Meaning & Analysis
When love is present, there is no sense of deficiency; love itself fulfills all needs or makes other needs feel less significant.
Insights
Love as Emotional Abundance
Love is portrayed as a state of emotional richness that compensates for material or circumstantial shortages, suggesting that affection can be more sustaining than wealth or comfort.
Fulfillment Through Connection
Implies that emotional intimacy and genuine affection create a sense of completeness, making lovers feel that nothing essential is missing in their lives.
Idealized Self-Sufficiency
Represents an idealistic vision of love in which the bond itself provides enough meaning and satisfaction that external wants are rendered irrelevant.
Romantic Idealism vs. Material Reality
Though often cited as a sentimental truth, the proverb has also been ironically challenged in literature, as seen in Brome’s reversal, which critiques the impracticality of love without sustenance—revealing a tension between romantic ideals and bodily needs.
Cultural Valorization of Love
Reflects cultural traditions that elevate love as a higher value than material possession, reinforcing the notion that spiritual or emotional wealth supersedes physical comfort.
Folk Philosophy of Contentment
The phrase echoes a folk belief that contentment springs from within relationships, suggesting that love is a source of emotional nourishment that can overcome external hardship.
Irony and Skepticism in Later Usage
By the 17th century, some uses of the proverb reflect skepticism, signaling a shift toward realism or even cynicism about love’s ability to satisfy practical needs—especially in theatrical or satirical contexts.
Rhetorical Devices
Paradox
Suggests that even in objectively lacking conditions, lovers feel no want—a paradox that elevates love as both intangible and all-sufficient.
Aphorism
Its concise, declarative form lends the proverb a timeless, axiomatic quality typical of enduring folk wisdom.
Irony (in reversal)
Later writers use the proverb ironically to expose the limitations of romantic idealism, subverting its message by contrasting it with physical deprivation.
Transcription
Quotations
And than of olde prouerbs in openyng the packe, One shewth me openly in loue is no lacke.
Contentment in loue . . . according to the saying, Loue hath no lacke.
In Love there is no lack, thus I begin.
That's a most lying Proverb, that saies, Where Love is, there's no Lack. I am faint, and cannot travail further without Meat.
Love hes na lack.
[As in 1641 Ferg.]
Love has no lack, if the Dame was ne'er so black.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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