In keeping with the February "love" theme, did you know that in the 19th century, sending paper Valentines through the mail got to be so popular that during some years, post offices had to hire more workers just to get all the cards sorted and delivered? Here are a couple of rather historic newspaper articles from 1811 and 1846 that I find interesting.
The first is a 1846 clipping from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reporting that the Brooklyn, N.Y., postmaster had put on eight extra hands to deal with the deluge of Valentine's Day mail. The second is a news report from London announcing that England's Two Penny Post Office had hired almost 100 sorters to handle the Valentine's mail in 1811.
I don't think that post offices experience the same kind of Valentine's crunch of "scissar(sic)-cut hearts and darts" in this day and age, but the heart-felt messages have not changed much over the years...and it is kind of a nice tradition that makes us feel good, regardless of age. Everyone is somebody's special Valentine!
Here is a collection of some of the most famous quotes on the subject of "love, not just on Valentine's Day but every day:
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.- Lao Tzu
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.- Henry Ward Beecher
Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.- Anais Nin
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires; To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.-Helen Keller
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.- Zora Neale Hurston
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.- Leo Tolstoy
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.- Dorothy Parker
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.- Alice Walker
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.- Pablo Neruda, “Love Sonnet XVII”
