quotations about love
We all crave love. Its universal language unites us as humans. Yet, it also slays us. If you gave people a choice between heartbreak and the Zika virus, we'd all be feverish in bed. Love's pain spreads across our flesh faster than any plague. As soon as you think you're cured, you relapse.
HEIDI K. ISERN
"The responsibility to fall out of love is on you", Quartz, August 5, 2016
Love means not ever having to say you're sorry.
ERICH SEGAL
Love Story
Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Lady Oracle
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 is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Elmer Gantry
The world has little to bestow
Where two fond hearts in equal love are joined.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Delia
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.
But now I know that there is no killing
A thing like Love, for it laughs at Death.
There is no hushing, there is no stilling
That which is part of your life and breath.
You may bury it deep, and leave behind you
The land, the people that knew your slain;
It will push the sods from its grave, and find you
On wastes of water or desert plain.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"From the Grave"
We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness -- and call it love -- true love.
ROBERT FULGHUM
True Love
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Jan. 19, 1938
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".
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
I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness.
ANNE CARSON
The Beauty of the Husband
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 will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
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
Sexual ecstasy usually arises among dyads, or groups of two, but the ritual ecstasy of "primitives" emerged within groups generally composed of thirty or more participants. Thanks to psychology and the psychological concerns of Western culture generally, we have a rich language for describing the emotions drawing one person to another--from the most fleeting sexual attraction, to ego-dissolving love, all the way to the destructive force of obsession. What we lack is any way of describing and understanding the "love" that may exist among dozens of people at a time; and it is this kind of love that is expressed in ecstatic ritual.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
Dancing in the Streets
We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.... You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
JOHN LENNON
ATV interview, Dec. 2, 1969