a shandean commonplace book

There is a kind of love called maintenance, Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;  Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;  Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists  And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds  The permanently ricketty elaborate Structures of living; which is Atlas.  And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky. UA Fanthorpe

Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. Fred Rogers

In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweeps, As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.                          Philip Larkin   

Understanding is love’s other name.                        Thich Nhat Hanh

. . . love is a magnifying phenomenon . . . every increase in love strengthens all the other love in the world.                        Andrew Solomon

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!                        Henri-Frederic Amiel

. . . love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?                        Diane Ackerman

Love works its miracles in stillness. Herbert Read