Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindeness, compassion, and affection; and "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may alos be described as actions towards others or oneself based on compassion, or as actions towards others based on affection. In English, love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure("I loved that meal") to interpersonal attraction("I love my partner"). "love"may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of Eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship, or to the profound oneness or devotion of religous love. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotinal states.
The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that English relies mainly on"love" to encapsulate; one example is the plurality of Greek words for "love." Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal definition. although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love. as a general expression of positive sentiment(a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with hate(or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as as interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is often applied to close friendships.