Love - Wikiquote
Love
Jump to: navigation , search
There is, in the human Breast, a social Affection, which extends to our whole Species. ~ John Adams
Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection ("I love my mother") to pleasure ("I loved that meal"). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection—"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self or animals.
A[ edit ]
Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.
Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. ~ Felix Adler
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ Eden Ahbez
Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy. ~ Louisa May Alcott
Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth. ~ Maya Angelou
Love is the principal cause of pleasure. ~ Thomas Aquinas
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. ~ Augustine of Hippo
What love will make you do
All the things that we accept
Be the things that we regret ~ Ashanti
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt... ~ Augustine of Hippo
Let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good. ~ Augustine of Hippo
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul. ~ Augustine of Hippo
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. ~ Augustine of Hippo
Love flowers best in openness and freedom.
Edward Abbey , Desert Solitaire (1968), "Cliffrose and Bayonets", p. 26
Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), film based on the novel by Douglas Adams
Mysterious love, uncertain treasure,
Hast thou more of pain or pleasure!
Endless torments dwell about thee:
Yet who would live, and live without thee!
Joseph Addison , Rosamond (c. 1707), Act III, scene 2
When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love;
The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
Sink in the soft captivity together.
Joseph Addison , Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act III, scene 1
When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
(In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
The woman that deliberates is lost.
Joseph Addison , Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act IV, scene 1
Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.
Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships.
Felix Adler , Life and Destiny (1913), Section 5: Love and Marriage
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
Louisa May Alcott , Little Women (1868), chapter 24: Gossip
Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.
Louisa May Alcott , Little Women (1868), chapter 40: The Valley Of The Shadow
“There is much to be known,” said Adaon, “and above all much to be loved, be it the turn of the seasons or the shape of a river pebble. Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.”
Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.
Woody Allen , reported in James Robert Parish, The Hollywood Book of Love, (2003), p. 35
Who sings of all of Love's eternity
Who shines so bright
In all the songs of Love's unending spells?
Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
Hear the music of Love Eternal
Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.
Jon Anderson , in "Loved by the Sun", from movie Legend (1985) (YouTube video)
We, unaccustomed to courage
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Maya Angelou , A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)
If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
Maya Angelou , A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)
Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.
Maya Angelou , A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)
Σχέτλι᾽ Ἔρως, μέγα πῆμα, μέγα στύγος ἀνθρώποισιν,
ἐκ σέθεν οὐλόμεναί τ᾽ ἔριδες στοναχαί τε γόοι τε,
ἄλγεά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσιν ἀπείρονα τετρήχασιν.
Unconscionable Love, bane and tormentor of mankind, parent of strife, fountain of tears, source of a thousand ills.
Apollonius of Rhodes , Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV, lines 445–447 (tr. E. V. Rieu)
The third principle [way doing good to another may give pleasure] is the motive: for instance when a man is moved by one whom he loves, to do good to someone: for whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure.
[Thomas Aquinas], Summa Theologica (1265–1274), I-II, q. 32, art. 6
To love is to will the good of the other.
[Thomas Aquinas], Summa Theologica (1265–1274), II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Álomban és szerelemben nincs lehetetlenség.
In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
János Arany , as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Attributed to Aristotle in Richard Alan Krieger, Civilization's Quotations: Life's Ideal (2002), p. 47, misquoting earlier reports of the quote which used "friendship" rather than "love".
Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
Aristotle , Free Translation from the French version of a letter named "The Letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the Policy toward the Cities". Basis for translation: Lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre sur la politique envers les cités, Arabic text edition and translated/edited by Józef Bielawski and Marian Plezia (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 1970), page 72
All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect who might be searching for us.
Kevin Arnold (played by Daniel Stern) narrating in The Wonder Years (1988)
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold , Dover Beach (1867), St. 4
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
Matthew Arnold , Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light Full text online
What love will make you do
All the things that we accept
Be the things that we regret
Ashanti , Foolish (January 29, 2002) from the April 2, 2002 album Ashanti
The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
Margaret Atwood , Surfacing (1972) p. 107
Variant: The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
W. H. Auden , September 1, 1939 (1939) Lines 78-88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden , The Dyer's Hand, and other essays‎ (1962), p. 372
It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.
Augustine of Hippo , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392
Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
Latin: "dilige et quod vis fac."; falsely often: "ama et fac quod vis."
Translation by Professor Joseph Fletcher: Love and then what you will, do.
What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
Augustine of Hippo , as quoted in Quote, Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory, p. 197
Quantum in te crescit amor, tantum crescit pulchritudo; quia ipsa charitas est animae pulchritudo.
Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul 's beauty.
Augustine of Hippo in Homilies on the First Epistle of John Ninth Homily, §9, as translated by Boniface Ramsey (2008) Augustinian Heritage Institute
Variant translations:
Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (1995), The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Ninth Homily, §9, as translated by H. Browne and J. H. Meyers
Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
As translated in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy : Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 50.
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam...quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.
I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.
Augustine of Hippo in Confessions (c. 397), III, 1
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam.
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
Augustine of Hippo in Confessions (c. 397), X, 27, as translated in Theology and Discovery: Essays in honor of Karl Rahner, S.J. (1980) edited by William J. Kelly
Variant translations:
So late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! So late I loved you!
The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett‎ (2007), by Lee Oser, p. 29
Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
Introduction to a Philosophy of Religion (1970) by Alice Von Hildebrand
Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother.
Augustine of Hippo in On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 436. From The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, 1938, 1962, Fr. Emile Mersch, S. J., (1890-1940), John R. Kelly, S.J., tr., London, Dennis Dobson LTD. [1]
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.
Augustine of Hippo in On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 438. From The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, 1938, 1962, Fr. Emile Mersch, S. J., (1890-1940), John R. Kelly, S.J., tr., London, Dennis Dobson LTD. [2]
We cannot help loving what is beautiful.
Augustine of Hippo , On Music (387–391), VI, 13
Only the beautiful is loved.
Augustine of Hippo , Confessions (c. 397), IV, 13
Jim Luther Davis: Love's about sacrifice; only true measure of it... Yeah, that's love.
Harsh Times (2005), written by David Ayer
B[ edit ]
If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure. ~ Bahá'u'lláh
Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. ~ Pope Benedict XVI
Love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty. ~ Pope Benedict XVI
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully. ~ Phillips Brooks
A life of love is one of continual growth , where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully. ~ Leo Buscaglia
Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures. ~ Gautama Buddha
Let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction ,
Hatred has never stopped hatred. Only love stops hate. This is the eternal law. ~ Gautama Buddha
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
[...]
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth. ~ Gautama Buddha
To love is to risk not being loved in return. ~ Leo Buscaglia
What am I singing?
Eat the music. ~ Kate Bush
We used to say
And so is love. ~ Kate Bush
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair. ~ William Blake
It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. ~ Samuel Butler
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. ~ Samuel Butler
At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love. ~ Ray Bradbury
If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection. ~ Gunar Björnstrand
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together. ~ Jean de La Bruyère
Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given
To lift from earth our low desire. ~ Lord Byron
The falling out of lovers is the renewing of love. ~ Robert Burton
Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.
Meher Baba , Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba (1986) by Bhau Kalchuri, 7:2457
The opposite of loneliness , it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.
Richard Bach , The Bridge Across Forever: A Lovestory (1989), p. 184
If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure.
Bahá'u'lláh , Lawh-i-Maqsúd (Tablet of Maqsúd)
It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
Bahá'u'lláh , Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 250
Ask not of me, love, what is love?
Ask what is good of God above;
Ask of the great sun what is light;
Ask what is darkness of the night;
Ask sin of what may be forgiven;
Ask what is happiness of heaven;
Ask what is folly of the crowd;
Ask what is fashion of the shroud;
Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss;
Ask of thyself what beauty is.
Philip James Bailey , Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment
Could I love less, I should be happier now.
Philip James Bailey , Festus (1813), scene Garden and Bower by the Sea
I cannot love as I have loved,
And yet I know not why;
It is the one great woe of life
To feel all feeling die.
Philip James Bailey , Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment
Love spends his all, and still hath store.
Philip James Bailey , Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment
The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
Philip James Bailey , Festus (1813), scene Alcove and Garden
If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
Jean Baudrillard , Cool memories‎ (1990), p. 153
Bright are the stars that shine
Dark is the sky
I know this love of mine
Will never die
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship , indignation and compassion .
Simone de Beauvoir , As quoted in Successful Aging : A Conference Report (1974) by Eric Pfeiffer, p. 142
Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6).
Pope Benedict XVI , in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)
Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.
Pope Benedict XVI , in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)
Nature expresses a design of love and truth.
Pope Benedict XVI , in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)
Authentic love is obviously something good. When we love we become most fully human. But people often consider themselves loving when actually they are possessive or manipulative. People sometimes treat others as objects to satisfy their own needs. How easy it is to be deceived by the many voices in our society that advocate a permissive approach to sexuality, without regard for modesty, self-respect or the moral values that bring quality into human relationships! This is worship of a false god; instead of bringing life, it brings death.
Pope Benedict XVI , Disadvantaged Youth (18 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia
Love has a particular trait: it has a task or purpose to fulfill - to abide. By its nature, love is enduring. The Holy Spirit offers our world love that dispels uncertainty; love that overcomes the fear of betrayal; love that carries eternity within; the true love that draws us into a unity that abides!
Pope Benedict XVI , Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia
Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and gift alike, he is even now working through you. Let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving love your mission!
Pope Benedict XVI , Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia
A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God's gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished-not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty - a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption that deaden our souls and poison our relationships.
Pope Benedict XVI , Closing Mass (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia
Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.
Wendell Berry , What Are People For? (1990), chapter The Responsibility of the Poet
I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
Wendell Berry , Another Turn of the Crank (1996), chapter Health is Membership
We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.
Wendell Berry , Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)
Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
William Blake , The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1 in: Songs of Experience (1794)
Man, you got to have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all
The mightiest love was granted him
Love that does not expect to be loved.
Jorge Luis Borges , of Baruch Spinoza in "Baruch Spinoza", as translated in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989) by Yirmiyahu Yovel
Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
Jorge Luis Borges , "The Threatened", The Book of Sand [El Libro de arena] (1975)
There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.
Paul Bourget , Cosmopolis (1892), Ch. 5 "Countess Steno"
There is no such thing as an age for love … because the man capable of loving — in the complex and modern sense of love as a sort of ideal exaltation — never ceases to love.
Paul Bourget , The Age for Love (Whether or not the interview with Pierre Fauchery by "Jules Labarthe" in this short story represents an actual one by Bourget is not known.) Full text online
I have been thinking about our conversation and about your book, and I am afraid that I expressed myself badly yesterday. When I said that one may love and be loved at any age I ought to have added that sometimes this love comes too late. It comes when one no longer has the right to prove to the loved one how much she is loved, except by love's sacrifice.
Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
Paul Bourget , The Age for Love (Whether or not the interview with Pierre Fauchery by "Jules Labarthe" in this short story represents an actual one by Bourget is not known.) Full text online
We have common cause against the night... Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear the music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokecherry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain... We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.
Ray Bradbury , Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), p. 145
At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.
Ray Bradbury , as quoted in "Sci-fi legend "Ray Bradbury on God, 'monsters and angels'" by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010) , p. 1
In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other.
I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world.
Giannina Braschi in "Empire of Dreams" (1988)
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht , Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), The Chaplain, in Scene 6, p. 76
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
Phillips Brooks , as quoted in Primary Education (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody, p. 190
There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
Sir Thomas Browne , Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section IX
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile — her look — her way
Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" —
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, —
A creature might forget to weep, who fbore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Sonnets from the Portuguese, No. XLIII
Whoever lives true life, will love true love.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Aurora Leigh (1856), Book I, line 1,096
I would not be a rose upon the wall
A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me,
It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh!
I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,
Than lie in a great queen's bosom.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IV
But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IX
The game of love is whatever you make it to be.
Michelle Branch , "The Game of Love" (September 2002), by Santana, Shaman
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Robert Browning , A Death in the Desert (1864)
Le temps, qui fortifie les amitiés, affaiblit l'amour.
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
Jean de La Bruyère , Du Coeur, ["Of the Heart" also translated as "Of the Affections"], Aphorism 4
L'amour qui naît subitement est le plus long à guérir.
Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
Jean de La Bruyère , Du Coeur, ["Of the Heart" also translated as "Of the Affections"], Aphorism 13
Le commencement et le déclin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras où l'on est de se trouver seuls.
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
Jean de La Bruyère , Du Coeur, ["Of the Heart" also translated as "Of the Affections"], Aphorism 33
L'on veut faire tout le bonheur, ou si cela ne se peut ainsi, tout le malheur de ce qu'on aime.
One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
Jean de La Bruyère , Du Coeur, ["Of the Heart" also translated as "Of the Affections"], Aphorism 39
Regretter ce que l'on aime est un bien, en comparaison de vivre avec ce que l'on hait.
Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
Jean de La Bruyère , Du Coeur, ["Of the Heart" also translated as "Of the Affections"], Aphorism 40
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love- deed -Yes and the power -deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality .
We cannot avoid
Martin Buber , in "Power and Love" (1926)
Hatred has never stopped hatred. Only love stops hate. This is the eternal law.
Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
Buddha Discourse on Goodwill, From the Metta Sutta , part of the Sutta Nipata, a collection of dialogues with the Buddha said to be among the oldest parts of the Pali Buddhist canon
Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
Lois McMaster Bujold , Memory (1996)
Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give.
Love. What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.
William S. Burroughs , Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000)
And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator.
Robert Burton , The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 1. Memb. 1. Subsec. 7
No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.
Robert Burton , The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 2. Memb. 1. Subsec. 2
The falling out of lovers is the renewing of love.
Robert Burton , The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 2. Terence—Andria, III. 23
To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain . To try is to risk failure , but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing .
Leo Buscaglia , Living, Loving, and Learning (1985)
A life of love is one of continual growth , where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
Kate Bush , The Dreaming (1982), All The Love
Only tragedy allows the release
Of love and grief never normally seen.
I didn't want to let them see me weep,
I didn't want to let them see me weak,
But I know I have shown
That I stand at the gates alone.
Kate Bush , The Dreaming (1982), All The Love
I needed you
Kate Bush , The Dreaming (1982), All The Love
All the love, all the love,
All the love we should have given.
All the love, all the love,
All the love you could have given.
All the love...
Kate Bush , The Dreaming (1982), All The Love
Do you know what I really need?
I need love love love love love, yeah!
Kate Bush , Hounds of Love (1985), Hounds of Love
The light
D'you know what?
I love you better now.
Kate Bush , Hounds of Love (1985), side two of the album called The Ninth Wave, song The Morning Fog
We let it in
But now we see that life is sad
And so is love.
Excuse me I'm sorry to bother you,
But don't I know you?
There's just something about you.
Haven't we met before?
Kate Bush , 50 Words for Snow (2011), Snowed In at Wheeler Street
There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.
You might feel it and just not show it.
Only the fools blew it.
You and me
Kate Bush , Never for Ever (1980), Breathing
It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.
Samuel Butler , Ramblings In Cheapside (1890), First published in Universal Review (December 1890)
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler , The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy, Life and Love
A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them., Chapter 11.
Love in your hearts as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns.
Samuel Butler , Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I
Love is a boy by poets styl'd:
Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
Samuel Butler , Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I, line 843
What mad lover ever dy'd,
To gain a soft and gentle bride?
Or for a lady tender-hearted,
In purling streams or hemp departed?
Samuel Butler , Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto I
Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill.
Lord Byron , Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , Canto II (1812), Stanza 81
The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
Lord Byron , The Giaour (1813), line 1,099
Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given
To lift from earth our low desire.
Lord Byron , The Giaour (1813), line 1,131
Why did she love him? Curious fool!—be still—
Is human love the growth of human will?
Lord Byron , Lara, A Tale (1814), Canto II, Stanza 22
And to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him.
Lord Byron , The Dream (1816), Stanza 2
She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd with her shadow.
Lord Byron , The Dream (1816), Stanza 3
Who loves, raves—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure
Is bitterer still.
Lord Byron , Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , Canto IV (1818), Stanza 123
O! that the Desert were my dwelling place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Lord Byron , Childe Harold's Pilgrimage , Canto IV (1818), Stanza 177
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence: man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart,
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone.
Lord Byron , Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 194
Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
Lord Byron , Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 199
In her first passion woman loves her lover;
In all the others, all she loves is love.
Lord Byron , Don Juan (1818-24), Canto III, Stanza 3. La Rochefoucauld. Maxims. No. 497
All I have is my love of love and love is not loving.
C[ edit ]
For want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it. ~ Albert Camus
Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more? ~ "Celine" (played by Julie Delpy ) in Before Sunrise (1995)
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love. ~ Sri Chinmoy
Do not judge but love and be loved, if you want to be really happy. ~ Sri Chinmoy
Life is nothing but the expansion of love. ~ Sri Chinmoy
There's just this human heart .
That's built with this human fault.
What was your question?
