Love is... 45 Years Old
The delightful “Love is…” cartoons celebrated their 45th year of publication in 2015. The drawings featured a little boy and girl, representing adults, with “Love Is…”, in the upper-right corner, and the rest of the phrase appearing below the drawing. They were at their height of popularity in the 70’s, in fact, somewhere stored away in the loft I still have a “Love is…” greeting card that my girlfriend, now my wife of 36 years, gave me back in the 70’s.
In the late 60’s, a New-Zealand born woman, later to be known as Kim Casali, met her future husband, Roberto Casali. The Series of comic cartoons began as little love notes from Kim to Roberto. Roberto saved them, and when he showed them to the Los Angeles Times, they wanted to have them in their publication. So, on 5 January 1970 “Love is…” became a syndicated cartoon. As well as being printed in newspapers in 50 countries in 25 different languages, they appeared all around the world in print, on cards, t-shirts, wedding stationary and all manner of souvenirs. One of the most famous drawings, “Love Is…being able to say your sorry”, was published in 1972.
In 1975 Kim Casali selected cartoonist Bill Asprey to produce the drawings whilst she continued the writing. The Tribune Media Service today syndicates the cartoons to over 100 newspapers in 34 countries. Following her death in 1997, her oldest son, Stefano continues to look after the “Love is…” business.
- The Cartoon Art of Bill Asprey - Home
Due to Copywright I cannot show samples of the cartoons so here is a link to the artists website.
No one yet has come up with an encompassing description of love but many historical and famous names have written about love, and below is a selection that begin with ‘Love is…’ Try memorising a few and slipping them into the conversation with your loved one.
- Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. - Author Unknown
- Love is a game that two can play and both win. - Eva Gabor
- Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart. - Kay Knudsen
- Love is the silent saying and saying of a single name. - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
- Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. - William Shakespeare
- Love is what you've been through with somebody. - James Thurber, quoted in Life magazine, 1960
- Love is being stupid together. - Paul Valery
- Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. - Robert Frost
- Love is the poetry of the senses. - Honoré de Balzac
- Love is the greatest refreshment in life. - Pablo Picasso
- Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. - Voltaire
- Love is metaphysical gravity. - R. Buckminster Fuller
- Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition. - Alexander Smith
- Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. - Robert Heinlein
- Love is patient and kind;
Love is not jealous or boastful;
It is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own ways;
It is not irritable or resentful;
It does not rejoice at wrong.
But rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things,
Believes all things,
Hopes all things,
Endures all things.
Love never ends...
So Faith,
Hope,
Love abide,
These three;
But the greatest of these is Love. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13 - Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day. - Nicholas Sparks
- Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. - Peter Ustinov
- Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other. - Felix Adler
- Love is always bestowed as a gift -- freely, willingly, and without expectation....
We don't love to be loved; we love to love. - Leo Buscaglia - Love is the greatest refreshment in life. - Picasso
- Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. - Hoosier Farmer
- Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties. - Jules Renard
- Love is a grave mental disease. - Plato
- Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time:
effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end. - Germaine De Stael - Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's. - Germaine De Stael
- Love is a thing, well, its kind of like quicksand:
The more you are in it, the deeper you sink.
And when it hits you, you've just got to fall. - UB40 - Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion
that each include the other,
each is enriched by the other - Felix Adler - Love is an electric blanket with somebody else in control of the switch. - Cathy Carlyle
- Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. - Swedish Proverb
- Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed:
our love to others, and others' love to us.
- Thomas Trahern - Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not. - Friedrich Nietzsche
- Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses. - Thomas Robert Dewar
- Love is a great beautifier. - Louisa May Alcott
- Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. - Sappho
- Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life. - Truman Capote
- Love is a friendship caught on fire. - Northern Exposure
- Love is a conflict between reflexes and reflections. - Mangnu Hirschfield
- Love is perfect kindness. - Joseph Campbell
- Love is a friendship set to music. - E. Joseph Cossman
- Love is a gift, not an obligation, follow your heart and always trust the person you love. - Unknown
- Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life. - Smiley Blanton
- Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. - Mother Teresa
- Love is all you need. - Paul McCartney
- Love is a better teacher than duty. - Albert Einstein
- Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. - Ben Hecht
- Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery. - Fulton J. Sheen
- Love is a tyrant sparing none. - Pierre Corneille
- Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. - Euripides
- Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia. - Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975
- Love is always bestowed as a gift --
freely, willingly, and without expectation....
We don't love to be loved; we love to love.
- Leo Buscaglia - Love is not singular except in syllable. - Marvin Taylor
- Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it, everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, never... never forget it. - Unknown
- Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. -Julins Gordon
- Love is a choice you make from moment to moment. - Barbara de Angelis
- Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. - Toni Morrison
- Love is great when you find someone to give it to. - Unknown
- Love is a friendship set to music. - E. Joseph Cossman
- Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away. - Unknown
- Love is like a butterfly, it settles upon you when you least expect it. - Unknown
- Love is the beauty of the soul. - Unknown
- Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence. - Vincent van Gogh
- Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life. - Leo Buscaglia
- Love is something that cannot be explained. It is the force that drives us to protect the ones we care about. - Unknown
- Love is the only gold. - Lord Alfred Tennyson
- Love is forever, and if it doesn't last forever it isn't love. - Dottie Kinealy
- Love is not weakness. It is strong. Only the sacrament of marriage can contain it. - Boris Pasternak
- Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties. - Jules Renard
- Love is a path to the heart that knows its own way. - Unknown
- Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. – Aristotle
- Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods. -Plato
- Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. - Mother Teresa
- And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears. - Walter Scott
- True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self. - William Butler Yeats
- True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. - La Rochefoucauld
- True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations; it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart. -Honore de Balzac
- True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall - but you are there to catch them.- Anonymous
-
Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. - Unknown
