quotations about love
Love endeth like the chianti flask, its drops are bitter.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
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
To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering Something Beautiful for God.
MOTHER TERESA
A Gift for God
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"O Do Not Love Too Long", In the Seven Woods
Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted. This is true in part only, for like all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with ailment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795
Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
"Of Love", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
Love -- thou art deep --
I cannot cross thee --
But, were there Two
Instead of One --
Rower and Yacht -- some sov'reign Summer --
Who knows -- but we'd reach the Sun?
EMILY DICKINSON
"Love thou art high"
Yes, life is but a waste,
A cheerless pathway, where
No healthy fruit allures the taste,
No flowerets balm the air,
If Love, the wild rose, ne'er luxuriates there.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Love"
Love is a word from the old poems you read. In real life there is no love. Men come together like apes and birds. It is sweet sometimes to play with a woman, but the wind blows and there is an end of it.
VICKI BAUM
Love and Death in Bali
Any love is enveloping and potentially dangerous; after all, you are putting your heart into someone else's hands and with that an incredible power to cause pain of various kinds (and vice versa). That's a given. But there is an additional absolutism about first love, when you have nothing to compare it with. You don't know anything, yet you feel you know everything -- this can be calamitous.
JULIAN BARNES
interview, The Guardian, January 29, 2018
There are many kinds of love, and people have the capacity to love many different people.
DAVID BALDACCI
One Summer
I shall be loved as quiet things
Are loved--white pigeons in the sun,
Curled yellow leaves that whisper down
One after one;
The silver reticence of smoke
That tells no secret of its birth
Among the fiery agonies
That turn the earth.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"I Shall Be Loved as Quiet Things"
Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960) was an American poet and author. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her last collection of poetry, Dreamers on Horseback, in 1931.
The heart is forever unfaithful, and the feelings of love will come and go, but true love is not about what you feel. It is about what you do.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
Love is a process -- not a static condition. It's a commitment to do the work and come back into relationship with each other. To move through whatever gets in the way of your love for one another.
SHANA PARKER
"3 Myths About Unconditional Love That Can Ruin Your Marriage", Good Men Project, December 25, 2015
When a man and woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better, their digestion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but periodic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an active life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Morals
This love is a lichen....
etching on the unmoved rock
the only rune it knows.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Stubbornly", Twigs and Knucklebones
Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
Love knows no law.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
One love drives out another.
SPANISH PROVERB
If you want to be loved, then love.
ROMAN PROVERB