quotations about love
Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising, since love is basically chemistry.
JIM AL-KHALILI
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
JOHN DONNE
The Anagram
Love ain't nothing but a monster with two heads.
COLEMAN HELL
"2 Heads"
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).
If you love someone, when it's the most real, the most important thing in your life, it's not enough to coast. You need to dig in those footers, start building on that base. You want something to last, you put your back into it.
NORA ROBERTS
Blue Smoke
If I'm meant to love people, I should love everyone.
What kind of tide can an ocean bestow
if it picks and chooses the rocks it's willing to touch?
SARAH LINDSAY
"Aunt Lydia Practices Loving Komodo Dragons", Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
If a man can be properly said to love something, it must be clear that he feels affection for it as a whole, and does not love part of it to the exclusion of the rest.
PLATO
The Republic
I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don't want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that's the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Paris Review, spring 1977
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Sandman, #65
Neil Gaiman (born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, films, and nonfiction. He is best known for the comic book series The Sandman and novels such as American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
Deep Love is slow of speech and void of art;
Silence and timid tears reveal his heart.
But shallow Love is ever eloquent
To mouth his meagre passion -- and depart.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue"
You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
PAT BENATAR
"Hell is for Children"
When a man falls in love suddenly his whole centre changes. Up to that point he has probably referred everything to himself--considered things from his own point. When he falls in love the whole thing is shifted; he becomes a part of the circumference--perhaps even the whole circumference; someone else becomes the centre.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A Mirror of Shalott
We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH
Aphorisms
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (September 13, 1830 - March 12, 1916) was an Austrian writer noted for her excellent psychological novels. She portrayed life among both the poor and the aristocratic.
True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Love lives in sealed bottles of regret.
SEAN O'FAOLAIN
Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 13, 1966
Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
HERMANN HESSE
Peter Camenzind
Love is nothing but lust misspelled.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians