quotations about love
Until Obi met Clara on board the cargo boat Sasa he had thought of love as another grossly over-rated European invention.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Love prepares us for martyrdom.
PHILIP KOSLOSKI
"Love is What Prepares Us For Every Form of Martyrdom", National Catholic Register, March 22, 2016
"God is love" became inverted into "love is God", so that it is now the West's undeclared religion--and perhaps its only generally accepted religion.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Love is an amazing magnet.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
Expressing love is one of the most beautiful things of life -- for husbands and wives, children and parents, etc. I know that people often claim they prefer to express love by doing things like mowing lawns or making a nice dinner or buying gifts, etc. (There is even a popular book that has you take a questionnaire to find out what your primary way of showing love is so that people will be able to detect when you are showing love, in case you never verbally express it.) To be honest, I don't like promoting the idea that some people are just programmed to express love in certain ways, and not in others. There! I said it. (Sorry if you're a big fan of the book!) I say we don't let a questionnaire or our previous habits and norms limit us. How about we ALL learn to express love -- verbally -- with words!
MARA KOFOED
"The Language of Love", Danny + Mara, December 12, 2012
Love is woman's eternal spring and man's eternal fall. It is a game at which men must play against stacked cards, and without the slightest inkling of the trump.
HELEN ROWLAND
Inter-Collegiate World
Love ... like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
When you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
Four Quarters, 1970
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"
Love knoweth no laws.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
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
The sweetness of human love is to be compared, therefore, to the sweetness of a flower, whose glowing colors and voluptuous fragrance are intended by Nature to attract the winged insects, whose visits are necessary for the fertilization of the seed. The color fades, the flower falls, the perfume vanishes, death soon follows after; but Nature is not mocked.
ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM
"Love's Nature", Thoughts on Love and Death
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Love must be the same in all worlds.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Roundabout Papers
Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour -- the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
Love born of anxiety resembles a thorn shaped so that efforts to pull it out of one's flesh merely cause it to penetrate more deeply therein.
ANDRE MAUROIS
An Art of Living