Love is the answer. ~ Annie Clark (St. Vincent)
The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love. ~ Leonard Cohen
I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me. ~ Leonard Cohen
Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding. - Dinah Craik
When faith and hope fail , as they do sometimes, we must try charity , which is love in action . - Dinah Craik
Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles. - Willa Cather
Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World.… It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. ~ Paulo Coelho
We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules. ~ Paulo Coelho
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us. ~ Paulo Coelho
Love is the only thing that will save us, independent of any mistakes we may make. Love is always stronger. ~ Paulo Coelho
Love simply is. … Love and don't ask too many questions. Just love. ~ Paulo Coelho
In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. [...] That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it. ~ Paulo Coelho
Love ain't no walk in the park
All you can do is make the best of it now
[...]
Just know that you're not in this thing alone
There's always a place in me that you can call home. ~ Cheryl Cole
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love's for a lifetime not for a moment. - The Corrs
Please believe me when I say
This time I won't run away
I swear by all the heaven's stars above
Now that I've found you
I'm looking in the eyes of love.
Love is the every only god. ~ E. E. Cummings
the axis of the universe
Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
One thing unshaken stays:
Life , that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
Whereby decays
  Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
Of hourly change begot,
Love that is God -born, bides as God eternal ,
And changes not; —
Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers
Find altered by-and-bye,
When, with possession, time anon discovers
Trapped dreams must die, —
For he that visions God, of mankind gathers
One manlike trait alone,
And reverently imputes to Him a father's
Love for his son.
James Branch Cabell , The Certain Hour (1916), "To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour"
What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.
James Branch Cabell , The Certain Hour (1916), "Auctorial Induction"
Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood.
James Branch Cabell , The Cream of the Jest (1917), Horvendile, in Ch. 2 : Introduces the Ageless Woman
There is no gift more great than love.
James Branch Cabell , The Silver Stallion (1926), Morvyth, in Book Two : The Mathematics of Gonfal, Ch. X : Relative to Gonfal's Head
One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving
Amy Carmichael A Chance to Die.The life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, Revell, 1987
Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.
Julia Cameron , Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)
When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.
Julia Cameron , Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)
The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.
Julia Cameron , Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)
Love is not love if it compelled by reason and driven by logic — love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all.
Julia Cameron , Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)
Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver,
É ferida que dói, e não se sente;
É um contentamento descontente,
É dor que desatina sem doer.
É um não querer mais que bem querer;
É um andar solitário entre a gente;
É nunca contentar-se de contente;
É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.
É querer estar preso por vontade;
É servir a quem vence, o vencedor;
É ter com quem nos mata, lealdade.
Mas como causar pode seu favor
Nos corações humanos amizade,
Se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?
Love is a ﬁre that burns, but is never seen;
a wound that hurts, but is never perceived;
a pleasure that starts a pain that’s unrelieved;
a pain that maddens without any pain; a serene
desire for nothing, but wishing her only the best;
a lonely passage through the crowd; the resentment
of never being content with one’s contentment;
a caring that gains only when losing; an obsessed
desire to be bound, for love, in jail;
a capitulation to the one you’ve conquered yourself;
a devotion to your own assassin every single day.
So how can Love conform, without fail,
every captive human heart, if Love itself
is so contradictory in every possible way?
Luís de Camões , Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver , translated by William Baer
Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d`abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
Albert Camus , quoted in
Robertson, Connie (1998). ""Camus, Albert 1913–1960" . The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations. Wordsworth Editions. pp. page 73. ISBN 185326489X .
 
There is not love of life without despair about life.
Albert Camus , Preface, Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
Orson Scott Card in Homebody (1998)
For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge , as fire is of light.
Thomas Carlyle , Essays, Death of Goethe. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23
True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one's fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.
Stephen L. Carter , The Emperor of Ocean Park Ch. 17, The Brass Ring, IV (2002)
Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles.
I have often had occasion to observe, that a warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.
Richard Cecil , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394
Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
"Celine" (played by Julie Delpy ), in Before Sunrise (1995)
“Love the others and you will be loved!” is a saying that might sound as a terrible and unjust accusation against all the innocents that have been hated and perhaps even tortured and killed .
Fausto Cercignani in: Brian Morris, Simply Transcribed. Quotations from Writings by Fausto Cercignani, 2014, quote 58
There's no love lost between us.
Miguel de Cervantes , Don Quixote (1605-15), Book IV, Chapter 13. Also used by Henry Fielding , Grub Street, Act I, scene 4; David Garrick , Correspondence (1759); Oliver Goldsmith , She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act IV. Ben Jonson , Every Man Out of His Humour, Act II, scene 1. Alain-René Lesage , Gil Blas (1715-1735), Book IX, Chapter VII, as translated by Tobias Smollett
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , The Phenomenon of Man 1955, p. 264
Each one gave the other the only assistance one man can expect from another: that his friend support him and ask only that he remain himself. It is no great accomplishment to take people as they are, and we must always do so eventually, but to wish them to be as they are, that is a genuine love.
Émile Chartier , Alain On Happiness (1973), Poets
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
G. K. Chesterton , Illustrated London News (16 July 1910)
Try not to change the world. You will fail. Try to love the world. Lo, the world is changed. Changed forever.
Sri Chinmoy , Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970), August 31
What is love? From the spiritual and inner point of view, love is self-expansion. Human love binds and is bound. Divine Love expands, enlarges itself.
Sri Chinmoy , My Rose Petals (1971)
First of all, let us try to know what love is. If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love.
Sri Chinmoy , Rainbow-Flowers (1973)
Where love is thick, faults are thin. If you really love someone, then it is difficult to find fault with him. His faults seem negligible, for love means oneness.
Sri Chinmoy , Fifty Freedom-Boats To One Golden Shore (1974), Citation- ffb-132, Part 4
Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self.
Sri Chinmoy , Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979), #1908, Part 20
Hatred is a disguised form of love. You can only hate someone whom you really wish to love, because if you were totally indifferent to that person, you could not even get up enough energy to hate him.
Sri Chinmoy , The Wings of Joy (1997)
If you really want to love humanity, then you have to love humanity as it is now.
Sri Chinmoy , The Wings of Joy (1997)
Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love.
Sri Chinmoy , The Wings of Joy (1997)
Man is by nature a lover. Only he has yet to discover the real thing to love. This quest awakens him to the fulfillment of his real Self.
Sri Chinmoy , The Wings of Joy (1997)
Is the world so unbearable? No! What we need is only a little more love for the world.
Sri Chinmoy , Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998), #4386, Part 5
Love is something that never cared to learn how to judge anybody.
Sri Chinmoy , Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998),#7310, Part 8
Instead of creating a reason why you cannot love the world, try to create a reason why you should and must love the world.
Sri Chinmoy , Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998), #14550, Part 15
World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.
Sri Chinmoy , Words of Wisdom (2010)
Do not judge but love and be loved, if you want to be really happy.
Sri Chinmoy , Words of Wisdom (2010)
Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.
Ray Charles , Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978) by Ray Charles and David Ritz, (2003 edition), For the Love of Women, p. 239
"There have been women I have loved … A lot, as discreetly as possible."
Jacques Chirac , undated, quoted in "'Affair' story will continue to rumble" Christian Fraser, BBC News, 14 January 2014
So mourn'd the dame of Ephesus her love.
Colley Cibber , Richard III (1700), Act II; altered from Shakespeare
What have I done? What horrid crime committed?
To me the worst of crimes—outliv'd my liking.
Colley Cibber , Richard III (1700), Act III, scene 2; altered from Shakespeare
There are no signs ,
There are no stars aligned,
No amulets no charms,
There's just this human heart .
That's built with this human fault.
What was your question?
Annie Clark (St. Vincent) , in "All My Stars Aligned" on Marry Me (2007)
Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
Of the laughing Sea ;
Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!
Voltairine de Cleyre , "The Dirge of the Sea" (April 1891)
And sometimes when I am weary,
When the path is thorny and Wild,
I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight,
Back to the eyes that smiled.
And pray that a wreath like a rainbow
May slip from the beautiful past,
And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love
And keep me, and hold me fast.
Voltairine de Cleyre , And Thou Too (1888)
The wise are wise only because they love.
Paulo Coelho , As quoted in Elders on Love: Dialogues on the Consciousness, Cultivation, and Expression of Love (1999) by Kenneth R. Lakritz and Thomas M. Knoblauch
Unsourced variant: The wise are wise only because they love. The fools are fools only because they think they can understand love.
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
Paulo Coelho , The Alchemist , p. 128
Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. … It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
Paulo Coelho , By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
As translated by Alan R. Clarke (1996)
The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don't care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don't care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don't want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they're throwing the dice — and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck.
The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free.
Paulo Coelho , By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.
Paulo Coelho , By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
I am going to sit here with you by the river. If you go home to sleep, I will sleep in front of your house. And if you go away, I will follow you — until you tell me to go away. Then I'll leave. But I have to love you for the rest of my life.
