The quote “You learn to love by loving” is often attributed to François Mauriac, a French novelist and Nobel Prize winner in Literature (1952). The original quote in French is:
“On n’apprend pas à aimer. On aime, c’est tout. C’est en aimant qu’on apprend à aimer.”
(“You don’t learn to love. You love, that’s all. It’s by loving that you learn to love.”)
This idea — that love is learned through the act of loving itself — has also been echoed in various forms by spiritual writers, psychologists, and even revolutionaries. But Mauriac is one of the earliest and clearest literary sources.
No manual teaches you how to love the Earth. You learn by touching it. By walking barefoot on wet soil. By planting seeds with your hands, not knowing if they’ll bloom — but hoping they will.
You learn to love by loving.
In a world numbed by algorithms and consumption, love is an act of rebellion. Real love — for people, for the planet, for justice — is slow, imperfect, often inconvenient. It’s building a compost pile instead of throwing scraps away. It’s showing up to a protest on a rainy afternoon. It’s listening when someone says, “this land was stolen,” and not looking away.
You don’t fall in love with a forest from a distance. You fall in love when you lie beneath its canopy and feel something greater than yourself.
That’s how change begins.
The crises we face — climate breakdown, inequality, extinction — aren’t just political. They’re emotional. We’ve been taught to live disconnected, to treat the Earth and each other as commodities. But what if the opposite is true? What if healing begins when we risk caring too much?
Love is not a resource that runs out. The more you give, the more you generate. It’s not a hashtag or a brand or a vote once every four years. It’s daily. It’s radical. It’s revolutionary.
And just like you learn to walk by walking, to write by writing —
you learn to love by loving.
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