George Santayana on Love

Love, in English, is a very wide term. What poets and philosophers, at least of the classical school, talk about is the passion of love, the madness, divine madness, of Plato. But attraction, confidence, mutual delight, and complete devotion to a chosen mate is not madness at all, it is a phase, a settlement of the sane affections of one human being to another, where all sane possible bonds, physical, domestic, social, intellectual, and religious bind the two together for life- common material interests and children being strong material buttresses to to such a complete union in after years. More than once, at friends' houses in England, or in hotels, I have found myself divided only by a frail closed door from the bed in which an elderly pair were exchanging confidential judgments and ideas; and I have been impressed by the perfection of friendship and sympathy in such a union. -Letters. (386) quoted in Singer. George Santayana: Literary Philosopher. (126)