Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast.

Today's reading has been edited and adapted from the book Hints for Lovers by Arnold Hall Tane, published in 1909.

The beginning, the middle, and the end of love is a sigh. All things point to the infinite,

and love more than all things else. Nothing stands still in this world, not even love. It must grow or it withers, and perhaps the strongest

love is that which surmounts the greatest number of obstacles.

Love to some is an intoxicant, to others an ailment, to all it is a necessity.

As is one's character, so is one's love.

Some loves, like some fevers, have three stages, incubation, eruption and convalescence.

And some loves, like some fevers, render the patient immune to that particular kind of contagion.

Only love can comprehend and reciprocate love. Of a great and reciprocated love there is one and only one sign,

the expression of the eyes.

Did ever the same love light shine in the same eyes twice?

The light of love in the eyes may take on a thousand forms, exultant jubilation, a

trustful happiness, infinite appeasement or promises untold, implicit faith, unquestioning

confidence, abounding pity, unabashed desire. Those who shall count the stars of heaven shall enumerate the radiances of love.

There is no art of loving, though as Ovid says, love must be guided by art, yet if love did not come by chance, it would never come at all.

It is a significant fact that love, which, more than any other thing in this world, is the great bringer together of hearts, begins its mysterious work as a separator and a putter at a distance.

For when first love dawns in the breast of youth, it throws about its object a sacred aura,

which awes at the same time that it inspires the faithful worshipper.

Too often the phantasm of love and not love itself wins the day.

Women who seek a real lover should beware of the overbold one.

To merge the thee and the me into one, that is ever the attempt of love.

...