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But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite can never meet.
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“But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite can never meet.”

Andrew Marvell

Source
The Definition of Love
Date
1681
Meaning

Meaning of “But ours so truly parallel, Though infinite can…”

The speaker compares two perfectly aligned but separated lovers to parallel lines, making impossibility rather than lack of feeling the defining feature of the relationship.

Source context

Where does it come from?

“The Definition of Love,” posthumously published in Miscellaneous Poems (1681), represented by Representative Poetry Online. The mathematical image belongs to a metaphysical lyric in which Fate prevents the lovers’ union.

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LovePhilosophyRelationshipSadShortThought-Provoking Quotes That Invite ReflectionTrust
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“It's home—all the home there is—anywhere!”

Eleanor H. Porter · Miss Billy · 1911
Voice: Fictional character · Billy Neilson
Meaning & context

Billy’s outburst shows how strongly a place and the people within it can become home precisely when circumstances make her think she must leave them.

Source details

Miss Billy, Chapter XVI, ‘Kate Takes a Hand,’ Project Gutenberg #3266. The line ‘It's home—all the home there is—anywhere!’ occurs at the end of the chapter after Billy decides to leave the Henshaw household because she fears disrupting it; Chapter XVII begins immediately afterward. It is Billy Neilson's distressed fictional speech about a specific domestic conflict, not a general rule about family, belonging or housing.

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The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.
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“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.”

Blaise Pascal · The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal · posthumous
Meaning & context

Human judgment includes forms of intuition, feeling, and commitment that cannot always be reduced to explicit logical argument.

Source details

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Humanity does not desire to be great, but to be beloved.
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“Humanity does not desire to be great, but to be beloved.”

Adam Smith · The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759
Meaning & context

Smith contrasts humane character with status-seeking by presenting affection and social trust, rather than greatness itself, as the fitting reward of humanity.

Source details

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, in Smith’s discussion of the rewards commonly associated with industry, truth, justice, and humanity.

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What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
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“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · Beyond Good and Evil · 1886
Meaning & context

Nietzsche presents love as a motive that can resist simple moral classification, complicating attempts to judge every action by one fixed formula.

Source details

Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 153, Helen Zimmern translation.

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They love us for their own sakes, and we love them for love’s sake.
Image design Golden Hour
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“They love us for their own sakes, and we love them for love’s sake.”

Charles Kingsley · Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face · 1853
Voice: Fictional character · Pelagia
Meaning & context

Pelagia voices a painful asymmetry: what feels like self-giving love to one person may be experienced as self-interest or possession from the other side.

Source details

Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face, Chapter XXIV, “Lost Lambs,” Project Gutenberg #6308. Pelagia tells Philammon that men love women for their own sakes while women love “for love’s sake” during a distressed reflection on betrayal, dependence and the absent Amal. It is fictional dialogue in Kingsley’s historical novel, not a universal claim about men and women.

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For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.
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“For love is the desire of the whole, and the pursuit of the whole is called love.”

Plato · Symposium · c. 385–370 BCE
Voice: Dialogue speaker · Aristophanes
Meaning & context

Aristophanes presents love as a longing to recover wholeness, but the claim belongs to his deliberately mythic account of divided human beings rather than to a literal theory of human origins.

Source details

Symposium, Aristophanes’s speech, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. The sentence concludes the comic myth of humans split into halves; it is a speaker position inside Plato’s dialogue, not direct autobiography or anthropology by Plato.