quotations about love
This may be the very nature of love, a passion as fickle as the sea, full of certainty when the object of desire is absent, yet dubious when confronted again with the lover's presence.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. For not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases.
ST. FRANCIS DE SALES
Treatise on the Love of God
Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Epipsychidion
Oh, ill betide that villain love, not love,
That all its object and affection finds
In the mere contact of encircling arms!
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA
The Painter of His Own Dishonour
Love is not enough. But, it is the rock on which all else stands.
NORA ROBERTS
Blood Brothers
Love is basically for teenagers, and when it comes to real life for grown-ups, you're far better off with someone who's moderately pleased to see you when you're around, but leaves you in peace when you've got things to do.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always wild!
JOHN GALSWORTHY
The Forsyte Saga
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"For What Binds Us"
Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
JACK LONDON
The Valley of the Moon
Of all earthly music, that which reaches the farthest into heaven is the beating of a loving heart.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Love laughs at locksmiths.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Dec. 21, 1939
To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Barchester Towers
Once you love someone it's like cancer. It spreads and spreads until it eats you up.
ANN WUEHLER
Interviews With Loneliness
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
AMY HEMPEL
"The Dog of the Marriage"
Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You don't know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, the roots cling to you. I've seen men and women give up everything for love that once was.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Man in My Basement
So this love still hold true
now what you gonna do
I won't give up on you
Between the moon and sun
this life is never done
I won't give up on you
Set up set up set up my love
I wont give up on you
TREVOR HALL
"Moon/Sun"