Love is a sickness full of woes, All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows, Most barren with best using. Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy’d, it sighing cries— Heigh ho!Love is a torment of the mind, A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind Not well, nor full nor fasting. Why so?
More we enjoy it, &c.

Love is a fire that burns unseen,
A wound that aches yet isn't felt,
An always discontent contentment,
A pain that rages without hurting,</p>A longing for nothing but to long,
A loneliness in the midst of people,
A never feeling pleased when pleased,
A passion that gains when lost in thought. It's being enslaved of your own free will;
It's counting your defeat a victory;
It's staying loyal to your killer. But if it's so self-contradictory,
How can Love, when Love chooses,
Bring human hearts into sympathy?

What thing is love?—for (well I wot) love is a thing It is a prick, it is a sting, It is a pretty, pretty thing; It is a fire, it is a coal, Whose flame creeps in at every hole!

Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.

Love smells like a flower in bloom. A flower that's sitting on a pile of steaming feces.

A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will–o'–the–wisp, dancing onward to fairylands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

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.

A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.

Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
In silence and in secret, though they knew
They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!

To love is to burn, to be on fire.

Love is a burnin' thing And it makes a fiery ring Bound by wild desire I fell into a ring of fire <p> I fell into a burnin' ring of fire I went down, down, down And the flames went higher And it burns, burns, burns The ring of fire, the ring of fire

The look of love alarms
Because 'tis filled with fire;
But the look of soft deceit
Shall win the lover's hire.

He did not think of love as an eternally vigilant, blazing flame, which with its powerful, flickering glow shown into all the peaceful folds of life and in some fantastic way made everything seem bigger and stronger than it was. For him, love was more like the calm, smoldering ember that gives off an even heat from its soft bed of ashes and in the muted twilight tenderly forgets what is distant and makes what is near seem twice as close and twice as intimate.