quotations about love
Love subdues everything, except the felon heart.
FRENCH PROVERB
Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
ALFRED TENNYSON
Locksley Hall
Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You don't know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, the roots cling to you. I've seen men and women give up everything for love that once was.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Man in My Basement
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
ANITA BROOKNER
attributed, Women Writers Talk
Swift doth young Love flee,
And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Modern Love
The first love disappears, but never goes. That ache becomes reconciliation.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Though she had been besieged, courted, and pursued by men who had fallen in love with her, she did not in her heart believe in the existence of love. It seemed to her as unreal as the painted drop scenes, the temples of love, and the banks of roses that formed the settings for her dances. But though she was cold and insensitive to love, she was esteemed a wonderful mistress. She herself practiced love as a duty imposed by her profession, a part to be played that might sometimes please but always fatigued her and called for a high degree of art.
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Thy love is like deep waters all around--
Warm pulsing waters, in whose brooding sound
The lone wail of my heart is lulled with dreams,
And the far clamour of the world is drowned.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
"Beyond"
With his venom
irresistible
and bittersweet
that loosener
of limbs, Love
reptile-like
strikes me down
SAPPHO
With His Venom
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"For What Binds Us"
Even kindergarten love is hard work.
JEFF HICKS
"Kindergarten love flourishes, 50 years later", The Record, September 3, 2018
If the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
If you love someone, then your freedom is curtailed. If you love someone, you give up much of your privacy. If you love someone, then you are no longer merely one person but half of a couple. To think or behave any other way is to risk losing that love.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
It is certain there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Passion of Love", Essays Moral and Humorous
Love called, and I could not linger,
But sought the forbidden tryst,
As music follows the finger
Of the dreaming lutanist.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Telepathy"
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
Love is a stream that will find its course.
JAMAICAN PROVERB
Love is kind of like a unicorn -- elusive and very hard to explain.
OLIVIA TRUFFAUT-WONG
"11 Movies To Watch When You're In Love To Get You Through The Good, The Bad, & All The Feels", Bustle, December 2015
Love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth.
SANDRA BERNHARD
attributed, Parted Lips: Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages