Fr. John Vaughan wrote quite well on love here:
WHAT the sun is in the material order, that love is in the social and moral order. As the sun burnishes the tips of the mountains, lights up the valleys, and converts seas and rivers into liquid gold, making a Paradise where but a moment ago all was cheerless and dark, so love casts a charm over the commonest life, and infuses warmth and colour, and beauty and pathos, into the most ordinary and humdrum existence. The newly-born infant lives, develops and grows strong as it basks in the sunshine of its mother’s love ; and even grown-up men and women turn as naturally and as eagerly towards a devoted friend as the sunflower is said to turn towards the sun.
Of all topics that can engross the mind, the only one of which men never seem to tire or grow weary is love. It forms the very warp and woof of romance and of story. It is the soul and vivifying principle of poetry and fiction. It is the unfailing inspirer of art, and painting, and music, and song. It creates the valour of the soldier, the daring of the explorer, the plodding perseverance of the scholar, and the unflinching courage of the martyr. Under its influence the weak become strong, the despondent hopeful, and the niggardly generous. It changes, transforms and ameliorates what ever it touches ; and infuses a nobler and higher impulse wherever its influence penetrates.
It is so congenial to man, so completely in accordance with his natural temperament, that he cannot wholly dispense with it, unless indeed by God s grace he rise altogether above nature. If, in sooth, there be in this world one poor sufferer more sure than another of exciting compassion and awakening sympathy, it is the lonely and desolate heart that has no one to befriend it, no one to address it a kind word. What notion, indeed, do we instinctively form of heaven itself, but a place of pure unclouded love? And what is the worst picture we can draw of hell, but a place
where love is stifled and extinguished, and cursed hate and jealousy hold sway and rule supreme?
From the book Thoughts for All Times