We receive and give unconsciously, but we attract to ourselves only that which in some sense belongs to us.   The magnet may pass through many substances, but it gathers and holds only the metal for which it has a mysterious affinity.

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean we say,
and what we would we know!

 It is good to be in love, but to love is better.   

Love is an efflux.   It is the outpouring of our very being into the being which is dear to us.   Yet we are not left impoverished, but enriched beyond the dreams of spiritual avarice. 

We must always be giving each other bread, or money, or jewels, or books, or counsel;  and then we think we have accomplished something.   But love is the real gift, no other can take its place;  but it can take the place of all the rest. 

Better to love than be beloved, 
Though lonely all the day;
Better the fountain in the heart
Than the fountain by the way.

Self is the only prison that ever binds the soul;
Love is the only angel who can bid the gates unroll:

Jealousy is impossible to love, for ‘love seeketh not its own’;  and jealousy is always selfishness.

Fellow Travellers.   
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, 
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.

For truly, nothing does so freeze affection, as the breath of jealousy.