St. Valentine's Day Wishes , 2012...

At the time of certain holidays, I have begun putting together a post of art and quotes as a form of well wishes.  In this instance, the following is my Valentine's card to everyone.  Whether you spend your day with friends, family, or a significant other, here's wishing you a wonderful day of hearts and flowers...with some chocolates thrown in...

("Love", Gustav Klimt  c.1895)

"Love is like a friendship caught on fire.  In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, But still only light and flickering.  As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable."

~ Bruce Lee

("Lovelace Abduction Clarissa Harlowe",  Louis Edouard  Dubufe  c.1867)

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."

~ Francois de la Rochefoucauld 

("The Kiss", Gustav Klimt  c.1907/08)

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."

~ Ingrid Bergman 

("Woman In Love",  Henry Nelson O'Neil  c.1856) 

 "Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.'  Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.' "

~ Erich Fromm

("The Swing", Jean-Honore Fragonard  c.1766)

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

~ Victor Hugo 

("Ladies Reading A Love Letter", Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller  c. 1841)

 "Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs."

~ William Shakespeare

("Lovers", Pal Szinyei Merse  c.1869)

"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.  It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."

~ Judy Garland 

("Spring Night", Alphonse Maria Mucha  c. 1910)

"Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination."

~ Voltaire 

("Romeo & Juliet", Sir Frank Dicksee)

"Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

("The Fountain of Love", Jean-Honore Fragonard  c.1785)

"Love is metaphysical gravity."

~ R. Buckminster Fuller 

("The Love Letter", Jean-Honore Fragonard  c.1769/70)

"Love is a gross exaggeration  of the difference between one person and everybody else."

~ George Bernard Shaw

("The Confession of Love", Jean-Honore Fragonard   c. 1771)

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."

~ Plato

("Love's Shadow", Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys  c. 1867)

 "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."

~ Mother Teresa