quotations about love
A man in love prefers his passion to every other consideration, and is fonder of his mistress than he is of virtue. Should she prove vicious, she makes vice lovely in his eyes.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Love in the young requires as little of hope as of desire to feed upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Light in August
Let me prevail as of old, as lover, as lord, as king, or have done with Love's tyrant rule.
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT
To Nimue
The flame of anger, bright and brief,
Sharpens the barb of Love.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Tell Me Not Things Past all Belief
You can run from love
And if it's really love it will find you
Catch you by the heel
U2
"A Man and a Woman", How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Between the horses of love and lust we are trampled underfoot.
U2
"So Cruel", Achtung Baby
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
It has been hard, I know, my daughters, but one word alone wipes out all of the hardships: love.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus at Colonus
I think love adds to everything. I'm an old softie about that. I think love is the most important thing in life. If you don't have [a relationship], you're always looking for one. It's the motivator, the driver.
SHERYL CROW
Dr. Drew interview, 2001
We are told from an early age that our true love is out there, waiting for us and so we yearn to find them, to know what it feels like to experience true love, to know you have made the right choice. The truth about love is that it is often bewildering and unknowable. You may never know if you have made the right choice. But when love is true, you embrace all the unknowns, regardless.
ROXANNE GAY
"Where the Hell Is the Love of My Life?", New York Times, October 18, 2018
A lover is like a firefly,
lighting your life for a moment,
then leaving you to deal with the darkness
Until it flashes again.
RICH REITH
"Soulmate"
Love knows no law.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
Love is an amazing magnet.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
Love's dream, too, knows decay;
Awhile the soul-harp's wildly thrilling strain
Pours out those notes we ne'er forget again,
And the deep fountains of the heart burst forth
As if to gladden every spot of earth;
But O! it will not stay.
MARY T. LATHRAP
"Song of the Earth-Weary"
The gospel of love spread among a sex for the needs of militarism and the labor market has filled woman with the spiritual hysteria of apostleship.
MARIAN COX
"The Fools of Love", The Dry Rot of Society and Other Essays
This love of ours, in so far as it is a love for one particular creature, is not perhaps a very real thing, since, though associations of pleasant or painful musings can attach it for a time to a woman to the extent of making us believe that it has been inspired by her in a logically necessary way, if on the other hand we detach ourselves deliberately or unconsciously from those associations, this love, as though it were in fact spontaneous and sprang from ourselves alone, will revive in order to bestow itself on another woman.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
When you love someone
you have to let them go.
It's the only way to keep them.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
For misdirected love, the attainment of its object is, indeed, the best cure; but it cures as the guillotine cures headache.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Love is blind.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales