The more we are filled with thoughts of lust the less we find true romantic love.

The saying contrasts lust—understood as self-focused, appetite-driven desire—with “true romantic love,” framed as a fuller, more attentive commitment to another person. It suggests a zero-sum dynamic: when the mind is preoccupied with erotic craving, it becomes harder to perceive or cultivate love’s qualities (patience, empathy, fidelity, and genuine regard). Implicitly, the quote belongs to a moral-psychological tradition that treats desire as shaping perception: what we repeatedly entertain in thought trains our expectations and narrows what we can recognize as valuable. The line can be read less as anti-sex than as a warning about obsession and objectification, arguing that love requires a different kind of attention than lust provides.