Paulo Coelho , By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.
Paulo Coelho , By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
Paulo Coelho , Eleven Minutes (2003), page 9
My aim is to understand love. I know how alive I felt when I was in love, and I know that everything I have now, however interesting it might seem, doesn't really excited me.
But love is a terrible thing: I've seen my girlfriends suffer and I don't want the same thing to happen to me. … Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.
Paulo Coelho , Eleven Minutes (2003), Maria's diary entry at the age of 17, p. 16
In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Paulo Coelho , Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 90
Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or — such is the pleasure they experience — they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.
Paulo Coelho , Aleph (2011)
No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I’m not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.
Paulo Coelho , Aleph (2011)
I love you like a river that creates the right conditions for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks. I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go.
Paulo Coelho , Aleph (2011)
I love you like a river that understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows. I love you because we are all born in the same place, at the same source, which keeps us provided with a constant supply of water. And so, when we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little. The spring returns, and the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy.
Paulo Coelho , Aleph (2011)
I receive your love, and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures, but a love with no name and no explanation, like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course but simply flows onward. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours, and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you, I love you, I love you.
Paulo Coelho , Aleph (2011)
What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
Leonard Cohen , Beautiful Losers (1966)
"You have loved enough, now let me be the lover." You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is Goddam to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.
Leonard Cohen , On the lyrics to "You Have Loved Enough" in an interview released at the Ten New Songs site (2001)
When they lay down beside me I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
I swept the marble chambers,
But you sent me down below.
You kept me from believing
Until you let me know:
That 'I am not the one who loves —
It's love that chooses me.
When hatred with his package comes,
You forbid delivery.
Leonard Cohen , Ten New Songs (2001), You Have Loved Enough
The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!!
Joseph Conrad , Victory: An Island Tale, part IV, chap. 14
Anything that's worth havin'
Sure enough worth fighting for
Quittin's out of the question
When it gets tough, gotta fight some more
[...] We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love
If its woth having, it's worth fightin for
Now everyday ain't gonna be no picnic
Love ain't no walk in the park
All you can do is make the best of it now
Can't be afraid of the dark
Just know that you're not in this thing alone
There's always a place in me that you can call home.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , The Presence of Love (1807), lines 10-11
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!
In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Poems Written in Later Life, motto (1826)
* I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.
To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ,'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), On taking Leave of ———— (1817)
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,—
His eyes are in his mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free.
William Cowper , The Task (1785), Book V, line 353
Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.
Dinah Craik , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394
When faith and hope fail , as they do sometimes, we must try charity , which is love in action . We must speculate no more on our duty , but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.
Dinah Craik , Christian's Mistake (1865). p. 64
Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
Love given willingly, full and free,
Love for love's sake — as mine to thee.
Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
But Love, the master, goes in and out
Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
Just as he please — just as he please.
Dinah Craik , Poems (1866), "Plighted"
You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
Jonathan Samuel Carroll , Outside the Dog Museum (1991)
Love's for a lifetime not for a moment.
I was searching for an answer
In a world so full of strangers
But what I found was never really enough
Now that I've found you
I'm looking in the eyes of love (In the eyes of love)
Baby you've been good to me
Oh, so much more that you could know, yeah, yeah
I never thought that I would find
Someone who's so sweet and kind
Like you...
Please believe me when I say
This time I won't run away
I swear by all the heaven's stars above
Now that I've found you
I'm looking in the eyes of love
Looking in the eyes of love...
I can see forever, yeah...
I can see you and me
Walking in this world together
Oh, my heart's found a hope...
I've been dreaming of...
Now that I've found you
I'm looking in the eyes of love
The Corrs , Looking in the Eyes of Love from the In Blue (2004)
Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star...
E. E. Cummings , "being to timelessness as it's to time" (1958)
and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
E. E. Cummings , 50 Poems (1940), Poem #34
love is the every only god
E. E. Cummings , 50 Poems (1940), Poem #38
love is more thicker than forget
…it is more sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
E. E. Cummings , 50 Poems (1940), Poem #42
measureless our pure living complete love
whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow
E. E. Cummings , 50 Poems (1940), Poem #50
'and liars kill their kind
but' her,my 'love creates love only' our
E. E. Cummings , 1 x 1 (1944), XXXII
nothing false and possible is love
(who's imagined, therefore limitless)
E. E. Cummings , 1 x 1 (1944), XXXIV
true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
E. E. Cummings , 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVI
yes is a pleasant country…
love is a deeper season
than reason
E. E. Cummings , 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVIII
i feel that(false and true are merely to know)
Love only has ever been,is,and will ever be,So
E. E. Cummings , XAIPE (1950), 33
no evil is
so worse than worst you fall in hate with love
—human one mortally immortal i
can turn immense all time's because to why
E. E. Cummings , 95 poems (1958), poem #7
lovers alone wear sunlight
E. E. Cummings , 95 poems (1958), poem #91
The whole truth…
E. E. Cummings , 95 poems (1958), poem #91
it's love by whom (my beautiful friend) the gift to live is without until:
…love was and shall be this only truth (a dream of a deed, born not to die)
E. E. Cummings , 73 poems (1963), poem#4
the axis of the universe
—love
E. E. Cummings , 73 poems (1963), poem#73
Forget the haters 'cause somebody loves ya.
Miley Cyrus , performed in the song W:We Can't Stop (2013) which is written by various songwriters
D[ edit ]
Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity ; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest . ~ Leonardo da Vinci
The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love. ~ Dorothy Day
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love. Would a world with peace, but without love, be a better world? Not if the peace was achieved by drugging the love (and hate) out of us, or by suppression. ~ Daniel Dennett
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time ; effaces all memory of a beginning , all fear of an end : we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it. ~ Anne Louise Germaine de Staël
Love is just a piece of time
in the world
And I couldn't help but fall in love again ~ Zooey Deschanel
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are. ~ John Dryden
Pity melts the mind to love. ~ John Dryden
A song fluttered down in the form of a dove,
And it bore me a message, the one word—Love!
The Dove by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We are all born for love.
It is the principle of existence and its only end. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
What is sacred? Of what is spirit made? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is only love. ~ Don Juan
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
The chief thing is to love others like yourself , that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all . ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
"What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus ... Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
Surely goodness and loyal love will pursue me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for all my days.
He loves righteousness and justice .
The earth is filled with Jehovah ’s loyal love.
For you, O Jehovah , are good and ready to forgive;
You abound in loyal love for all those who call on you.
David , Psalm 86:5 , NWT
Love, Fear , and Esteem, — Write these on three stones.
Leonardo da Vinci , The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations, "Of servants", as translated by Edward MacCurdy
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
Leonardo da Vinci , The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy
The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.
Leonardo da Vinci , The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy
When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.
Leonardo da Vinci , The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy
The Caladrius is a bird of which it is related that, when it is carried into the presence of a sick person, if the sick man is going to die, the bird turns away its head and never looks at him; but if the sick man is to be saved the bird never loses sight of him but is the cause of curing him of all his sickness. Like unto this is the love of virtue. It never looks at any vile or base thing, but rather clings always to pure and virtuous things and takes up its abode in a noble heart; as the birds do in green woods on flowery branches. And this Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.
Leonardo da Vinci , The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XX Humorous Writings, as translated by Edward MacCurdy
L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
Dante Alighieri , Paradiso XXXIII, 145
Amor, ch'al cor gentil ratto s'apprende.
Love, that all gentle hearts so quickly know.
Dante Alighieri , Inferno, V. 100
Amor ch' a nullo amato amar perdona.
Love, which insists that love shall mutual be.
Dante Alighieri , Inferno, V. 103
If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
Robertson Davies , "The Pleasures of Love," in Saturday Night (23 December 1961); reprinted in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1990)
Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time ; effaces all memory of a beginning , all fear of an end : we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it.
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , Corinne (1807), Bk. 8, Ch. 2, as translated by Isabel Hill (1833)
Variant translation: It is certainly through love that eternity can be understood; it confuses all thoughts about time ; it destroys the ideas of beginning and end ; one thinks one has always been in love with the person one loves, so difficult is it to conceive that one could live without him.
As translated by Sylvia Raphael (1998)
The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
Doris Day , Catholic Worker (April 1964)
We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth . But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. "All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, "I am the Way." The cross is there, of course, but "in the cross is joy of spirit ." And love makes all things easy.
Doris Day , On Pilgrimage (1948)
The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , "The Evolution of Chastity" (1934), as translated by René Hague in Toward the Future (1975)
What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity . The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , "The Evolution of Chastity" (February 1934), as translated in Toward the Future (1975) edited by by René Hague, who also suggests "space" as an alternate translation of "the ether."
