When two people are at one
 in their inmost hearts
 They shatter even the strength of iron
 or of bronze
 And when two people understand each other
 in their inmost hearts
 Their words are sweet and strong
 like the fragrance of orchids.
      -- "When Two People Are at One", from the I Ching.

I find love
 not only
 in the things
 we do together
 but also
 in the things
 I do alone
 Because of you.
 In the thoughts
 you inspire,
 in the dreams
 you haunt, and
 in the memories
 you are helping
 me to build.
 I find love
 in you.
      -- Robert J. Doebley, "Finding Love"

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
 Admit impediments. Love is not love
 Which alters when it alteration finds,
 Or bends with the remover to remove:
 O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
 It is the star to every wandering bark,
 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
 Within his bending sickle's compass come:
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
 If this be error and upon me proved,
 I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
      -- William Shakespeare, sonnet CXVI

What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.
 What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee.
 What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage...
      -- Ezra Pound, _The Cantos_

In the marriage ceremony, that moment when falling in love is replaced by the
arduous drama of staying in love, the words "in sickness and in health, for
richer, for poorer, till death do us part" set love in the temporal context in
which it achieves its meaning. As time begins to elapse, one begins to love the
other because they have shared the same experience... Selves may not
intertwine; but lives do, and shared memory becomes as much of a bond as the
bond of the flesh.
      -- Michael Ignatieff, "Lodged in the Heart and Memory"

    A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the
same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move
confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a
country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and
freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding.
There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy
hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now
back to back -- it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners
moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly
nourished by it.
    The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation or the joy of
participation, it is also the joy of living in the moment. Lightness of touch
and living in the moment are intertwined. One cannot dance well unless one is
completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or
pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it
comes. Perfect poise on the beat is what gives good dancing its sense of ease,
of timelessness, of the eternal.
      -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, _Gift from the Sea_

    We were on the pier, you desiring
     That I see the Pleiades. I could see
     everything but what you wished.
    Now I will follow. There is not a single cloud; the stars appear, even the
invisible sister. Show me where to look, as though they will stay where they
are.
    Instruct me in the dark.
      -- Louise Glück, "Under Taurus"

A man expects an angel for a wife; [yet] he knows that she is like himself --
erring, thoughtless and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling
radiancy of better things. ... You may safely go to school with hope; but ere
you marry, should have learned the mingled lesson of the world: that hope and
love address themselves to a perfection never realized, and yet, firmly held,
become the salt and staff of lift; that you yourself are compacted of
infirmities ... and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth
preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under this scurvy
condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, will
become to you a lesson, a model and a noble spouse through life. So thinking,
you will constantly support your own unworthiness and easily forgive the
failings of your friend. Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the ...
blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them,
hour by hour, to do better and to meet and love upon a higher ground.
      -- Robert Louis Stevenson, _Virginibus Puerisque_

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields
into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if
you trip.
      -- Jonathan Carroll, _Outside the Dog Museum_