What is love

By Hermione Gray

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WHAT is love asks Orla Hughes this week. Good question, Orla.

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Albionboy answers by describing the physical effects: 'makes you lose your appetite', 'butterflies in your stomach', 'breathless', 'aching in your heart', 'longing in the pit of your stomach', and then, rather cynically, refers to an 'emptying bank account.'

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The word 'love' is, in fact, from the Old English lufu, which is connected with the Sanskrit lubh, 'to desire', and the Latin lubere, 'to please.'

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Over the centuries, however, poets and writers have attempted to pin down its deeper meaning... whether good or bad.

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Here are a few of those attempts...

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'Love is a growing or full constant light
And his first minute, after noon, is night'
John Donne, d 1631

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'Love is a passion that hath friends in the garrison'
George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, d 1695

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'Oh, life is a glorious circle of song
A medley of extemporanea
And love is a thing that can never go wrong
And I am Marie of Roumania'
Dorothy Parker, d 1967

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'Love is like linen often chang'd, the sweeter'
Phineas Fletcher, d 1650

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'Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it'
Jerome K Jerome, d 1927

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'Love is mor than gold or gret richesse'
John Lydgate, d 1451

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'But love is such a mystery
I cannot find it out
For when I think I'm best resolv'd
I then am most in doubt'
Sir John Suckling, d 1642

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'Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise'
Samuel Johnson, d 1784
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Ryan O'Neil and Ali Mc Graw in Love Story

'Love means never having to say you're sorry'� Ryan O'Neal's character in the weepy film Love Story, as he quotes his dead young wife (played by Ali McGraw).