quotations about love
We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
Until Obi met Clara on board the cargo boat Sasa he had thought of love as another grossly over-rated European invention.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Empires, thrones, kings, dominions, all may be swept away by the force of circumstances, or time; glory, honour, position, wealth, and good name may be gone forever; and love may still be alive, fresh and young. Love born on high soars aloft, and makes its heavenly influence felt in every land and every clime; every nation bows before its power, every caste and every creed own its conquering influence. Love is the foundation of all happiness here and in the life to come, of all earthly joy and heavenly bliss the one spot of garden in the desert of many a life; the spring that is never dried up, and that pours forth its soothing waters o'er many an aching breast. Love can ne'er be bough; no fear can quench it; and absence makes it burn more brightly. Love never dies, or e'er grows old, but year after year it grows in strength and purity, till its golden rays touch the sky, from whence it came.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Love", Short Essays
Are you a man? Then don't disgrace your manhood and go "moping" about because a worthless girl has "jilted" you, and sacrificed truth and honour to her inclination for the time being. You have heard that there are supposed to be as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. I believe there are better; try and catch them, and be thankful for the escape you have had. If you are a man, don't try to drown your grief with the brandy bottle, you might as well drown it in the river; but act like one, and your mind will soon be at ease. Young women, if any of you have been cast off by a thing in man's garb, fret not, you can easily get a better, and remember you have the deep sympathy of every man worthy the name who knows how you have been treated. Parents, it is your duty to watch over your children, and much of the above sort of pain that is in the world endured, might be avoided.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Requited Love", Short Essays
Love is a concept none of us really understand but yet we try to define it in the small square of accepted norms. When two people love each other and want to be together in more than one way, gender, society, age, caste, creed stops mattering.
SHRIYA JOSHI
"This Short Film About Freedom To Love Is Our Gift To You On Independence Day", Storypick, August 12, 2016
It is not love that he feels for me. It is more like a constant resentment that has become such a habit to him that to have it removed, like an aching tooth, brings him no relief.
PHILIPPA GREGORY
The Boleyn Inheritance
Our love, too, proceeding from ourselves and returning to us, would suffice to make our life blessed, and would stand in need of no extraneous enjoyment.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.
ANDREW MARVELL
The Definition of Love
The gospel of love spread among a sex for the needs of militarism and the labor market has filled woman with the spiritual hysteria of apostleship.
MARIAN COX
"The Fools of Love", The Dry Rot of Society and Other Essays
Oh! For love, for the painfully nourished, tenderly cherished, sweet frenzies illusion, the known-illusion within the globule of sentimental cynicism. For romantic love, then, I sacrifice honor, decency, human kindness, charity, honesty, friendship and the future -- all, (ah!) for love!
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
Great Love has many attributes, and shrines
For varied worshippers, but his force divine
Shows most its many-named fulness in the man
Whose nature multitudinously mixed--
Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought--
Resists all easy gladness, all content
Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul
Flooded with consciousness of good that is
Finds life one bounteous answer.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.
HERBERT SPENCER
The Study of Sociology
If they substituted the word "Lust" for "Love" in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
FRED ROGERS
The World According to Mister Rogers
Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.
ROBERT FULGHUM
True Love
Why is the measure of love loss?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
JOYCE KILMER
"In Memory"
Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted. This is true in part only, for like all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with ailment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795