Yet Erich Segal's classic is no friend to love. For its famous last line - 'love means never having to say you're sorry' - has poisoned countless romances, affairs, marriages and families.
It is, quite possibly, one of the worst philosophical guides by which to conduct your life ever to have been offered.
Love means never having to say you're sorry? Ryan O'Neal and Jennifer MacGraw in Love Story
Whatever love means, saying sorry is a huge part of it. In fact, if you have never asked your loved one to forgive you, then you have never loved at all.
This is why we use the expression 'falling in love'. For the 'falling' that we speak of isn't just that thrilling, sickening feeling you get from desire, it's also the much more sickening feeling you have when you have abandoned all kinds of illusions about yourself up on the high moral ground.
Love doesn't just show you your worst side, it makes you ashamed of it.
To audiences in the early Seventies, already struggling with the effects of the sexual revolution, Segal's oft-quoted aphorism about being all-forgiving must have seemed like the ultimate conscience-free get-out clause.
The story goes like this: wealthy law student Oliver (Ryan O'Neal) falls madly in love with working-class music student Jennifer (Ali MacGraw).
When they marry, Oliver's father disowns him and cuts all financial support. Jennifer falls ill, but it is only when she is on the verge of death that Oliver dares admit to his father that he has borrowed money from him not for an affair, as he had professed, but to finance Jennifer's treatment.
Erich Segal: The writer, who died recently, wrote the classic novel which was made into a film
Cue Oliver's father apologising for his behaviour - and Oliver repeating what Jennifer once told him - that love means 'never having to say you're sorry'.
In 'perfect' human love, such as that which Segal's Love Story characters shared, seemingly you don't ever need to apologise.
Instead, as Oliver did, you can lie, deceive and forgive the very person - your own father - who is partly responsible for you losing the woman you adore.
It's such a stupid line that films such as What's Up Doc? (in which O'Neal, our hero in the original Love Story, declares the quote to be '…the dumbest thing I ever heard') and an episode of The Simpsons have parodied it.
John Lennon too, declared: 'Love means having to say sorry every 15 minutes.'
The turning-point in Disney's Beauty And The Beast comes when the huge, violent Beast mumbles 'Sorry' to Belle. It's when he acknowledges he's treated her badly that their relationship radically changes.
Belle's expression of surprise, and warmth, speaks volumes. From then on, the Beast begins to be both loving and lovable.
By far the most emotionally intelligent cartoon ever made, Beauty And The Beast shares the perception of the power of apology with other classics such as The Secret Garden, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and even James Cameron's film Avatar.
The message is abundantly clear: those who wish to transform themselves into better, happier people can only do so when they are truly penitent.
Segal's famous line gave people the idea that love implies a degree of self-sacrifice beyond that required by the divine.
Love divine requires believers to be on their knees as often as possible, begging for forgiveness - even if the poor sinner has done nothing worse than being born.
How far this is from the truth. When I got married, my husband and I made it a rule that we had to apologise to each other. As strong-minded individuals we can - and do - have fierce arguments about everything from map-reading to politics.
Our marriage would not have survived without the formal acknowledgement that one of us made a mistake, that one person was wrong - and the other right.
Lesson: The turning point in Disney's Beauty and the Beast is when he apologises
Perhaps this is where Segal's famous line gained such currency. Children often go through a stage in which they simply don't understand that, when they behave badly, they must show genuine contrition.
If never taught to apologise - as many aren't, these days - they grow into adults who believe that somebody who loves them will always forgive.
We have probably all met people like this, since they are monsters who make the lives of others a total misery.
Segal's line has become part of our ludicrous culture of 'respect', in which apologising is made out to involve such a loss of dignity, such a depreciation of self-worth, such an infringement of your human rights that it seems as though it's nothing short of a hair-breadth worse than death.
Yet even politicians have learned that grovelling about transgressions in their private lives makes them seem, if not bigger, then certainly slightly less odious.
Only a few celebrities, such as the actor Jude Law, seem to grasp that particular nettle, which allows them to stay popular with the public.
Greatest romantic tale: Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride And Prejudice cannot find happiness in love until they have said sorry to each other
Being able to say you're sorry in a relationship is not only a test of the individuals in a partnership, but of the partnership itself. It's no good being the one who is always apologising, since apology risks martyrdom: as my friend, the author Kate Saunders says: 'If you're always the one kissing the cheek, you'll soon find yourself kissing a very different cheek about the body's anatomy.' (Think about it.)
I once had a particularly poisonous relationship in which, no matter how badly my boyfriend had behaved, I was always the one doing the apologising, either to - or about - him.
It never struck him that he might have done anything wrong, even when he sneered at my family - or slept with other women. Far from it: when I finally showed him how angry and hurt I was, his response was not shame yet more contempt.
My mistake, of course, was to adore him so blindly that I fell for the Segal line and believed that there was nothing to forgive.
Having 'nothing to forgive' sounds fine in principle, but in truth it is nothing but an empty gesture.
Everyone at some point hurts and offends everyone else in the normal friction of life.
Real love is about the give and take of 'sorrys' - but until couples realise this, they can't move forward.
If part of the bliss of being loved by the one you love is having your best self admired and brought out, then the other part is learning that you can become a good deal better, simply by atoning for your worst self.
This is what happens to Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride And Prejudice. Each cannot find happiness in love until they have said sorry to each other.
There are many reasons why Love Story has not lasted the test of time and why Pride And Prejudice remains the greatest romantic novel of all - but it's in showing us why love means saying sorry that it becomes, perhaps, the best of all. ( dailymail.co.uk )
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