The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $10.29 You Save: $7.71 (43%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $8.86 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Four Loves
Book Review: To love at all is to be vulnerable
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading C.S. Lewis has for me always been like eating a rich dessert: you can't gulp it down in large mouthfuls or you'll miss the flavor. This analogy applies most of all, I think, to The Four Loves. Lewis has such a gift for unpacking complex topics with all the learning of an Oxford professor without coming off as condescending. Yet he never short-changes his readers - he challenges just enough to keep you walking with him as he explores the human heart and that part of it that is knowable in the Divine.
Like most of Lewis' works, you can pick any paragraph at random, and you will find a quote with the ring of Eternal Truth:
"Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
"Suppose you are fortunate enough to have "fallen in love with" and married your Friend. And now suppose it possible that you were offered the choice of two futures: "Either you two will cease to be lovers but remain forever joint seekers of the same God, the same beauty, the same truth, or else, losing all that, you will retain as long as you live the raptures and ardours, all the wonder and the wild desire of Eros. Choose which you please." Which should we choose? Which choice should we not regret after we had made it?"
"[Affection] is indeed the least discriminating of loves... There need be no apparent fitness between those whom it unites. I have seen it felt for an imbecile not only by his parents but by his brothers. It ignores the barriers of age, sex, class and education. It can exist between a clever young man from the university and an old nurse, though their minds inhabit different worlds. It ignores even the barriers of species. We see it not only between dog and man but, more surprisingly, between dog and cat. Gilbert White claims to have discovered it between a horse and a hen."
Christians, especially those who have marveled at the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, should not go through life without at least one trip through this book.
Book Review: Truly written book about Love
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is exactly what I have expected! It's about the true love, it's meanings, explanations and everything you need to know about many different kinds of love, such as love between friends, between man and woman, between parents and their kids etc. If you are interested in the subject, don't think about buying it. Simply but that book!Book Review: What IS Love?
Summary: 5 Stars
I wish I could thank C.S. Lewis for writing this book! Not only was it a joy to read, but it has helped change my life as a person and as a Christian. Those who are not Christians would even enjoy this book! His analysis of the different types of love from an academic and a theological viewpoint is very gentle to the soul and easy on the mind. I didn't expect it, but reading this book caused me to examine the types of love in my life, both in giving and receiving, and after doing so, lessened so much of the heartache I had before reading its pages.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wonders what love is, or if love is even worth having.
Book Review: What Now My Love?
Summary: 5 Stars
Doing a book review on CS Lewis' "The Four Loves" brings forth an entire new meaning on 'a writer's block'. To expound this extraordinary Lewis' work on the four New Testament Greek "love" words - storge (natural affection), philia (friendship, love), eros (attraction, sexual love), and agape (love, charity) - amounts to nothing more than a leaky version of the Cliff Notes at best. There are Lewis' scholars who could do far more justice to this work than I. The long and short of "The Four Loves" is this. The three "loves" (storge, philia, and eros) are stemmed from agape (God's perfect love). Each is fractured and flawed since the Fall. Underlying all that we do, in both good and not so good, are these shades of loves. All are a fragment of and a divagation from the origin. The agape. Our forms of love have fallen short and are in need of mending. Only God's love mends.
If your affectionate other were to ask after a romantic candlelit dinner, "What now my love?" Don't sing. Lean forward and cup her hand, you segue to say, "Eros makes promises. Romance must die in marriage, and that marriage requires affection." Saying this may or may not take you to places you've never been - for the better or for the worst. Your look of love, however, could only change for the better. Thanks to Lewis.
Book Review: Would definitely buy from this seller again
Summary: 5 Stars
The book arrived well within the given timeframe and was in great shape. It was also a great price.