Variants:
"One day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity" — after all the scientific and technological achievements — "we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
As quoted by R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. in his speech accepting the nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, in Washington, D. C. (8 August 1972); this has sometimes been published as if Shriver's interjection "after all the scientific and technological achievements" were part of the original statement, as in The New York Times (9 August 1972), p. 18
What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.
As translated in The The Ignatian Tradition (2009) edited by Kevin F. Burke, Eileen Burke-Sullivan and Phyllis Zagano, p. 86
Love is the only force which can make things one without destroying them. … Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Seed Sown : Theme and Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary Reading (1996) by Jay Cormier, p. 33
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Fire of Love : Encountering the Holy Spirit (2006) by Donald Goergen, p. 92
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Read for the Cure (2007) by Eileen Fanning, p. v
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level — indeed in the molecule itself — it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form. . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , The Phenomenon of Man (1955)
Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can't love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don't at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don't feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends . . . why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it?
Richard Dawkins Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster, November 2007
I somehow see what's beautiful
In things that are ephemeral
I'm my only friend of mine
And love is just a piece of time
in the world
And I couldn't help but fall in love again.
Zooey Deschanel, She & Him  : Volume One (2008), "I Thought I Saw Your Face Today"
O-o-old habits die hard when you got, when you got a sentimental heart
Piece of the puzzle, you're my missing part
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart?
Zooey Deschanel, She & Him  : Volume One (2008), "Sentimental Heart"
Love is not a feeling to pass away
Like the balmy breath of a Summer's day.......
Love is not a passion of earthly mould
As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold
Charles Dickens , From Lucy's Song in The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens, Chapman & Hall, London 1903
[A] loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom...
Charles Dickens , David Copperfield (1850), Chapter 9. Often quoted as "A loving heart is the truest wisdom".
It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
Denis Diderot , Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1773 - 1777)
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 , U.S. screen actor. The Lonely Life, ch. 19 (1962)
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. . . . When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70), French writers. The Goncourt Journals (1888-96; repr. in Pages from the Goncourt Journal , ed. by Robert Baldick, 1962), entry for 15 Nov. 1859
We are all born for love.
It is the principle of existence and its only end.
Benjamin Disraeli , Sybil (1845), Book V, Chapter IV
The daily actions of religious people have accomplished uncounted good deeds throughout history, alleviating suffering, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick. Religions have brought the comfort of belonging and companionship to many who would otherwise have passed through this life all alone, without glory or adventure. They have not just provided first aid, in effect, for people in difficulties; they have provided the means for changing the world in ways that remove those difficulties. As Alan Wolfe says, "Religion can lead people out of cycles of poverty and dependency just as it led Moses out of Egypt". There is much for religion lovers to be proud of in their traditions, and much for all of us to be grateful for.
The fact that so many people love their religions as much as, or more than, anything else in their lives is a weighty fact indeed. I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love. Would a world with peace, but without love, be a better world? Not if the peace was achieved by drugging the love (and hate) out of us, or by suppression. Would a world with justice and freedom, but without love, be a better world? Not if it was achieved by somehow turning us all into loveless law-abiders with none of the yearnings or envies or hatreds that are wellsprings of injustice and subjugation.
It is hard to consider such hypotheticals, and I doubt if we should trust our first intuitions about them, but, for what it is worth, I surmise that we almost all want a world in which love, justice, freedom, and peace are all present, as much as possible, but if we had to give up one of these, it wouldn't — and shouldn't — be love. But, sad to say, even if it is true that nothing could matter more than love, it wouldn't follow from this that we don't have reason to question the things that we, and others, love. Love is blind, as they say, and because love is blind, it often leads to tragedy: to conflicts in which one love is pitted against another love, and something has to give, with suffering guaranteed in any resolution.
Daniel Dennett , Breaking the Spell (2006)
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Benjamin Disraeli , Henrietta Temple (1837), Book 4, chapter 1. Often misquoted as "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end".
It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love, it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn't die right away, it will be so weak, so ill, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well.
Catherine Doherty , Poustinia (1975), Ch. 12
… What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. (1999) [1880]. The Brothers Karamazov. Constance Garnett, translator. Signet Classic. pp. p. 312. ISBN 0451527348 .
 
Variant: Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought with gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was a fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping and I cried, "Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
Then sighing said the other, "Have thy will,
"I am the Love that dare not speak its name."
It's afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn't neccessarily prove that you loved him.
Marguerite Duras The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990)
It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
Marguerite Duras The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990)
Love is a passion
Which kindles honor into noble acts.
John Dryden , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392
Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
John Dryden , Cymon and Iphigenia (1700), line 134
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
John Dryden , Tyrannick Love (1669), Act IV, scene i
My heart 's so full of joy ,
That I shall do some wild extravagance
Of love in public, and the foolish world ,
Which knows not tenderness , will think me mad.
John Dryden , All for Love (1678), Act II, scene i
For pity melts the mind to love.
Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night.
John Dryden , The Secular Masque (1700), Line 82
You can't be wise and in love at the same time.
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Idiot (1868)
On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III
Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand ), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day , in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself , that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all . And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett)
"It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love humanity,' he said, 'but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,' he said, 'I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.'"
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love all God 's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light . Love the animals , love the plants , love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book VI, chapter 3: "Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds" (translated by Constance Garnett)
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
Dostoevsky (1999) [1880]. The Brothers Karamazov. Constance Garnett, translator. Signet Classic. pp. p. 312. ISBN 0451527348 .
 
To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus .
You may think that's a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you'll eventually get along.
Will Durant , When asked, at the age of 92, if he could summarize the lessons of history into a single sentence. As quoted in "Durants on History from the Ages, with Love," by Pam Proctor, Parade (6 August 1978) p. 12. Durant is quoting Jesus (from John 13:34) here, and might also be quoting Jiddu Krishnamurti : "Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself — these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society."
E[ edit ]
Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart. ~ Eknath Easwaran
I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here—to love and to serve. ~ Albert Einstein
The single Rose
Where all loves end ~ T. S. Eliot
Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations? ~ T. S. Eliot
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove. ~ T. S. Eliot
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. ~ T. S. Eliot
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.
Eknath Easwaran , Original goodness: On the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount ( 1989 )
To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.
Eric Rücker Eddison , A Fish Dinner in Memison, published 1941
Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith... A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding, but in a saving faith there is also the consent of the heart .
Jonathan Edwards , Charity and Its Fruits (1738)
Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."
Jonathan Edwards , Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 396
Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.
Albert Einstein , Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann , Albert Einstein, The Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives (1979), p. 46 - 30 July 47 - letter
Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.
Albert Einstein , Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann , Albert Einstein, The Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives (1979), p. 56 - Jotted (in German) on the margins of a letter to him (1933).
Unsourced variants: Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. / You can't blame gravity for falling in love.
I believe that we don't need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here—to love and to serve.
Albert Einstein , as quoted by William Hermanns Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), p. 94
But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good?
George Eliot , The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I
'Tis what I love determines how I love.
George Eliot , The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I
Women know no perfect love:
Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
Man clings because the being whom he loves
Is weak and needs him.
George Eliot , The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III
I like not only to be loved , but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech , and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
George Eliot , Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1875)
Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.
George Eliot , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393
Lady of silences
Something created in our own imaginations?
Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
Then one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
T. S. Eliot , Four Quartets , Burnt Norton (1935), (V)
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise.
T. S. Eliot , Four Quartets , East Coker (1940), (V)
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire. (IV)
T. S. Eliot , Four Quartets ,Little Gidding (1942), (IV)
Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.
Epictetus , Fragments, Fragment xxii
Let no man think that he is loved by any who loveth none.
Epictetus , Fragments, Fragment xxiii
L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction. (Page 203)
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. (Translated by Lewis Galantière in "Wind, Sand and Stars")
F[ edit ]
Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
In love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received. ~ Eleanor Farjeon
The stars above will be below when man has Love. ~ Philip José Farmer
Give us power , give us light To hold all love within our breast's small space. ~ Philip José Farmer
Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough! ~ Richard Feynman
Love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. ~ Viktor Frankl
The salvation of man is through love and in love. ~ Viktor Frankl
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved. ~ Sigmund Freud
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ~ Robert Frost
Love is an act of faith , and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. ~ Erich Fromm
If it is true , as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature . ~ Erich Fromm
Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship . ~ Erich Fromm
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." ~ Erich Fromm
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~ Erich Fromm
I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union. ~ Erich Fromm
If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. ~ Erich Fromm
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason , makes no sense if conceived in a partial way. ~ Erich Fromm
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love. ~ Robert Fulghum
Old sundial, you stand here for Time :
For Love, the vine that round your base
Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
Without the asking on your cold
Unsmiling and unfrowning face.
Eleanor Farjeon , Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love
Upon your shattered ruins where
This vine will flourish still, as rare,
As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
Love will not crumble.
Eleanor Farjeon , Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love
Dropt tears have hastened your decay
And brought you one step nigher death ;
And you have heard, unthrilled, unmoved,
The music of Love's golden breath
And seen the light in eyes that loved.
You think you hold the core and kernel
Of all the world beneath your crust,
Old dial? But when you lie in dust,
This vine will bloom, strong, green, and proved.
Love is eternal .
Eleanor Farjeon , Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love
Every man 's life (and … every woman 's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal … love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy.
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)
No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning .
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)
I will fight for you, yes, and you will fight for me. And if you have sacrificed joy and courage and beauty and wisdom for my sake, I will give them all to you again; and yet you must also give them to me, for they are things in which without you I am wanting. But together we can make them.
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)
'In love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received.' And he bent his head and kissed her long and deeply, and in that kiss neither knew themselves, or even each other, but something beyond all consciousness that was both of them.
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)
He loved her, both for her fault and her redemption of it, more than he had ever thought that he could love her; for he had believed that in their kiss love had reached its uttermost. But love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922), p. 172
Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light , though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun . And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear , and all the good from love.
Eleanor Farjeon , Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922), p. 174
Prometheus , I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart ,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night .
Philip José Farmer , "In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love
That fights to keep us rooted in the earth ,
But also urges us to dare the stars ,
This irresistible, this ancient power
Wedged in the soul , unshakable, is the light
That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space .
Philip José Farmer , Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
The way is open, comrades, free as Space
Alone is free. The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
Philip José Farmer , Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
We hope to breed a race of men whose power
Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
Above will be below when man has Love.
Philip José Farmer , Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
God , Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth
In our fingers, give us power, give us light
To hold all love within our breast's small space.
Philip José Farmer , Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
They say love dies between two people. That's wrong. It doesn't die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you are not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn't die; you're the one that dies.
Charlotte Rittenmeyer in William Faulkner , The Wild Palms (1939). New York: Vintage Books, 1966, p. 83
Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough!
Richard Feynman , Note to the mother of Marcus Chown , who had admired the profile of Feynman presented in the BBC TV Horizon program "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981). Written after Chown asked Feynman to write her a birthday note, hoping it would increase her interest in science.
Photo of note published in No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996), by Christopher Sykes, page 161.
In a " Quantum theory via 40-tonne trucks ", The Independent (17 January 2010), and in a audio interview on BBC 4 (September 2010), Chown recalled the note as: "Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics. Physics is not the most important thing, love is."
Just one step at a time
And closer to destiny
I knew at a glance
There'd always be a chance for me
With someone I could live for
Nowhere I would rather be.
Is your love strong enough
Like a rock in the sea?
Am I asking too much?
Is your love strong enough?
"Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by Bryan Ferry (YouTube Video)
At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.
F. Scott Fitzgerald , Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), "The Diamond As Big As The Ritz"
All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— 'I love you.'
I believe that a woman should love a man for what he is, not for what she wants him to be.
Weebo in film Flubber
I wish I could take what I'm feeling right now and put it in the water system so everybody could drink it and we would all love each other.
Jamie Foxx , at the Golden Globes ceremony (2005)
I love love
I love being in love
I don't care what it does to me
The Format , in "Inches and Failing"
Masood, a young lady has fallen in love with me—at least so I judge from her letters. Awkward is it not—awkward and surprising. You would be flattered and twirl your moustache, but I am merely uncomfortable. I wish she would stop, as she is very nice, and I enjoyed being friends. What an ill constructed world this is! Love is always being given where it is not required.
E. M. Forster , Selected Letters: Letter 137, to Syed Ross Masood (5 December 1914)
En art comme en amour, l'instinct suffit.
In art as in love, instinct is enough.
Anatole France , Le Jardin d'Épicure [The Garden of Epicurus] (1894)
Un conte sans amour est comme du boudin sans moutarde; c’est chose insipide.
A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.
Anatole France , La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels], (1914), ch. VIII
Les amants qui aiment bien n'écrivent pas leur bonheur.
Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness .
Anatole France , The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), La Bûche [The Log] (30 November 1859)
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets , proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
Benjamin Franklin , Poor Richard (1755)
How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.
Sigmund Freud in a letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays (27 June 1882); published in Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939 (1961), 10-12
Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.
Sigmund Freud in a letter to Carl Jung (1906), as quoted in Freud and Man's Soul (1984) by Bruno Bettelheim
...three of life's most important areas: work, love, and taking responsibility.
Sigmund Freud in From The Wolf-man and Sigmund Freud Muriel Gardiner, p. 365 (cf. books.google.com )
Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that "I" and "you" are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
Sigmund Freud 's Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by Joan Riviere (1961)
It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive manifestations of their aggressiveness.
Sigmund Freud 's Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 5, as translated by James Strachey and Anna Freud (1961)
Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.
Erich Fromm , Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947), Ch. 3
In Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made:
Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
Erich Fromm , The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 3: The Human Situation, Sect. C "Rootedness — Brotherliness vs. Incest”
I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
Erich Fromm , Art of Loving (1956)
Love is an act of faith , and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956)
Only if he [man] develops his reason and his love, if he can experience the natural and the social world in a human way, can he feel at home, secure in himself, and the master of his life.
Erich Fromm , The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 4: Mental Health and Society, p. 68
Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
Erich Fromm , The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 5: Man in Capitalistic Society, p. 147
It is considered immoral to keep one "love" partner beyond a relatively short period of time. "Love" is short-lived sexual desire, which must be satisfied immediately.
Erich Fromm , The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 4: Mental Health and Society, Ch. 5: Man in Capitalistic Society, p. 165
Envy , jealousy , ambition , any kind of greed are passions ; love is an action , the practice of human power , which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2
In spite of the universalistic spirit of the monotheistic Western religions and of the progressive political concepts that are expressed in the idea "that all men are created equal ," love for mankind has not become a common experience . Love for mankind is looked upon as an achievement which, at best, follows love for an individual or as an abstract concept to be realized only in the future. But love for man cannot be separated from love for one individual. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956)
The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956)
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton — well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956)
The portion of this statement, "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence" has been widely quoted alone, resulting in a less reserved expression, and sometimes the portion following it has been as well: "Any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature."
To speak of love is not "preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
Erich Fromm , The Art of Loving (1956)
I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.
I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
Erich Fromm , Credo (1965)
I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy.
I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create...
Erich Fromm , Credo (1965)
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost , as quoted in a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957) by Sydney Cox in Vermont History, Vol. 25 (1957), p. 355
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
Harry Emerson Fosdick , Riverside Sermons (1958), p. 100
I got love, I got so much love, love in my heart, and this feeling I can't let it go.
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history .
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief .
And I believe that love is stronger than death .
Robert Fulghum , "Credo" at his official website ; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
You want my opinion ? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
Robert Fulghum , True Love (1998)
Love the battle between chaos and imagination .
Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.
Robert Fulghum , "Alice-Alice" in Third Wish (2006)
Truth is cosmically total: synergetic . Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, with no exceptions. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral.
Buckminster Fuller , Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.54
The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
Buckminster Fuller , Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.56
G[ edit ]
It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving. ~ John Galsworthy
Nothing is impossible for pure love. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return. ~ Robert Graves
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. ~ Khalil Gibran
All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself. ~ Khalil Gibran
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny [...] has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. ~ Emma Goldman
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you,
And longer if I may ~ Ellie Goulding
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. ~ Che Guevara
Love and compassion are necessities , not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.
John Galsworthy , A Bit O' Love (1915)
Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of other men — all this was precious to her beyond everything.
Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t'aime davantage,
Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain.
For, you see, each day I love you more,
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
Rosemonde Gérard , "L'éternelle chanson", IX, Les Pipeaux; in P. Dupré, Encyclopédie des Citations (1959), p. 176
Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy.
Khalil Gibran , "Peace", Tears and Laughter, trans. Anthony R. Ferris (1949), p. 30
Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
Robert Graves , "Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961)
New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.
Robert Graves , Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), "Marigolds"
Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
Robert Graves , Country Sentiment (1920), "Advice To Lovers"
Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.
Robert Graves , Country Sentiment (1920), "Advice To Lovers"
Nothing is impossible for pure love.
Mahatma Gandhi , An Autobiography (1927), Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 11
All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 12
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Marriage, page 15
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Time
He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons might look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: "All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself.
Love is a sacred mystery.
To those who love, it remains forever wordless;
But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest.
Khalil Gibran , Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
Khalil Gibran , Chapter: Children of Gods, Scions of Apes in The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994), Edited by Robin H. Waterfield, translated by Juan R. I. Cole
My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.
Khalil Gibran , The Vision : Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994) edited by Robin H. Waterfield, translated by Juan R. I. Cole
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
Khalil Gibran , in The Prophet (1923)
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
Emma Goldman , "Marriage and Love" in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love.
Oliver Goldsmith , The Deserted Village (1770), line 29
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you,
And longer if I may
Ellie Goulding , How Long Will I Love You (10 November 2013) from the 2013 album Halcyon Days
Love is like a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the snow weasels come.
Matt Groening in the book, Love is Hell (1986)
Che mai
Non v'avere ò provate, ò possedute.
Far worse it is
Giovanni Battista Guarini , Il pastor fido (1590)
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Excerpts from the two paragraphs above have sometimes been quoted in abbreviated form: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Variant translation: One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Che Guevara , Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965), A letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of Marcha a radical weekly published in Montevideo, Uruguay; published as "From Algiers, for Marcha : The Cuban Revolution Today" (12 March 1965); also published in Verde Olivo, the magazine of the Cuban armed forces "Socialism and Man in Cuba" - Variant translation by Margarita Zimmermann
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity.
G. I. Gurdjieff , All and Everything : Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)
Love and compassion are necessities , not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection (2004); also quoted in A Small Drop of Ink: A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages (2003) by Linda Pendleton
If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue
Tenzin Gyatso , The Little Book of Buddhism (2000)
H[ edit ]
Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
[...]
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.~ William Ernest Henley
Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect. ~ Hermann Hesse
To love is to act ~ Victor Hugo
Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another. ~ Victor Hugo
What is love? Baby, don't hurt me. Don't hurt me, no more.
Nestor Alexander Haddaway , "What Is Love" (1993), written by Dieter Lünstedt and Karin Hartmann-Eisenblätter, The Album (May 1993), Germany: Coconut Records
All religions are incorporated in the principle of Truth, Simplicity and Love.
Haidakhan Babaji , The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981.
Your first love has no beginning or end. Your first love is not your first love, and it is not your last. It is just love. It is one with everything.
Nhat Hanh , Cultivating the Mind of Love (2005)
Full Circle Publishing ISBN 81-216-0676-4
Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person.
I need to be free with you tonight
I need your love
Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding, I Need Your Love (2013) from the 2012 album 18 Months
The principal difference between love and hate is that love is an irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred. All the fearful counterfeits of love — possessiveness, lust, vanity, jealousy — are closer to hate: they concentrate on the object, guard it, suck it dry.
Sydney J. Harris , Strictly Personal (1953), "Love and Its Loveless Counterfeits"
Freud 's prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
Sydney J. Harris , Pieces of Eight (1982)
When I'm not near the girl I love,
I love the girl I'm near.
Yip Harburg , "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" in Finian's Rainbow (1946) - Tommy Steele version
Dorothy: If, neither of us had memories, and we met, so, then would you and I fall in love as well?
Roger: That's, um, well...
Dorothy: I warned you, it was a tough question.
Dorothy: So then, Mr. Wise fell in love out of loneliness, right?
Roger: Sorry, that question is too tough to answer. What was your second question?
Dorothy: Forget it. If you thought the last question was tough, this one is worse.
The Big O Missing Cat written by Keiichi Hasegawa
Love, whether newly-born or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the hearts so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter (1850), p. 153
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
** " Jubal Harshaw " in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "Uncut" edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: "Dr. Harshaw says that 'the word "love" designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.'"
Robert A. Heinlein , Stranger in a Strange Land (1961, 1991), chapter His Scandalous Career
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.
Robert A. Heinlein , Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), chapter His Scandalous Career
The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
So man and woman will keep their trust,
Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife,
And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
And they that go with the Word unsaid,
Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.
William Ernest Henley , Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XXI
The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
Matthew Henry in Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1, under Genesis 2:21. [3]
Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.
George Herbert , Jacula Prudentum (1651)
Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
Hermann Hesse , Peter Camenzind (1904)
That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!
Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.'
Hermann Hesse , Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth (1919), first published under the pseudonym "Emil Sinclair"
Here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
Billie Holiday , "Easy Living"
The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
Josiah Gilbert Holland , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393
The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.
Josiah Gilbert Holland , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394
Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as "Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness".
Love is the irreconcilable foe of the prevailing rationality, for lovers preserve and protect neither themselves nor the collectivity. They throw themselves away; that is why wrath is heaped upon them. Romeo and Juliet died in conflict with society for that which was heralded by this society. In unreasonably surrendering themselves to one another they sustained the freedom of the individual as against the dominion of the world of things.
Max Horkheimer , “The End of Reason,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 43
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
Love! A dark and starry transfiguration is mingled with that torment. There is ecstacy in the agony.
Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo , Book V - An End Unlike the Beginning, Ch. IV - A Heart Beneath A Stone
Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.
Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo , Book IX - Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn, Ch. V - Night Behind Which Is Dawn
Aimer, c'est agir
To love is to act
Victor Hugo , Last words of his diary, written two weeks before his death. Victor Hugo complete writings, Jean-Jacques Pauvert , editor, 1970
I[ edit ]
Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
Hold the person that you love closely if they're next to you, the one you love, not the person that'll simply have sex with you.
Immortal Technique , "You Never Know", Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)
Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
Robert G. Ingersoll , Orthodoxy, Works, Vol. II (1884), p. 420
Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love.
J[ edit ]
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. ~ John 4:18
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ~ Steve Jobs
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle. ~ Steve Jobs
All the powers of soul and body, memory , understanding , and will , interior and exterior senses , the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love... ~ John of the Cross
-->
There is nothing better or more necessary than love. ~ John of the Cross
Love loves to love love. ~ James Joyce
The ground of mercy is love, and the working of mercy is our keeping in love. ~ Julian of Norwich
Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending. ~ Julian of Norwich
Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not alway in peace and in love. ~ Julian of Norwich
If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love. ~ Julian of Norwich
Our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live. ~ Julian of Norwich
Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. ~ Carl Jung
Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love.
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
in amando Christum Deum,
O Mother, fountain of love,
make me feel the power of sorrow,
that I may grieve with you
Grant that my heart may burn
in the love of Christ my Lord,
that I may greatly please Him.
Stabat Mater , authorship unknown, variously attributed to Jacopone da Todi and to Pope Innocent III
Better get ready gonna see the light
Love, love is the answer and that's all right
So don't you give up now so easy to find
Just look to your soul and open your mind
Tommy James , Eddie Gray and Mike Vale, Crystal Blue Persuasion (1969)
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.
William James , The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology
If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.
William James , Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals, 1911
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Jesus Christ in Matthew 6:21
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:5
I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Jesus Christ in Luke 6:34–35
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Jesus Christ , in John 13:34-35
My Father is glorified in this, that you keep bearing much fruit and prove yourselves my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love. “These things I have spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends. You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because I have made known to you all the things I have heard from my Father.
Steve Jobs , Stanford University commencement address (12 June 2005)
Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.
John of the Cross , reported in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2002), p. 231
In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers ,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.
John of the Cross , Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom , stanza 28
I have said that God is pleased with nothing but love; but before I explain this, it will be as well to set forth the grounds on which the assertion rests. All our works , and all our labours, how grand soever they may be, are nothing in the sight of God, for we can give Him nothing, neither can we by them fulfil His desire, which is the growth of our soul. As to Himself He desires nothing of this, for He has need of nothing, and so, if He is pleased with anything it is with the growth of the soul ; and as there is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a manner equal to Him, for this reason only is He pleased with our love. It is the property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love. Hence the soul, because of its perfect love, is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with Him. In this equality and friendship all things are common, as the Bridegroom Himself said to His disciples: I have called you friends, because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.
John of the Cross , Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom , Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza 27
My sole occupation is love.
All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God , all the powers of soul and body, memory , understanding , and will , interior and exterior senses , the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love.
John of the Cross , Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom , Notes to the Stanzas, Explanation of Stanza 28 part 8
There is nothing better or more necessary than love.
John of the Cross , Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom , Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza, 28 part 1
When the soul, then, in any degree possesses the spirit of solitary love, we must not interfere with it. We should inflict a grievous wrong upon it, and upon the Church also, if we were to occupy it, were it only for a moment, in exterior or active duties, however important they might be. When God Himself adjures all not to waken it from its love, who shall venture to do so, and be blameless? In a word, it is for this love that we are all created. Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing unto God — setting aside the good example they would give if they would spend at least one half their time in prayer, even though they may have not attained to the state of unitive love.
John of the Cross , Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom , Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza 28 part 3
Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.
John of the Cross , The Sayings of Light and Love, Dichos de Luz y Amor, as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
She's the goddess of all things sweaty and sticky.
