quotations about love
The greatest pleasures of love are inseparable from its greatest pains: Love has the face of a goddess, but the talons of a lion.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
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
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Miserables
Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885) is considered the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country's greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Les Misérables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831).
Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.
ERICH SEGAL
Love Story
Love's never a fair trade.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Her works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics".
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary has been called "the most brilliant work of satire written in America," and his story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature.
We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
PAT BENATAR
"Hell is for Children"
It is not in craving after ready-made, complete and finished things that love finds its meaning -- but in the urge to participate in the becoming of such things.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds
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
The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
You never give away your heart; you lend it from time to time. If it were not so how could we take it back without asking?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Songs of Experience
Some people, right away, do know each other deeply. Love gives them insight into each other. Love makes them pledge themselves to each other. Love makes them inventive. Yes, it also makes them ridiculous. But that's just another of love's glories. It makes being ridiculous permissible.
JAMES KUZNER
"Should we scoff at the idea of love at first sight?", The Conversation, August 30, 2018
James Kuzner is Associate Professor of English at Brown University. With a specialty in early modern literature, his research tends to focus on the relationship between literature, selfhood, and political imagination.
[Nature's] crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
Love holds everything together with a girdle of barbed wire encased in a sheath of pink cotton wool.
TIM LOTT
"Love is ... a torment and a joy. And it's not for softies", The Guardian, July 22, 2016
Tim Lott (born 23 January 1956) is a novelist, travel journalist, and an occasional op-ed writer for the Independent on Sunday.
Love is eternal as long as it lasts.
VINICIUS DE MORAIS
attributed, The New York Times Biographical Service, 1991
Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Love sucks. Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it's just another way to bleed.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Blue Moon