quotations about love
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit's fast.
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The World in Six Songs
Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Love is to be the lodestar of our lives and, if blessed with the capacity to exercise it, we can aspire to imitate God.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Love thy neighbor, but pull not down thy hedge.
GERMAN PROVERB
Nothing is so strange when one is in love ... as the complete indifference of other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Son, if a maiden love thee, thou shalt appear handsome in her sight; she shall praise thine eyes, and the corners of thy mouth, yea, she shall admire thy hands. Though thou wert even as the orangutan yet shall she paint thee with fancies.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos
The world gets grimy and the love object is in stark relief from it's surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
There are moments of passion and joy, but most of this love is enduring the long stretches of dealing with not-so-thrilling stuff because one has to do so and no one else will. Moreover, one cannot imagine doing otherwise. If that sounds like your marriage, congratulations.
ANDY SENIOR
"Love and the Single Factotum", Syncopated Times, September 26, 2018
To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
True Christian love is not derived from things without, but floweth from the heart, as from a spring.
MARTIN LUTHER
Sermon XI, A Selection of the Most Celebrated Sermons of M. Luther and J. Calvin
Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.
TANITH LEE
Metallic Love
I don't love you any less, but I can't love you anymore.
LYLE LOVETT
"I Can't Love You Anymore", The Road to Ensenada
I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Sexing the Cherry
I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.
NORMAN MAILER
Harlot's Ghost
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
Let us suppose the loved one is as madly impelled toward the lover. In a few days, in an hour, nay, in an instant -- for there is such a thing as love at first sight -- this man and woman, two unrelated individuals, who may never have seen each other before, conceive a passion, greater, intenser than all other affections, friendships, and social relations. So great, so intense is it, that the world could crumble to star-dust so long as their souls rushed together. If necessary, they would break all ties, forsake all friends, abandon all blood kin, run away from all moral responsibilities. There can be no discussion.... We see it every day, for love is the most perfectly selfish thing in the universe.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
Love is never finished expressing itself.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts