It is a proverb, that “courtesy costs nothing;” but calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind; but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. – Emerson, Prudence

We can deeply love what we do not know, but we cannot deeply know what we do not love. – Simon May, The Pocket Philosopher

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge. – Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary

It has been said that the arts are forms of love, not of knowledge. While one sympathises with the spirit of this, it is misleading to say that we cannot legitimately talk of knowledge with respect to the arts, & worse to imply that knowledge precludes love. It is, unfortunately, all too often true that the methods of teaching what are popularly regarded as the central forms of knowledge do preclude love – but that is an indictment of the education system. Mathematics & the sciences, as well as the arts, should be forms of knowledge & of love. To regard the two terms as exclusive is as mistaken here as it is with respect to love of other people. So far from its being the case that love is inimical to knowledge, it is difficult to see how one could love another person without knowing him quite well. – David Best, Feeling & Reason in the Arts, p30-1