knowing that a difference of opinion is not equal to the loss of emotional understanding.

True love is not blind; it sees the virtues and the faults, admitting without hesitation that no human being is "perfect."

Love says with all humility: "I know I shall be annoyed because you do not respect appointments, and I know you are annoyed when I smoke, and I know there is a difference in the harmony of our natures; but each of us sees in the other a great value that allows us to create together a happy life far surpassing any-thing either of us could achieve alone. The important thing is that each of us likes and loves what is in the other's personality and

wants to cherish the other as he is."

There are no two persons on the face of the earth who can live in permanently friendly relations without the one troubling the other's life from time to time. Understanding is necessary, for when love strikes an obstacle it turns into anger and hatred.

And if a person believes that no sacrifice at all is needed from either side, this means that love has no price in his eyes. Love is a discovery and a fulfillment of the self: that a person live and grow and work for the good of the other person.

True love grows with the passing of the years, and lasting love

helps in discovering a way of reaching a better love.

The only thing that equals love in its severity is truth. Where marriage is concerned, they are two different manifestations of one thing: love is nothing but the emotional response to a mental acknowledgment of the reality of another person. It is a constant expansion — not like the tree in its straightness, but in an irregular fashion; and the art of love is like patience for the return of spring. What we have truly loved cannot be lost: its trace will remain in our soul, and it cannot be torn from us even by death.

Translated from the "Reader's Digest"