quotations about love
Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"A Little Girl Lost", Songs of Experience
Love is the kiss
in the quiet nest
while the leaves are trembling,
mirrored in the water.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
The Butterfly's Evil Spell
As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.
APHRA BEHN
The Fair Jilt
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
Love is not a delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
It is difficult here to give definite examples, but everybody knows how, in the subtle psychology of Falling in Love, there are involved innumerable minor elements, physical and mental, which strike us exactly because of their absolute adaptation to form with ourselves an adequate union. Of course we do not definitely seek out and discover such qualities; instinct works far more intuitively than that; but we find at last, by subsequent observation, how true and how trustworthy were its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do so who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.
GRANT ALLEN
"Falling in Love", Falling in Love and Other Essays
I would rather have eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.
ROBERT TIZON
attributed, Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
Now do I know that Love is blind, for I
Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth,
No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky,
Seres Spring's maturity, checks Summer's birth,
Leaves linnet's pipe as sad as plover's cry,
And makes me in abundance find but dearth.
But when thy feet flutter the dark, and thou
With orient eyes dawnest on my distress,
Suddenly sings a bird on every bough,
The heavens expand, the earth grows less and less,
The ground is buoyant as the ether now,
And all looks lovely in thy loveliness.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Love's Blindness", Lyrical Poems
Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 - 2 June 1913) was an English poet and journalist who succeeded Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.
APHRA BEHN
The Lover's Watch, Four o'clock
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
We often weep beneath Love's cross,
But when she calls we her obey.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Guide-Board"
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby -- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Charles Caleb Colton (1777 - 1832) was an English cleric and writer. His books, including collections of epigrammatic aphorisms and short essays on conduct, though now almost forgotten, had a phenomenal popularity in their day.
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
At night the grackle Love will start
To shriek and shrill,
Nor will he once be still
Till he has wide awake the backward heart.
So selfish Love,
Go hush;
Feathers and claws take off
Or seek some bush.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Three Valentines"
We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
ITALIAN PROVERB
O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt, Master Constable
Love can be a terrible curse. It can make you overlook even the largest flaws in a person's behavior.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