quotations about love
Love had a thousand shapes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
I try to keep deep love out of my stories because, once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don't want to hear about anything else. They go gaga about love. If a lover in a story wins his true love, that's the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucers.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Paris Review, spring 1977
All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
I would rather have eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.
ROBERT TIZON
attributed, Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out
It is not in craving after ready-made, complete and finished things that love finds its meaning -- but in the urge to participate in the becoming of such things.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds
At night the grackle Love will start
To shriek and shrill,
Nor will he once be still
Till he has wide awake the backward heart.
So selfish Love,
Go hush;
Feathers and claws take off
Or seek some bush.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Three Valentines"
Love is eternal as long as it lasts.
VINICIUS DE MORAIS
attributed, The New York Times Biographical Service, 1991
Love's never a fair trade.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Her works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics".
LOVE.--A sentiment we all entertain for ourselves, and occasionally imagine others entertain for us.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Love is ... a cloak of suburban guilt.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Children of the future Age
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"A Little Girl Lost", Songs of Experience
Love life seems to be that factor which requires the largest quantity of magical tinkering.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Love is the kiss
in the quiet nest
while the leaves are trembling,
mirrored in the water.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
The Butterfly's Evil Spell
Love holds everything together with a girdle of barbed wire encased in a sheath of pink cotton wool.
TIM LOTT
"Love is ... a torment and a joy. And it's not for softies", The Guardian, July 22, 2016
Tim Lott (born 23 January 1956) is a novelist, travel journalist, and an occasional op-ed writer for the Independent on Sunday.
To follow the impulse of love and feeling is the secret law of every woman's heart.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules.
TOM ROBBINS
Still Life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins (born July 22, 1932) is an American novelist best known for his novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was made into a movie in 1993 starring Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, and Keanu Reeves.
Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty.... People with no imagination feed it with sex -- the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that -- softly, without props.
TONI MORRISON
Love
True love is like a coin, changeless and pure,
Bright from the mint of virtuous affection,
Whose solid worth lies in its gold secure
Stamped with the soul's reflection;
Though Time may mar with rude and hasty hands
Its brilliancy and beauty,
Its gold unspoiled beneath the surface stands
Alloyed with common duty.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Love's Counterfeits"
Only love makes fruitful the soul.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Beyond
You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
November