quotations about love
And love is part and union in itself
Of all that is in nature, brilliant, pure--
Of all in feeling, sacred and sublime.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
We had known each other for many years; starved together, worked together, loved each other, suffered each other, made love; and yet the most tremendous consummation of our love was occurring now, as she patiently, in love and terror, held my hand.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
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
So being in love is like being hooked up to a perpetual dopamine drip, and you get a little hit every time you see the person or touch them or think about them?
SEAN ILLING
"This is what love does to your brain", Vox, April 23, 2018
We are told from an early age that our true love is out there, waiting for us and so we yearn to find them, to know what it feels like to experience true love, to know you have made the right choice. The truth about love is that it is often bewildering and unknowable. You may never know if you have made the right choice. But when love is true, you embrace all the unknowns, regardless.
ROXANNE GAY
"Where the Hell Is the Love of My Life?", New York Times, October 18, 2018
When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.
JOHN BERGER
Ways of Seeing
You're not sick, you're just in love.
IRVING BERLIN
"You're Just in Love"
It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
attributed, Evan Esar's 20,000 Quips & Quotes
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone -- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
BETTE DAVIS
The Lonely Life
It is love that I am seeking for,
But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind
That is not in the world.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Shadowy Waters
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse.
JOHN DONNE
The Canonization
The flame of anger, bright and brief,
Sharpens the barb of Love.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Tell Me Not Things Past all Belief
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
It has been hard, I know, my daughters, but one word alone wipes out all of the hardships: love.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus at Colonus
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
Love, however doomed, had the capacity to attach buoys to the soul.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
Love's dream, too, knows decay;
Awhile the soul-harp's wildly thrilling strain
Pours out those notes we ne'er forget again,
And the deep fountains of the heart burst forth
As if to gladden every spot of earth;
But O! it will not stay.
MARY T. LATHRAP
"Song of the Earth-Weary"
Her heart consenteth before her lips say: Yea; and in this interval lieth her Paradise; wherefore she would prolong it.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Looking back, I should have known better than to accompany Hugh to a love story. Such movies are always a danger, as unlike battling aliens or going undercover to track a serial killer, falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced at some point in their lives. The theme is universal and encourages the viewer to make a number of unhealthy comparisons, ultimately raising the question "Why can't our lives be like that?" It's a box best left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim