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Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

 

Erich Fromm

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"Is changingness indeed a stronger power than changelessness, and who is the stronger, the one who says, “If you will not love me, then I will hate you,” or the one who says, “If you hate me, I will still continue to love you”?" "The one who loves presupposes that love is in the other person’s heart and by this very presupposition builds up love in him – from the ground up, provided, of course, that in love he presupposes its presence in the ground." "There is nothing, no ‘thus and so,’ that can unconditionally be said to demonstrate unconditionally the presence of love or to demonstrate unconditionally its absence..." "Thus even giving to charity, visiting the widow, and clothing the naked do not truly demonstrate or make known a person’s love, inasmuch as one can do works of love in an unloving way, yes, even in a self-loving way." "The self-deceived person may even think he is able to console others who became victims of perfidious deception, but what insanity when someone who himself has lost the eternal wants to heal the person who is extremely sick unto death!" "Just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden springs no eye has seen, so also does a person’s love originate even more deeply in God’s love." ... So a human being’s love originates mysteriously in God’s love." Every human being by his life, by his conduct, by his behavior in everyday affairs, by his association with his peers, by his words, his remarks, should and could build up and would do it if love were really present in him." "Only the unloving person fancies that he should build up by controlling the other; the one who loves presupposes continually that love is present and in just that way he builds up." "The one who loves builds up by controlling himself." "It is God, the Creator, who must implant love in each human being, he who himself is Love. Thus it is specifically unloving and not at all upbuilding if someone arrogantly deludes himself into believing that he wants and is able to create love in another person." "Truly, love is to be known by its fruit, but still it does not follow from this that you are to take it upon yourself to be the expert knower. " "If it is usually difficult to begin without presuppositions, it is truly most difficult of all to begin to build up with the presupposition that love is present and to end with the same presupposition." Works of Love Hong 1995 Princeton University Press p. 34, 216-217, 13-14, 7-10, 213-217, 15, 218

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

And, Even Now, You (Always Already) Inhere In Me--The "Who" and "What" That Is Only One--Beyond The Seeming "Two" Of body-mind and world. I Am You--As You Are (Always Already, and Non-Separately). Even When My Avatarically-Born Human Physical Body Has Died In This World, I Am Present and every where Alive--Because I Am Always Already Conscious As The Only One Who Always Already Is. I Am Joy!--and The Only Reason For It! I Am Love!--and The Only Person Of It! The Love Of Me Is The Heart-Secret I Have Come To Avatarically Reveal To The Heart Of everyone one Of Man (and To The Heart Of everyone one of all, and To The Heart Of The All Of all). Love Must Be Always Done (and, Thereby, Proved)--or Else The "Bright" Heart Of Love Is Darkened By Its Own Un-Love. And The Would-Be-"Brightest" Heart Of Love's Beloved Is Made Un-"Bright" (and Dark As Eternal Night) By All The Waiting-Time Of Un-Love's Day. Therefore, I Am here! I Am (Now, Forever) Avatarically Descended here--To Be The Constant Lover and The True Loved-One Of All and all (and every one of all).

 

Adi Da

 

"You love God, don't you?" Nicholson asked, with a little excess of quietness. "Isn't that your forte, so to speak? From what I heard on that tape and from what Al Babcock —"
"Yes, sure, I love Him. But I don't love Him sentimentally. He never said anybody had to love Him sentimentally," Teddy said. "If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable."

 

J. D. Salinger

 

You hear people in restaurants competing with each other "I love you". "No, I love you". "Yeah, but I REALLY love you. I love pencils that you have sucked and thrown away ten years ago. I love your eyebrows and your ancestry and EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! Just eat your food and let me love you, don't speak!" But what they don’t know, of course, at the time is that that dialogue is actually from a really bad science fiction film written by nature - really, what they're saying to one another is: "The race must continue, the race must continue! My vadudium is pointing at your phenungulator, the race must continue!".

 

Dylan Moran

 

You know, actually we have no love — that is a terrible thing to realize. Actually we have no love; we have sentiment; we have emotionality, sensuality, sexuality; we have remembrances of something which we have thought as love. But actually, brutally, we have no love. Because to have love means no violence, no fear, no competition, no ambition. If you had love you will never say, "This is my family." You may have a family and give them the best you can; but it will not be "your family" which is opposed to the world. If you love, if there is love, there is peace. If you loved, you would educate your child not to be a nationalist, not to have only a technical job and look after his own petty little affairs; you would have no nationality. There would be no divisions of religion, if you loved. But as these things actually exist — not theoretically, but brutally — in this ugly world, it shows that you have no love. Even the love of a mother for her child is not love. If the mother really loved her child, do you think the world would be like this? She would see that he had the right food, the right education, that he was sensitive, that he appreciated beauty, that he was not ambitious, greedy, envious. So the mother, however much she may think she loves her child, does not love the child. So we have not that love.

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti