Valentine's Day：情人节，你了解多少？（附历史上7封著名的英文情书）Valentine's Day，瓦伦丁节，又称情人节，是欧美和大洋洲的一些国家的民族节日。
此节日的来源甚多，但一般是以罗马圣教徒瓦伦丁被处死，后被定为“情人节”这个版本较为通用。
公元3世纪，罗马帝国出现全面危机，经济凋敝，统治阶级腐败，社会动荡不安，人民纷纷反抗。
贵族阶级为维护其统治，残暴镇压民众和基督教徒。
是时有一位教徒瓦伦丁，被捕入狱。
在狱中，他以坦诚之心打动了典狱长的女儿。
他们相互爱慕，并得到典狱长女儿的照顾。
统治阶级下令将他执行死刑。
在临刑前，他给典狱长女儿写了一封长长的遗书，表明自己是无罪的。
表明他光明磊落的心迹和对典狱长女儿深深眷恋。
公元270年2月14日，他被处死刑，后来，基督教徒为了纪念瓦伦丁为正义、为纯洁的爱而牺牲自己，将临刑的这一天定为“圣瓦伦节”，后人又改成“情人节”。
我们为什么会相爱？哲学家有话说，情人节来了，希望你喜欢的人也喜欢你。
节日快乐，每一个心里充满爱的人！！！Ah, romantic love -beautiful and intoxicating,heartbreaking and soul-crushing,often all at the same time.Why do we choose to put ourselves through its emotional wringer?Does love make our lives meaningful,or is it an escape from our loneliness and suffering?Is love a disguise for our sexual desire,or a trick of biology to make us procreate?Is it all we need?Do we need it at all?If romantic love has a purpose,neither science nor psychology has discovered it yet.But over the course of history,some of our most respected philosophers have put forward some intriguing theories. Love makes us whole, again.The ancient Greek philosopher Platoexplored the idea that we love in order to become complete.In his "Symposium", he wrote about a dinner party,at which Aristophanes, a comic playwright,regales the guests with the following story:humans were once creatures with four arms, four legs, and two faces.One day, they angered the gods,and Zeus sliced them all in two.Since then, every person has been missing half of him or herself.Love is the longing to find a soulmate who'll make us feel whole again,or, at least, that's what Plato believed a drunken comedian would say at a party. Love tricks us into having babies.Much, much later, German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauermaintained that love based in sexual desirewas a voluptuous illusion.He suggested that we love because our desires lead us to believethat another person will make us happy, but we are sorely mistaken.Nature is tricking us into procreating,and the loving fusion we seek is consummated in our children.When our sexual desires are satisfied,we are thrown back into our tormented existences,and we succeed only in maintaining the speciesand perpetuating the cycle of human drudgery.Sounds like somebody needs a hug.Love is escape from our loneliness.According to the Nobel Prize-winning British philosopher Bertrand Russell,we love in order to quench our physical and psychological desires.Humans are designed to procreate,but without the ecstasy of passionate love,sex is unsatisfying.Our fear of the cold, cruel world tempts us to build hard shellsto protect and isolate ourselves.Love's delight, intimacy, and warmth helps us overcome our fear of the world, escape our lonely shells,and engage more abundantly in life.Love enriches our whole being, making it the best thing in life.Love is a misleading affliction.Siddhārtha Gautama,who became known as the Buddha, or the Enlightened One,probably would have had some interesting arguments with Russell.Buddha proposed that we love because we are trying to satisfy our base desires. Yet, our passionate cravings are defects,and attachments, even romantic love, are a great source of suffering. Luckily, Buddha discovered the eight-fold path,a sort of program for extinguishing the fires of desireso that we can reach Nirvana,an enlightened state of peace, clarity, wisdom, and compassion.The novelist Cao Xueqin illustrated this Buddhist sentimentthat romantic love is folly in one of China's greatest classical novels,"Dream of the Red Chamber."In a subplot, Jia Rui falls in love with Xi-fengwho tricks and humiliates him.Conflicting emotions of love and hate tear him apart,so a taoist gives him a magic mirror that can cure himas long as he doesn't look at the front of it.But of course, he looks at the front of it.He sees Xi-feng.His soul enters the mirrorand he is dragged away in iron chains to die.Not all Buddhists think this way about romantic and erotic love, but the moral of this storyis that such attachments spell tragedy,and should, along with magic mirrors, be avoided.Love lets us reach beyond ourselves.Let's end on a slightly more positive note.The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoirproposed that love is the desire to integrate with anotherand that it infuses our lives with meaning.However, she was less concerned with why we loveand more interested in how we can love better.She saw that the problem with traditional romantic loveis it can be so captivating,that we are tempted to make it our only reason for being. Yet, dependence on another to justify our existenceeasily leads to boredom and power games.To avoid this trap, Beauvoir advised loving authentically, which is more like a great friendship.Lovers support each other in discovering themselves,reaching beyond themselves,and enriching their lives and the world together.Though we might never know why we fall in love,we can be certain that it will be an emotional rollercoaster ride.It's scary and exhilarating.It makes us sufferand makes us soar.Maybe we lose ourselves.Maybe we find ourselves.It might be heartbreaking,or it might just be the best thing in life.Will you dare to find out?值此温馨佳节之际，下面特为大家分享历史上7封著名的英文情书，看看这些历史名人们如何用写信的方式传递爱意的，让大家在了解情人节来源的同时，通过这些名人的臻爱之言对“爱”有更深刻的理解。
