quotations about love
It is only the souls that do not love that go empty in this world.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary
I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Love renders the proud humble, and tames the fierce; it is at once the most and the least selfish of all passions; for, whilst it would engross the being on whom it is lavished, it will make any sacrifice, or undergo any privation, to insure the comfort of her it would possess.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Rival Ladies
The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
True love will not brook reserve; it feels undervalued and outraged, when even the sorrows of those it loves are concealed from it.
WASHINGTON IRVING
"The Wife", The Sketch Book
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
I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.
SARAH DESSEN
This Lullaby
Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Treatise on the Love of God
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 differs from all the other contagious diseases: the last time a man is exposed to it, he takes it most readily, and has it the worst!
BRET HARTE
"Two Men of Sandy Bar"
No rose without a thorn, nor love without a rival.
TURKISH PROVERB
Love does not rust.
GERMAN PROVERB
Singing oh no no
Let it go
Love can take your heart
Throw it out of control
Saying oh no no
Let it go
My love yeah she's a hurricane
I pray through the storm
CREATURE CANYON
"Hurricane"
You're not sick, you're just in love.
IRVING BERLIN
"You're Just in Love"
I don't believe you ever stop loving anyone you ever really loved. You have them there like money in the bank just because you loved them and held them in your arms or dreamed you did. You can forget a lot of things in life, but not that honey to end all honeys.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
A Dangerous Age
You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love.
ROLAND BARTHES
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
Why the pull of sexual attraction to someone who is unfamiliar, whose allure as Horace marked, portends a war with one's self? As we'll consider, the object of sexual desire has a different constitution from the focus of personal love. With sexual love, there is an emphasis upon touch and kinesthesia that alters the whole/part structure of objects. It brings with it a shift in temporality as well as makes the pleasure of repetitive sexual scenarios curiously new and unique.
PETER HADREAS
A Phenomenology of Love and Hate
True Christian love is not derived from things without, but floweth from the heart, as from a spring.
MARTIN LUTHER
Sermon XI, A Selection of the Most Celebrated Sermons of M. Luther and J. Calvin
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Marriage and Love", Anarchism and Other Essays