Love - what is it? How do you describe it?

[anya]

Hi all,
This may appear like an odd thread but i have been wondering what love is and how best to describe it?
You have love for family members and even animals, but love for your chosen partner is different - this love has no boundaries, no colour, no religion, no anything - yet it is powerful enough to stop a person and leave them for dead.
Why are we afected like this? - do we ask for this to happen? - do we need to be dependant on someone else? What are the signs to say you are in love? how do you know this is love or just lust or a desire?
And finally - i challenge anyone to describe how they feel when they are in love

err Mr. Barnsley-Mark, that's a lot of qu... love is love is love... We just knew it is love when it hits us.

[charlwill]

Hi Mark, this is defintion of love.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.