LOVE QUOTES XIX
quotations about love
Love was as hardwired into the structure of the universe as gravity and matter.
DAN SIMMONS
The Fall of Hyperion
But the most common species of love is that which first arises from beauty, and afterwards diffuses itself into kindness and into the bodily appetite. Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. The one is, perhaps, the most refined passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar. The love of beauty is placed in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that it is so singularly fitted to produce both.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Amorous Passion, or Love Betwixt the Sexes", A Treatise of Human Nature
O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Tamerlane"
The poorest lives some little blossoms bring
To deck Love's altar in the days of spring.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
With the secularization of the Western world, we are turning to romantic love to give us what we once looked for in the realm of the divine. Transcendence, meaning, wholeness, and ecstasy.
ESTHER PEREL
"A top couples' therapist says our 'religion of romantic love' is making relationships harder", Business Insider, November 10, 2017
Man ever is and always shall be blessed; for he loves, and love is an onward current that never ebbs; and borne upon this current humanity will at last make its far, fair haven; and meanwhile, as it voyages, it will find the course not too rough, but glorified by frequent halcyon days and calm nights set with stars.
FRANK CUMMINS LOCKWOOD
Robert Browning
I was thinking what a curious thing love is; only a sentiment, and yet it has power to make fools of men and slaves of women.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase
Our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.
PABLO NERUDA
"The Furies"
You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
Love's tongue is in the eyes.
PHINEAS FLETCHER
Piscatory Eclogues
We love being in love, that's the truth on't. If we had not met Joan, we should have met Kate, and adored her. We know our mistresses are no better than many other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no wittier. 'Tis not for these reasons we love a woman, or for any special quality or charm I know of; we might as well demand that a lady should be the tallest woman in the world, like the Shropshire giantess, as that she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began to love her.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
Love is an alliance of friendship and of lust; if the former predominate, it is a passion exalted and refined, but if the latter, gross and sensual.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Charles Caleb Colton (1777 - 1832) was an English cleric and writer. His books, including collections of epigrammatic aphorisms and short essays on conduct, though now almost forgotten, had a phenomenal popularity in their day.
I'll tell you ... what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter -- as I did!
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
Love is ... telling someone when they have crap between their teeth.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the soul is to the body which it animates.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Fire Next Time
The stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man; for as to the stage, love is even matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.
JOHN LOCKE
"Of Love", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Love is a cognitive, willful act. Feelings have very little to do with it, particularly around three o'clock in the morning when the baby needs changing or somebody has "lost it" before getting to the bathroom to throw up.
KEVIN LEMAN
Smart Women Know When to Say No
Love fades, the dreamer wakes, the dream is brief.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dawn"