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Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. This is indicative of the poverty of awareness or emphasis that we give to that tremendously important realm of feeling.
Eskimos have thirty words for snow, because it is a life-and death matter to them to have exact information about the element they live with so intimately. If we had a vocabulary of thirty words for love we would immediately be richer and more intelligent in this human element so close to our heart.
An Eskimo probably would die of clumsiness if he had only one word for snow; we are close to dying of loneliness because we have only one word for love.
Of all the Western languages, English may be the most lacking when it come to feeling.
—Robert Johnson
The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden
.How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite.
What we feel most has no name but amber, archers,
cinnamon, horses and birds.
—Jack Gilbert
The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart, excerpt.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.
—John of the Cross
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