Since it’ll be Valentine’s Day in four days, this seems like a good time for love quotes. Rather than focusing on romantic love, I want to share unconditional love quotes … what the best romantic love (or any type of love) is about anyway.

Here are my favorite unconditional love quotes (with the exception of quotes from the world’s holy books):

“Unconditional love is the greatest gift of all.” Sylvia Massara, The Soul Bearers

“The only love worthy of a name is unconditional.” John Powell

 “The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved but rather by the one choosing to love.” Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare

“Unconditional love, agape love, will not be swayed by time or circumstances.” Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Thomas Merton

“Truly loving another means letting go of all expectations. It means full acceptance, even celebration of another’s personhood.” Karen Casey

“This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.” Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

 “Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.” Isabel Allende

“Love… What is love? Love is to love someone for who they are, who they were, and who they will be.” Chris Moore

“The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.” Brian Tracy

“Intense love does not measure, it just gives.” Mother Teresa

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

 “To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.” Oscar Wilde

“Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.” Leo Buscaglia

“You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.” Amy Carmichael.

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

 “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get–only with what you are expecting to give–which is everything.” Katherine Hepburn

“Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.” Jean Anouilh

“Love is the doorway through which the human soul passes from selfishness to service.” Unknown.

 “He who is devoid of the power to forgive, is devoid of the power to love.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Do all things with love.” Og Mandino

“Love creates an ‘us’ without destroying a ‘me.’” Unknown.

 “Where there is great love there are always miracles.” Willa Cather.

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

“Where there is love there is life.” Mahatma Gandhi.

“Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.” St. Augustine.

“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” Helen Keller.

“Once you have learned to love, you will have learned to live.” Unknown.

 “Love is its own reward.” Thomas Merton.

“A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love.” Mother Teresa.

“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

 “Love is life…and if you miss love, you miss life.” Leo Buscaglia.

“All you need is love.” The Beatles

What is your favorite unconditional love quote?

“All You Need Is Love” Word-Art Freebie

Image at top of post by Cornelia Kopp at Flickr Creative Commons.

Linked with Thought-Provoking Thursday.

December – or any month – is a great time to focus on joy. Except for Bible verses about joy, following are some of my favorite joy quotes.

“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” Karl Barth

“As long as thanks is possible, then joy is always possible.” Ann Voskamp

“There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.” — Ralph H. Blum

“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” Marianne Williamson

 “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” Thich Nhat Hanh

“Let there be more joy and laughter in your living.” Eileen Caddy

“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.” Lao Tzu

“Beauty is whatever gives joy.” Edna St. Vincent Millay

“May your life be like a wild flower.
Growing freely in the beauty
and joy of each day.”
Native American Proverb.

“To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.” Lord Byron

 “Taking joy in life is a woman’s best cosmetic.” Rosalind Russell

“Joy in looking and comprehending is nature’s most beautiful gift.” Albert Einstein

 “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” Buddha

“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” C. S. Lewis

“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” Emily Dickinson

“Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty?” Sara Teasdale

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.” John Keats

 “What a joy it is to dance and sing!” Angela Carter

 “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” Greg Anderson

“For happiness one needs security, but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair. “ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.” Swedish Proverb

“Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” Mark Twain

“One joy shatters a hundred griefs.” Chinese Proverb

 “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” Joseph Campbell

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” Joseph Campbell

“The hurt you embrace becomes joy.” Rumi

 “Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 “Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” Helen Keller

“The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.” Helen Keller

“As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.” Helen Keller

“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.” Helen Keller

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” Leo Buscaglia

“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” Jim Rohn

“The best way of removing negativity is to laugh and be joyous.” David Icke

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.” William Shakespeare

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.” Khalil Gibran

“The soul’s joy lies in doing.” Percy Bysshe Shelley

 “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.” Henry Ford

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.” Henry Miller

“To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.” Pearl S. Buck

“The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.” Pearl S. Buck

 “Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.” Henry A. Kissinger

“We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.” E. B. White

“I am probably the most selfish man you will ever meet in your life. No one gets the satisfaction or the joy that I get out of seeing kids realize there is hope.” Jerry Lewis

“It is a fine seasoning for joy to think of those we love.” Moliere

“A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.” Thomas Carlyle

 “To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.” Pearl S. Buck

“Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.” Jim Rohn

 “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” Rabindranath Tagore

 “There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing. It is my love. It is my joy.” W. Clement Stone

 “Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” Eleanor Roosevelt

“Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfillment.” Tony Robbins

“Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.” Thomas Kinkade

“There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 “Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.” Mohandas Gandhi

“Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” Mother Teresa

“Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain… To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices – today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it.” Kevyn Aucoin

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.” Richard Wagner

What is your favorite joy quote?

Photo Credit: Photo by Jeanette at Flickr Creative Commons.

Linked with Thought-Provoking Thursday.