是天上的饱和，爱是人间的饱和。

你望一颗星，有两个动机，因为它是发光的，又因为它是望不透的。你在你的身边有一种更柔美的光辉和一种更大的神秘，女人。

无论我们是谁，全有供我们呼吸的物质。如果我们缺少它们，我们便缺少空气，不能呼吸。我们便会死去。因缺爱而死，那是不堪设想的。灵魂的窒息症！

当爱把两人溶化并渗合在一个极乐和神圣的一体中时，他们才算是找到了人生的秘密，他们便成了同一个命运的两极，同一个神灵的两翼。爱吧，飞翔吧！

一个女人来到你的跟前，一面走，一面放光，从那时起，你便完了，你便爱了。你只有一条路可走，集中全部力量去想她，以迫使她也来想你。

爱所开始的只能由上帝来完成。

真正的爱可以为了一只失去的手套或一条找到的手帕而懊恼，而陶醉，并且需要永恒来寄托它的忠诚和希望。它是同时由无限大和无限小所构成的。

如果你是石头，便应当做磁石；如果你是植物，便应当做含羞草；如果你是人，便应当做意中人。

爱是不知足的。有了幸福，还想乐园，有了乐园，还想天堂。

爱中的你呵，那一切已全在爱中了。靠你自己去找来。天上所有的，爱中全有，仰慕；爱中所有的，天上不一定有，欢情。

“她还会来卢森堡公园吗？”“不会再来了，先生。”“她到这个礼拜堂里来做弥撒，不是吗？”她现在不来这儿了。”“她仍住在这房子里吗？”她已经搬走了。”“她搬到什么地方去了呢？”

“她没有说。”

多么凄惨，竟不知道自己的灵魂在何方。

爱有稚气，其他感情有小气。使人变渺小的感情可耻。使人变孩子的感情可贵！

这是一件怪事，你知道吗？我在黑暗中。有个人临走时把天带走了。

呵！手牵着手，肩并着肩，同睡在一个墓穴里，不时在黑暗中相互轻轻抚摸我们的一个手指尖，这已能满足我的永恒的生命了。

因爱而受苦的你，爱得更多一点吧。为爱而死，便是为爱而生。

爱吧。在这苦刑中，有星光惨淡的乐境。极苦中有极乐。

呵鸟雀的欢乐！那是因为它们有巢可栖，有歌可唱。

爱是汲取天堂空气的至上之乐。

深邃的心灵们，明智的精灵们，按照上帝的安排来接受生命吧。这是一种长久的考验，一种为未知的命运所作的不可理解的准备工作。这个命运，真正的命运，对人来说，是从他第一步踏出墓穴时开始的。到这时，便会有一种东西出现在他眼前，他也开始能辨认永定的命运。永定，请你仔细想想这个词儿。活着的人只能望见无极，而永定只让死了的人望见它。在死以前，为爱而忍痛，为希望而景仰吧。不幸的是那些只爱躯壳、形体、表相的人，唉！这一切都将由一死而全部化为乌有。

应当知道爱灵魂，你日后还能找到它。

我在街头遇见过一个为爱所苦的极穷的青年。他的帽子是破旧的，衣服是磨损的，他的袖子有洞，水浸透他的鞋底，星光照彻他的灵魂。

何等大事，被爱！何等更为重大的事，爱！心因激情而英雄化了。除了纯洁的东西以外，心里什么也没有了，除了高贵和伟大的东西以外，它什么也不依附了。邪恶的思想已不能再在这心里滋长，正如荨麻不能生在冰山上。欲念和庸俗的冲动所不能攀缘的崇高宁静的灵魂高踞青天，镇压着人世间的乌云和黑影，疯狂，虚伪，仇恨，虚荣，卑贱，并且只感别来自命运底下的深沉的震撼，有如山峰感知地震。

人间如果没有爱，太阳也会灭。