"Where there is love, there is God." "I love you as my brother or sister!" "Love makes the world go round!" "Love is a many splendored thing." "I love you." "Thanks, the same to you." "I have fallen in love and I can't concentrate on my studies or anything else." "Tell me, what does it mean to be in love? I think that perhaps I am in love. " In most marriage ceremonies in America, the new husband and wife usually commit themselves with the words, "from this day forward, I will love you, to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, and until death do us part" " We are no longer two separate persons, but now one person in our love." "No, no. We never tell our parents or grandparents that we love them, and they don't tell us that they love us either, but of course we know that we love each other. We're Chinese, you know." My three year old grandson says, "I love you Pop Pop." My eight year old granddaughter writes, "You're the best, Pop Pop! I love you." "Well, you know I lived with my grandmother for 18 years, but I never told her that I loved her. I think that I will call her and tell her that I love her. She will be surprised." These are many expressions relating to love.
Personally, I have enough love to share with many persons, young and old. This makes my life richer and I am not embarrassed to tell them that I love them. Frequently, they also tell me that they love me too. Many young Chinese students have responded in this way to me when it would be lightly unlikely that they could say the same thing to their parents or grandparents. In China, I am like a grandfather to lots of my young students, and a very friendly foreigner. Thus, we can create situations which might not be appropriate in the usual Chinese setting.
One of the most famous letters in the world and often quoted in Christian religious traditions among the world's more than 2 billion Christians is the famous first letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians in Greece during the first century after the birth of Christ. In this letter; he says that love is never puffed up, is never selfish, is never critical, is always kind, and is always generous. St. Paul says that when he was a child, he thought like a child, but when he became an adult, he thought as an adult. In this way, he identified love as maturing as one grows older. The hope, and love and that the greatest of these virtues is love.