quotations about love
Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state -- admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological -- in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
Love is something we all talk about but rarely experience. We get sucked into settling, to waiting, to a wilting dating culture, to hatred and to meaningless rendezvous or "ghosting." Love is dying, and we're all forgetting about it.
SONYA MATEJKO
"This Is What I Know About The World At 24", Huffington Post, April 5, 2016
One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus at Colonus
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marring the whole girl.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
Love is a very difficult -- occupation. You got to work at it, man. It ain't a thing every Tom, Dick and Harry has got a true aptitude for.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Period of Adjustment
Every relationship you enter into is a form of a love relationship. It is a sharing of energy, time and space. It is a partnership. It is unity in its highest form. We become intimate by the contract of the joining itself.
TERRELL WASHINGTON
"To Love is to Trust", The Good Men Project, August 18, 2016
Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Let me begin by telling you that I was in love. An ordinary statement, to be sure, but not an ordinary fact, for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that hapiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lovers's eyes lilac opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favourite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Other Voices, Other Rooms
I could never take a chance of losing love to find romance.
U2
"A Man and A Woman", How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
God has set his intentions in the flowers, in the dawn, in the spring--it is his will that we should love.
VICTOR HUGO
Toilers of the Sea
Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885) is considered the most important of the French Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country's greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Les Misérables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831).
Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
"Beyond"
Love may turn to indifference with possession.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
The Country Wife
Caressing reassures lovers that their love endures.
WITTER BYNNER
"Rose-Time"
Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
WOODY ALLEN
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
I'd call it love if love didn't take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH
Necessities of Life
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
AMY HEMPEL
"The Dog of the Marriage"
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The Garden of Epicurus