quotations about love
It isn't being happy together ... that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Ministry of Fear
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Love may turn to indifference with possession.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Tell not thy previous loves to a woman, lest she also telleth thee hers.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
I want love on demand. Take it away when it hurts, but deliver it when desired, straight to my door.
HEIDI K. ISERN
"The responsibility to fall out of love is on you", Quartz, August 5, 2016
Love seems to beautify and inspire all nature. It raises the earthly caterpillar into the ethereal butterfly, it paints the feathers in spring, it lights the glowworm's lamp, it wakens the song of birds, and inspires the poet's lay. Even inanimate Nature seems to feel the spell, and flowers glow with the richest colours.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Love was a delicious blend of warm and cold. There was comfort in making love. It solved no problems: but one could run away from problems.
LARRY NIVEN
Ringworld
"To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved."
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
A lover is often most unjustly ridiculed for investing the woman for whom he has a passion, with qualities and feelings that she may not in reality possess; but in this, as in most cases, the world delights to judge unkindly; for it ought not to be overlooked that he is merely clothing the idol of his affections with his own beautiful conceptions of what she should be--transferring to her a superiority of sentiment which, in fact, belongs to himself, since it must have existed in his own mind before it could have been brought forward to adorn that of another. The pleasures of the world are all in imagination, else what a curse would existence be!
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Since to be loved endures,
To love is wise.
ROBERT BRIDGES
Since to be Loved Endures
Of all things in this world love is the most unmanageable. Parents and guardians are sadly foiled when they undertake to guide and coerce it: and the best thing they can do with it is to leave it to itself.
ROBERT BELL
The Ladder of Gold
Our love is about small days to build memories upon, simple adventures we experience together.
LINDSAY DETWILER
"True Love Is Built In The Simple Moments", Huffington Post, October 22, 2017
I've found out that falling in love doesn't have anything to do with time. It can take a year or an instant. It happens when it's ready to happen.
NORA ROBERTS
The Calhouns
To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task ... tremendous and foolish and human.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
O, high the happy bosom heaves
When love is in the dancer!
WITTER BYNNER
"Three Poplars"
If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
To Rhea
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Hero and Leander
When love grows diseas'd, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a ling'ring and consumptive passion.
GEORGE ETHEREGE
The Man of Mode
I used to be all about the grand gestures. The big demonstrations of love. The utterly romantic, perfectly crafted moments that take your breath away. It's funny though, because after almost ten years, and two kids, later, I've come to see love and romance in a whole different light. And I can honestly say that this year, for the first time, I've made peace with the fact that we aren't buying each other the obligatory chocolates or flowers. I'm actually okay with it. I promise. Husband dearest, in case you're wondering if this is a trap, it isn't.
RASHA RUSHDY
"Love Is Sweatpants and Take-out, Actually", Huffington Post, February 14, 2016
Wisdom and love have nothing to do with one another. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love -- you'll stick your finger in anything.
ROBERT ALTMAN
attributed, Esquire the Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives