Love Quote by Anna Jameson

Jameson smuggles a radical claim into the polite clothing of Victorian moral reflection: love is not the reward for understanding, but its precondition. The first clause concedes a familiar human quirk - we get attached to mysteries, people, art, even beliefs we can’t fully parse. That “sometimes” is doing careful work, admitting the romantic impulse without making it holy. Then she tightens the vice: “impossible completely.” Not hard, not unlikely - impossible. Total understanding, she argues, isn’t a cold achievement of intellect but an intimacy earned by attention, patience, and a willingness to be changed by the thing you’re trying to know.

The subtext is a critique of detached judgment, especially the era’s confident habit of classifying other minds and cultures from a safe distance. Jameson, a writer who moved through art criticism, travel writing, and early arguments for women’s intellectual seriousness, knew how often “understanding” was used as a gatekeeping word: men “understood” politics, theology, genius; women were expected to feel. She flips the hierarchy. Feeling isn’t the enemy of insight; it’s the entry fee.

The line also anticipates a modern problem: we’re trained to interpret from suspicion, to “get” things quickly, to treat empathy as optional. Jameson insists that comprehension without care becomes mere taxonomy. You can name what you refuse to value, but you won’t reach its inner logic. Love, here, isn’t sentimentality; it’s a disciplined consent to see more than your first reaction allows.