Love

Love is a special affection for someone or something, a feeling or emotion. Some describe it as a chemical reaction in the human brain. Various different types of love exist, which are more or less related:

1. love between family members: parent's love of children, etc.
2. love of friends
3. romantic love[?]
4. sexual love
5. loving one another in general
6. loving something abstract or inanimate
7. loving one's nation or homeland

What is common to all the types of love, is a conscious or subconscious desire towards someone or something or realisation of their goals.

Some languages, such as ancient Greek, are better than English at distinguishing between the different senses in which the word love is used. For example, ancient Greek has the words philia, eros, agape, and storge, meaning love between friends, romantic/sexual love, sacrificial (unreciprocated) love, and affection/familial love respectively. However, with Greek as with many other languages, it has been historically difficult to separate the meanings of these words totally, and so we can find examples of agape being used with much the same meaning as eros.

Religious views

The Unification Church defines love in philosophical terms as "the emotional force given by the Subject to the Object". The church classifies love into three types:

1. parental love
2. conjugal love
3. children's love

Quotes about love

Much ado about nothing

- William Shakespeare

Love: A term that has no meaning if defined.

- John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

- The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce.