The most important issue here is that Romeo and Juliet is a play in which different characters define love in different ways. There is no narrator who provides some generally accepted definition by which the opinions and habits of characters can be judged or measured.
Romeo thinks of love as a form of overwhelming and all-consuming passion. Given his extreme fickleness and impulsiveness, his definition of love is what many viewers would consider a crush or form of infatuation.
Friar Laurence is a priest who would consider the ultimate form of love that of Jesus who sacrificed himself to save humanity as a whole. Friar Laurence is skeptical concerning the model of love advocated by Romeo, seeing true love as something deeper and longer term. His vision of love is also unselfish, as he considers ending a feud that is harming the city just as important as the desires of Romeo. His version of love is what one would call "agape" or spiritual love which embraces all of humanity rather than an erotic love focused on an individual.
Prince Escalus is an example of patriotic love which is focused on the city as a whole. Paris sees love not as romantic but rather as an arrangement that builds family and social bonds within a community.
How love is defined in the play depends on whom you ask, and when you ask them.
Most of the famous quotes about love in the play come from Romeo. For example, when he's in love with Rosaline, he says that "love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs"—in other words, love is insubstantial, like the air. He also says before meeting Juliet that love is "too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn." When he comes to visit Juliet in the orchard, though, he says "with love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls / For stony limits cannot hold love out /And what love can do, that dares love attempt." Romeo's love for Juliet, unlike his love for Rosaline, gives him strength and courage. But it also makes him take foolish risks.
When Juliet first hears about love in the play, she is doubtful that it has much to do with appearances: her mother asks "can you like of Paris' love?" and Juliet replies "I'll look to like, if looking liking move." When she meets Romeo, she begins to think of love as a blossoming flower: "This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, / May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet." Unlike Romeo, who views love as "light" and airy whether it's good or bad, Juliet's love is more solid and down-to-earth.
Benvolio refers to love as "gentle in his view"—that is, appearing to be gentle—but "tyrannous and rough in proof," that is, when tested in reality. His view of love seems the most accurate based on what we see in the play, since the lovers give us words of such beauty but then die so sadly and unnecessarily.
In Romeo and Juliet, love is defined as a romantic love, a sensual passion for a particular person. This kind of love is often called eros and is often opposed to agape love. This form of love is also described as a type of insanity, a theme Shakespeare will develop more fully in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Romeo describes love as follows:
a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;Being vexed a sea nourish'd with loving tears:What is it else? a madness most discreet,A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
Love is a fire, it is physical (showing in lovers' eyes as a sparkling fire), and it is all consuming. When it is not returned it causes crying and bitter feelings ("gall"), but when love is returned by the beloved it is sweet.
Shakespeare also warns that this type of passionate, erotic love also risks running out of control and burning out. The friar, for example, tries to warn Romeo to calm down a bit about Juliet, telling him:
These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triumph die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume
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