God Squad: Love quotes for the rabbi's anniversary

On Dec. 29, Betty and I celebrated our 54th wedding anniversary.

I rarely write about Betty and that is a huge mistake. I can only do what I do because of her. Betty not only birthed our children, Mara and Max, she birthed my writing by encouraging and editing me. She was the one who encouraged Father Tom Hartman and I to put our best efforts into God Squad columns. She is a terrific rebbetzin, the word for the wife of a rabbi. For religions with married clergy, spouses (male or female) are in a strange place. They are not hired, but they are expected to play a role. Even if Betty had never done any of these things for me and with me, she would still be the best person I have ever met. I love her madly.

In honor of our anniversary, I have collected some of my favorite words about love from my favorite writers. I have gathered some from old books (the D.H. Lawrence quote is from an introduction to an unpublished version of "Lady Chatterley's Lover"). Some are gathered from the internet. I think I saw some embroidered on pillows. If you are an old writer, you collect quotes the way old barns collect mice. I hope these words resonate in your souls, my dear readers, and I hope they touch the truth of your love for your partner in life.

Tell me what you love about them, and I will include your responses. God said about Adam in the Garden of Eden, "It is not good for a person to be alone." God was right. I love you, Betty. Happy anniversary.

Love quotes 

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." — Emily Bronte

"You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known — and even that is an understatement." — F. Scott Fitzgerald

"We were together. I forget the rest." — Walt Whitman

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close." — Pablo Neruda

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." — A.A. Milne

"Each time you happen to me all over again." — Edith Wharton

"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?" — George Eliot

"Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be …" — Robert Browning

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." — Nicole Krauss

"We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it." — Nicholas Sparks

"I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain & the words that dance between people & for me, it will always be this way, walking in the light, remembering being alive together." — Brian Andreas

"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." — Rainer Maria Rilke

"May you have the courage of your tenderness." — D.H. Lawrence

"So it must be: a voyage apart in the same direction. Grapple the two vessels together, lash them side by side, and the first storm will smash them to pieces. This is marriage, in the bad weather of modern civilization. But leave the two vessels apart, to make their voyage to the same port, each according to its own skill and power, and an unseen life connects them, a magnetism which cannot be forced. And that is marriage as it will be when all this is broken down." — D.H. Lawrence