Learn English – What does this mean “In love’s service only wounded soldiers can serve.”

quotes

I just read this quote from nytimes's opinion section.

"In love’s service only wounded soldiers can serve."

What does this quote mean? I can faintly feel what it means, but I want to understand it more clearly. Can somebody help me?

Thanks.

Best Answer

The mature people one meets often have this crooked timber view, having learned from experience the intransigence of imperfection and how to make a friend of every stupid stumble. As Thornton Wilder once put it, “In love’s service only wounded soldiers can serve.”

It means that you can only know something through loss, and I think bittersweet describes this maturation theme: Life and love have no perfection, and the illusion of the ideal mars what is the truth. The recognition that we are crooked timber. We are, to varying degrees, foolish, weak, and often just plain inexplicable — and always will be is in itself a prerequisite tool to experiencing life or love.

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