quotations about love
Old love, middle love, the kind of love that knows itself and knows that nothing lasts, is a desperate shared wildness.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Plague of Doves
No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Love knows no law.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
Love knoweth no laws.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues
Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
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
Love is a process -- not a static condition. It's a commitment to do the work and come back into relationship with each other. To move through whatever gets in the way of your love for one another.
SHANA PARKER
"3 Myths About Unconditional Love That Can Ruin Your Marriage", Good Men Project, December 25, 2015
Love fattens on smooth words.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
Me: Stories of My Life
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 you want to be loved, then love.
ROMAN PROVERB
I shall be loved as quiet things
Are loved--white pigeons in the sun,
Curled yellow leaves that whisper down
One after one;
The silver reticence of smoke
That tells no secret of its birth
Among the fiery agonies
That turn the earth.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"I Shall Be Loved as Quiet Things"
Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960) was an American poet and author. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her last collection of poetry, Dreamers on Horseback, in 1931.
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Down by the Salley Gardens", Crossways
A man in love is incomplete until he has married--then he's finished.
ZSA ZSA GABOR
Newsweek, Mar. 28, 1960
When you love someone
you have to let them go.
It's the only way to keep them.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
To find love round your ways,
A shield in evil days;
A robe that keeps you warm,
As ermine, from the storm;
To wear it as a jewel-flame,
A cross of honor, with a royal name;
To sit a queen, unmoved
By want or grief--this is to be beloved.
CAROLINE SPENCER
"The Difference"
This love of ours, in so far as it is a love for one particular creature, is not perhaps a very real thing, since, though associations of pleasant or painful musings can attach it for a time to a woman to the extent of making us believe that it has been inspired by her in a logically necessary way, if on the other hand we detach ourselves deliberately or unconsciously from those associations, this love, as though it were in fact spontaneous and sprang from ourselves alone, will revive in order to bestow itself on another woman.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.
PLATO
Phaedrus
The gospel of love spread among a sex for the needs of militarism and the labor market has filled woman with the spiritual hysteria of apostleship.
MARIAN COX
"The Fools of Love", The Dry Rot of Society and Other Essays
The end of love is a haunting. A haunting of dreams. A haunting of silence. Haunted by ghosts it is easy to become a ghost. Life ebbs. The pulse is too faint. Nothing stirs you. Some people approve of this and call it healing. It is not healing. A dead body feels no pain.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Powerbook
The capacity to love is the fruit of age, not the monopoly of youth.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History