And now a brief pause in the Sturm und Drang for: LOVE!

 Happy almost valentine's day!
What the world needs is more love and less paperwork. --Pearl Bailey.
This is one of my favorite holidays-- a chance to love it up.  Don't be fooled by the commercials.  V day isn't just for lovers or to sell stuff.  It's a great excuse to think about love in all its wonderful variations, and to show it to those who engender it in you.
Most years I make valentines; this year's were made last night late and won't get mailed until tomorrow.   Or maybe next week.  I'm a lousy mailer.  But February is the longest shortest month there is, so I am happy to drag out the love-fest.  Mine are pretty simple: a quote and a picture glued to a piece of pretty paper. Sometimes I add some paint and glitter.  This year I am being a minimalist.

If you haven't made a valentine yet ,this year's quote batch is  below.   Go ahead, let someone know you love them.
xox, Jana

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love. 

~Author Unknown

Must, bid the Morn awake!
Sad Winter now declines,
Each bird doth choose a mate;
This day's Saint Valentine's.
For that good bishop's sake
Get up and let us see
What beauty it shall be
That Fortune us assigns.
~Michael Drayton

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. 

~William Shakespeare

Many are the starrs I see, but in my eye no starr like thee.

 Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. 

 ~Albert Einstein

kisses are a better fate
than wisdom.
~e.e. cummings

Who, being loved, is poor? 

Oscar Wilde

Without love, what are we worth?  Eighty-nine cents!  Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely. 

 ~M*A*S*H, Hawkeye

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. 

 ~Ben Hecht

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity. 

 ~Henry Van Dyke

Take away love and our earth is a tomb. 

 ~Robert Browning

Are we not like two volumes of one book? 

 ~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. 

 Zora Neale Hurston

We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack. 

Marie Ebner Von Eschenbach

I love thee - I love thee,
'Tis all that I can say
It is my vision in the night,
My dreaming in the day.
~Thomas Hood

Love, and a cough, cannot be hid. 

 ~George Herbert

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before. 

 ~Mignon McLaughlin

Poetry spills from the cracks of a broken heart, but flows from one which is loved.  ~Christopher Paul Rubero

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star: -
So many times do I love again.
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. 

~Blaise Pascal

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. 

 ~Plato

Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold. 

 ~Zelda Fitzgerald

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.  ~Ovid

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who would give a law to lovers?  Love is unto itself a higher law. 

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

Candle light, moon light, star light,
The brightest glow is from love light.
Grey Livingston

A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it. 

 Frank A. Clark

Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. 

Rose Franken

Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. 

Swedish Proverb

It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves. 

John Bulwer

Love is not singular except in syllable.  Marvin Taylor

Love is the poetry of the senses.  ~Honoré de Balzac

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights.  If you hear bells, get your ears checked.  ~Erich Segal

Love is what you've been through with somebody.  ~James Thurber

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words. 

~William Shakespeare

My heart to you is given:
Oh, do give yours to me;
We'll lock them up together,
And throw away the key.
~Frederick Saunders

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.  ~Pablo Picasso

Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
A thousand to that hundred; so kisse on,
To make that thousand up a million;
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let's kisse afresh, as when we first begun.
~Robert Herrick, "To Anthea (III)"

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. 

~Voltaire

Love is metaphysical gravity.  ~R. Buckminster Fuller

If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden. 

Claudia Ghandi

"Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life."

 Aphra Behn

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

Dr. Seuss

"Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

Robert Heinlein

"Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence."

-Vincent van Gogh

"A life without love is like a year without summer." -Swedish Proverb

"Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end."

 -Author Unknown

"Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart." -Author Unknown

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

"Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved." -Victor Hugo

"Love is the only gold."

Lord Alfred Tennyson

"To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven." -Karen Sunde

"Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!"

 Thomas Hood

"When love is not madness, it is not love."

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

Albert Einstein

"Many are the starrs I +see, but in my eye no starr like thee."

“I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love."
Henry Ward Beecher

"To love another person is to see the face of God."
-Les Miserables

"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."
-Alexander Smith

"The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time."
-Lawrence Durrell

“Very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."
Stendhal

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
Thoreau

"Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it."
Dr. Karl Menninger

"To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best."
William M. Thackeray

"Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart."
Unknown

"Within you, I lose myself. Without you, I find myself wanting to be lost again."
Unknown

Attention is the most basic form of love, through it we bless and are blessed.
John Tarrant

Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
Nicholas Sparks

Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Elizabeth Browning

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.

Voltaire

 
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.
Picasso

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods.
Plato

When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
Elizabeth Bowen

One who wants to do good, knocks at the gate; one who loves, finds the door open.

Rabindranath Tagore