quotations about love
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Graziella: A Story of Italian Love
Ah, cruel 'tis to love,
And cruel not to love,
But cruelest of all
To love and love in vain.
ANACREON
"Ode XXIX", Odes
Love kills.
EDNA BUCHANAN
Love Kills
Love is the Soul's exquisite vibrations....
Love is the Soul at song.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Edwin Leibfreed published several books of poetry, including A Garland of Verse (1910), A Soliloquy of Life (1915), and The Man of a Thousand Loves (1932).
Love is... carefully curated ignorance.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one's mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips--a name which comes up continually, rising, like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name which one repeats over and over again, which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a prayer.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Was it a Dream?"
The affections are like lightning: you cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
attributed, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern
Man loves most that which is his own.
HENRY ADAMS
Historical Essays
If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too."
KURT VONNEGUT
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
Free-market free love is simultaneously a utopian idea and a dystopian idea. The idea of total sexual freedom is an ideal, but then it's also a Michel Houellebecq nightmare. Now online dating and apps have made that normal. Everyone is "on the market" or "off the market"; friends with "benefits," "investing" time--these are all economic metaphors.
MOIRA WEIGEL
"Love in a Time of Capital: An Interview With Moira Weigel", The Nation, August 29, 2016
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times.
RITA RUDNER
stand-up routine
Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
UMBERTO ECO
Foucault's Pendulum
The most wonderful thing in life is to be delirious and the most wonderful kind of delirium is being in love.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Islanders and the Fisher of Men
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
ZIG ZIGLAR
See You at the Top
Love is one of the last things that gives meaning and magic in a world where god is dead and nothing matters anymore.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Blanche Jennings, May 8, 1909
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. His opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage".
No form of love is wrong, so long as it is love.
D. H. LAWRENCE
The Ladybird
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. His opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage".
When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Love", Essays and Letters
Of the affairs of love ... my only advice is to be honest. That's your most powerful tool to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Eragon