Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?

Answer 1

Love is risky. It requires us to expose our hearts to others, sometimes with agonizing results. Some people would rather run into a burning building than to open themselves up to that kind of danger. However, trying to protect ourselves from the risks of love means withdrawing from life.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it in tact, you must give your heart to no one., not even a pet. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Answer 2

From Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:27, 1850:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it, when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It is better to make the attempt (at romance) and to fail than it is not to attempt at all. The interpretation appears quite litteral but can be attributed to anything (not just romance).