quotations about love
True love begins in heaven's bower,
Unfolds on earth a perfect flower.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Language"
O, wicked love ... that has so many unnamed components.
ANNE RICE
Beauty's Punishment
No distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, Sep. 30, 1779
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence.
LORD BYRON
Don Juan
Love, the hidden spring of life, and soul's desire.
Celestial gold, secreted, laid by fire
In every heart, in every thing that lives,
In every thought that human impulse gives.
The coin of heaven, the treasure of the earth,
The rarest gift, and joy of largest worth.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Love"
Edwin Leibfreed published several books of poetry, including A Garland of Verse (1910), A Soliloquy of Life (1915), and The Man of a Thousand Loves (1932).
Love is eternal as long as it lasts.
VINICIUS DE MORAIS
attributed, The New York Times Biographical Service, 1991
Love had a thousand shapes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
It's logical that everyone wants to be in love. Then, for a while, life isn't taken up with the tedium of thinking everything through, talking things through. It's nice to be able to notice small objects or small moments, to point them out and to have someone eager to pretend that there's more to them than it seems.
ANN BEATTIE
"Moving Water", The New Yorker Stories
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
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
'Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promises past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
'His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
As Ye Came from the Holy Land
Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 - 1618) was an English writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularizing tobacco in England.
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
Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
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 is ... taking years to unpack their neuroses, then using the space you've made to store your own.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
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
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
All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman's heart.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.
TONI MORRISON
Paradise