On Happiness and Love ~ by Albert Camus

On Happiness  and Love *
~ by Albert Camus ~

   If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us.

    When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy.

    Betrayal answers betrayal, the mask of love is answered by the disappearance of love.

    For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.

    The loss of love is the loss of all rights, even though one had them all.

    Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.

    It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

    The end of their passion consists of loving uselessly at the moment when it is pointless.

    At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.

    I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world.
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* Source : brainpickings.org/2014/06/16

Bogey and Hepburn - "The African Queen" (1952)

Sonnet 145 ["I hate ... not you”] ~ by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 145 ["I hate ... not you”] 

~ by William Shakespeare ~

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Those lips that love's own hand did make

Breathed forth the sound that said "I hate,"

To me that languished for her sake.

But when she saw my woeful state,

Straight in her heart did mercy come,

Chiding that tongue that ever sweet

Was used in giving gentle doom,

And taught it thus anew to greet.

"I hate" she altered with an end

That followed it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who, like a fiend,

From heaven to hell is flown away.

"I hate" from hate away she threw.

And saved my life, saying "not you."