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Love Quote by Albert Ellis

"The art of love is largely the art of persistence"

About this Quote

Love, in Ellis's framing, isn't a lightning bolt or a compatibility test; it's a behavior you keep choosing. Calling it an "art" demystifies romance while still honoring its difficulty: art is learned, practiced, and imperfect, not delivered by fate. Then he quietly sharpens the knife with "largely". He's not claiming persistence is the whole story, just the underrated engine under the hood of most successful intimacy.

The subtext carries Ellis's signature therapeutic worldview: feelings are real, but they're not reliable managers. In rational-emotive terms, love survives less on intensity than on what you do when intensity fades: returning the call, repairing the rupture, staying curious when your first impulse is to defend. "Persistence" here isn't romantic martyrdom; it's tolerance for frustration, willingness to renegotiate, and the unglamorous stamina to show up again after disappointment. It also implies a rebuke of the modern consumer approach to relationships, where replacing is easier than repairing and "not feeling it anymore" is treated as a definitive diagnosis.

Context matters. Ellis worked in an era when psychology was increasingly turning from grand theories of the unconscious toward actionable, skills-based models. His line reads like a clinical translation of vows: not "forever", but "again and again". It flatters no one. It suggests love isn't proven by what you feel on your best day, but by what you're willing to keep doing on your most ordinary ones.

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TopicLove
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Ellis, Albert. (2026, January 15). The art of love is largely the art of persistence. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-art-of-love-is-largely-the-art-of-persistence-22930/

Chicago Style
Ellis, Albert. "The art of love is largely the art of persistence." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-art-of-love-is-largely-the-art-of-persistence-22930/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The art of love is largely the art of persistence." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-art-of-love-is-largely-the-art-of-persistence-22930/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.

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The Art of Love Is Persistence - Albert Ellis
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Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 - June 24, 2007) was a Psychologist from USA.

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