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A kiss is a secret told to the mouth instead of the ear; kisses are the messengers of love and tenderness.

Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.

Saliva has antibacterial properties. It also has things called nerve growth factor, skin growth factor, histatins which help with wound closure. So when you see an animal licking a wound or even a mom kissing a child's boo-boo, there's some, there's some good science behind why one might do this.

All across Africa, the Pacific and the Americas, we find cultures that didn't know about mouth kissing until their first contact with European explorers. And the attraction was not always immediately apparent. Most considered the act of exchanging saliva revolting.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

Kissing could have begun as a way of sniffing out who's who. From a whiff to a kiss was just a short trip across the face.

What does kissing really mean to me? To me, if you feel, when you kiss a girl, that certain feeling of all those dolphins, like, swimming through your blood stream, and you get those good tingles inside your stomach, I don't think there's any better feeling.

I prefer a kiss that is so much more than just a tongue in your mouth.

There are two possibilities: Either the kiss is a human universal, one of the constellation of innate traits, including language and laughter, that unites us as a species, or it is an invention, like fire or wearing clothes, an idea so good that it was bound to metastasize across the globe.

What is a kiss? Why this, as some approve: The sure, sweet cement, glue, and lime of love.