quotations about love
Love, they say, is a pain
Infinite as the soul,
Ever a longing to be
Love's, to infinity,
Ever a longing in vain
After a vanishing goal.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Rosa Mundi"
Love makes a few weeks so rich that all the rest of our lives seems poor in comparison.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The World in Six Songs
He who knows Love becomes Love, and he knows
All beings are himself, twin-born of Love.
ELSA BARKER
He Who Knows Love
Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela.
GEORGE MOORE
Confessions of a Young Man
When it comes to attracting men, logic escapes even the savviest of women. Probably because there is no logic involved.... You can read all the self-help books you want, you can run on a treadmill till you've reduced your tuchas to bubkes, you can stuff your face with oysters, and it won't make a bit of difference. For love, attraction, compatibility, and companionship are not a science of objectivity; they are, rather, far and away the single most subjective matter in the history of the universe. Did Cavewoman X have a romp in the cave with Caveman Y because of his universally sought-after ability to single-handedly kill a wildebeest with his bare hands and bring it to the feet of his intended? No, she probably just liked the way his mouth turned up at the corners in concentration while he chiseled out a piece of flint.
GWEN MACSAI
Lipshtick
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
If you want to fall in love, you can't hold everything in. You have to open up, take that risk. You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy. The one you find may not be the kind of woman you expected to fall in love with, but it wont matter, you'll love her for exactly what she is.
JEAN M. AUEL
The Valley of Horses
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
Cannot we all learn something from love, even those of us who may not be professed lovers? The teachers of the new cults, of mental and moral healing, go so far as to say that all they know has been learned through love. The foundation of their philosophy is love, and the inspiration, too. In it they declare there is the only health. In its enemy, hate, they find the only disease, the only cause of death. Surely there are many expressions of love besides the one that has been allowed to usurp the word. The love of the youth for the maiden and of the maiden for the youth is only one form of the love that radiates through the whole world, the sunshine of life from which we all derive our health and our energy.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Love", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
All is fair in love and war.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes, and hearts, and ears; bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude; and this is love.
JOHN LYLY
Gallathea and Midas
Love is a great beautifier.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Be worthy love, and love will come.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
It seems to me now that true love is the only theme for either song or story.
ROBERT BARR
Over the Border
I've never had my heart broken ... It's a very sad state of affairs. I think everybody should have their heart broken. I don't think it says anything good about me at all ... My lover and my best friend and my partner has been my work. But I certainly would in life have wanted to know--would like to know--what it was like to have a real partner.
SALLY FIELD
Good Housekeeping, Mar. 2009
Love gratified, is love satisfied -- and love satisfied, is indifference begun.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa
Love released from bond, and unburdened of its fetters, is love no longer.
THOMAS BURKE
A Love Lesson