quotations about love
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
It has been hard, I know, my daughters, but one word alone wipes out all of the hardships: love.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus at Colonus
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
I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.
SARAH DESSEN
This Lullaby
Why the pull of sexual attraction to someone who is unfamiliar, whose allure as Horace marked, portends a war with one's self? As we'll consider, the object of sexual desire has a different constitution from the focus of personal love. With sexual love, there is an emphasis upon touch and kinesthesia that alters the whole/part structure of objects. It brings with it a shift in temporality as well as makes the pleasure of repetitive sexual scenarios curiously new and unique.
PETER HADREAS
A Phenomenology of Love and Hate
Love is a kind of warfare.
OVID
The Art of Love
I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.
NORMAN MAILER
The Man Who Studied Yoga
Few people love with the violence they hate.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Love is never free ... It is the most expensive emotion we have.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Burnt Offerings
The pain of love is how slowly it dies.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
In the vacuum of the heart love falls forever.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
For me, however, if I understand the concept, to love properly and in earnest one would have to do it anonymously, or at least in an undeclared fashion, so as not to seem to ask anything in return, since asking and getting are the antithesis of love--if, as I say, I have the concept aright, which from all I have said and all that has been said to me so far it appears I do not. It is very puzzling. Love, the kind that I mean, would require a superhuman capacity for sacrifice and self-denial, such as a saint possesses, or a god, and saints are monsters, as we know, and as for the gods--well.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Infinities
If you have a history of bad relationships, what feels natural to you is probably NOT the best thing for you. This is counter-intuitive, but the things that feel good or exciting to you may actually be red flags that you're with someone who is fulfilling an old pattern of yours. Ironically, the kind of love that you deserve is going to feel uncomfortable at first, because it will be something NEW and off your neural map, so to speak. It may not be as exciting, and you'll likely not even be as initially attracted to the person who you'll ultimately create a strong relationship with, but true love is a marathon, not a sprint.
JENEV CADDELL
"The Part You're Missing About Manifesting True Love", Huffington Post, December 30, 2015
Wherever love is, I want to be, I will follow it as surely as the land-locked salmon finds the sea.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
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 grows with obstacles.
GERMAN PROVERB
When love is full grown it has few words, and sometimes it growls them out.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Old Gorgon Graham
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
G. K. CHESTERTON
attributed, Life is a Verb
Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"