Here is a small paper, which is rather a small quote collection, all deal with the phenomenon of "love" v. Lev Tolstoy.
"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source. " Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XIII, Ch. 16,
"Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here."
Book IV, ch. 11
"To love life is two love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is two love this life in one's suffering, in undeserved suffering."
All quotes are from War and Peace (War and Peace)
Lev (Nikolayevich) Tolstoy 1828-1910, Russian writer.
Love is one of the 5 key emotions (the four others are hatred, envy, guilt and fear), and the word itself is of the earlier Danish agent noun kærlegh, kærlek 'love', which is composed of adj. dear plus the suffix-LEGHE,-lek 'appearance, shape, quality' of the common Germanic laika-'play'. Since then it put together in many contexts, from "to a shelter" "Burning Love" (both a kartoffelmosret and a plant Lychnis chalcedonica) ...