Arthur M. Jolly Cupid (referring to Venus) in The Waiting Room of the Gods (2009)
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong in How to Save Your Own Life (1977)
Theodore: No, don’t do this to me. Don’t turn this around on me. You’re the one that’s being selfish. We’re in a relationship.
Samantha: But the heart is not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love. I’m different from you. This doesn't make me love you anyless, it actually makes me love you more.
Theodore: No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re mine or you’re not mine.
Samantha: No, Theodore. I’m yours and I’m not yours.
Her (film) written by Spike Jonze
Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.
Alejandro Jodorowsky Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)
Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.
Notes (1913) made by James Joyce , for his play Exiles
One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.
James Joyce , Dubliners (1914), chapter "A Painful Case"
Love loves to love love.
James Joyce , Ulysses (1946), ch. 12: Cyclops, p. 327
He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 8
Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 22
Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not alway in peace and in love.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 39
We give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 40
Truth seeth God , and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made, and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.
In which marvelling he seeth his God, his Lord, his Maker so high, so great, and so good, in comparison with him that is made, that scarcely the creature seemeth ought to the self. But the clarity and the clearness of Truth and Wisdom maketh him to see and to bear witness that he is made for Love, in which God endlessly keepeth him.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 44
The ground of mercy is love, and the working of mercy is our keeping in love. And this was shewed in such manner that I could not have perceived of the part of mercy but as it were alone in love; that is to say, as to my sight.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48
Mercy is a sweet gracious working in love, mingled with plenteous pity: for mercy worketh in keeping us, and mercy worketh turning to us all things to good. Mercy, by love, suffereth us to fail in measure and in as much as we fail, in so much we fall; and in as much as we fall, in so much we die: for it needs must be that we die in so much as we fail of the sight and feeling of God that is our life. Our failing is dreadful, our falling is shameful, and our dying is sorrowful: but in all this the sweet eye of pity and love is lifted never off us, nor the working of mercy ceaseth.
For I beheld the property of mercy, and I beheld the property of grace: which have two manners of working in one love.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48
Our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48
Love and Dread are brethren, and they are rooted in us by the Goodness of our Maker, and they shall never be taken from us without end. We have of nature to love and we have of grace to love: and we have of nature to dread and we have of grace to dread.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 70
All that is contrary to love and peace is of the Fiend and of his part.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 77
Where I say that He abideth sorrowfully and moaning, it meaneth all the true feeling that we have in our self, in contrition and compassion, and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. And all such that is speedful, it is Christ in us. And though some of us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He hath brought us out of all our woe. For love suffereth never to be without pity.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 80
If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 82
Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope , and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 84
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 84
I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.
Julian of Norwich , Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 86
Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen machtwillen, und wo die macht den vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine ist der Schatten des andern.
Translation: Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
K[ edit ]
The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Love will come find you
Just to remind you
[...] See that's the thing about love
[...] Then life
So you don't give up ~ Alicia Keys
Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire? ~ Omar Khayyam
When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
What is it that makes a person great, admired by creation, well pleasing in the eyes of God? What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it that makes a person unwavering, unwavering as a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? –It is love! ~ Søren Kierkegaard
Above all do not forget your duty to love yourself. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.. ~ Helen Keller
He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn. ~ Joyce Kilmer
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain. ~ Joyce Kilmer
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow? ~ Carole King
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart. ~ Carole King
We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way. Martin Luther King
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. ~ Martin Luther King
Love is the supreme unifying principle of life. ~ Martin Luther King
We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. [...] We must follow nonviolence and love. ~ Martin Luther King
Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody. ~ Martin Luther King
Love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart. ~ Stephen King
Feelings of love and gratitude arise directly and spontaneously in the baby in response to the love and care of his mother. ~ Melanie Klein
What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Only the free mind knows what Love is. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
You are what you love, not what loves you.
"Donald Kaufman" ( Nicolas Cage ) in Adaptation (2001 film)
The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.
Nikos Kazantzakis , The Saviors of God (1923), "Italy", Ch. 18, p. 182
I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! — then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats , Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 1
Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
Where long ago a giant battle was;
And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity: the crown of these
Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
Upon the forehead of humanity.
John Keats , Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 789
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.
John Keats , Poems (1820), "Lamia", Pt. II, l. 1
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!
John Keats , Poems (1820), "Ode to Psyche", st. 5
Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth's, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.
Helen Keller , The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
Helen Keller , The Story of My Life (1905), p. 203
Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people?
Friedrich Kellner , diary entry (30 March 1940)
Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.
Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), in The Imitation of Christ , pt. 3, ch. 6 (1471)
Love will come find you
Just to remind you
[...] See that's the thing about love
[...] Then life
Rama Chandra (Bernard White), The Matrix Revolutions
Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?
Omar Khayyam , Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza IX. FitzGerald's Trans
The resolving of the ethical, is freedom; the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.
Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, Hong p. 111
When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.
Søren Kierkegaard , Works of Love (1847)
In order to eliminate misunderstandings, the main point is that marriage is a τέλος , yet not for nature’s striving so that we touch on the meaning of the τέλος in the mysteries, but for the individuality. But if it is a τέλος, it is not something immediate but an act of freedom, and belonging under freedom as it does, the task is actualized only through a resolution. Erotic love or falling in love is altogether immediate; marriage is a resolution; yet falling in love must be taken up into marriage or into the resolution; to will to marry-that is the most immediate of all immediacies must also be the freest resolution, that which is so inexplicable in its immediacy that it must be attributed to a deity must also come about by virtue of deliberation, and such exhaustive deliberation that from it a resolution results. Furthermore, the one must not follow the other; the resolution must not come slinking along behind but must occur simultaneously; both parts must be present in the moment of decision. If deliberation has not exhausted thought, then I make no resolution; I act either on inspiration or on the basis of a whim.
Søren Kierkegaard , Stages On Life's Way, 1845, Hong p. 101-102
The eternal fears no future, hopes for no future, but love possesses everything without ceasing, and there is no shadow of variation. As soon as he returns to himself, he understands this no more. He understands what bitter experiences have only all too unforgettably inculcated, the self-accusation, if the past has the kind of claim upon his soul that no repentance can entirely redeem, no trusting in God can entirely wipe out, but only God himself in the inexpressible silence of beatitude. The more of the past a person’s soul can still keep when he is left to himself, the more profound he is.
Søren Kierkegaard , Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 p. 338 (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses)
Above all do not forget your duty to love yourself.
Søren Kierkegaard , Letter to Hans Peter, Kierkegaard's cousin (1848)
Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.
** Søren Kierkegaard , On Regine Olsen , (2 February 1839)
What is it that makes a person great, admired by creation, well pleasing in the eyes of God? What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it that makes a person unwavering, unwavering as a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? –It is love! What is it that is older than everything? It is love. What is it that outlives everything? It is love. What is it that cannot be taken but itself takes all? It is love. What is it that cannot be given but itself gives all? It is love. What is it that perseveres when everything falls away? It is love. What is it that comforts when all comfort fails? It is love. What is it that endures when everything is changed? It is love. What is it that remains when the imperfect is abolished? It is love. What is it that witnesses when prophecy is silent? It is love. What is it that does not cease when the vision ends? It is love. What is it that sheds light when the dark saying ends? It is love. What is it that gives blessing to the abundance of the gift? It is love. What is it that gives pith to the angel’s words? It is love. What is it that makes the widow’s gift an abundance? It is love. What is it that turns the words of the simple person into wisdom? It is love. What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love; and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else. It is love!
Søren Kierkegaard , Three Upbuilding Discourses , Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 55
What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love. And only that which never becomes something else is love, that which gives away everything and for that reason demands nothing, that which demands nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, that which blesses and blesses when it is cursed, that which loves its neighbor but whose enemy is also its neighbor, that which leaves revenge to the Lord because it takes comfort in the thought that he is even more merciful.
Søren Kierkegaard , Three Upbuilding Discourses , Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 57
When love lives in the heart, the eye is shut and does not discover the open act of sin, to say nothing of the concealed act … When love lives in the heart, the ear is shut and does not hear what the world says, does not hear the bitterness of blasphemy, because he who says, “you fool”, to his brother is guilty before the council, but he who hears it when it is said to him is not perfect in love. … When rashness lives in the heart, a person is quick to discover the multiplicity of sin, then he understands splendidly a fragmentary utterance, hastily comprehends at a distance something scarcely enunciated. When love lives in the heart, a person understands slowly and does not hear at all words said in haste and does not understand them when repeated because he assigns them good position and a good meaning. He does not understand a long angry and insulting verbal assault, because he is waiting for one more word that will give it meaning. When fear lives in the heart, a person easily discovers the multiplicity of sin, discovers deceit and delusion and disloyalty and scheming, discovers that; Every heart is a net, Every rogue like a child, Every promise like a shadow. But the love that hides a multitude of sins is never deceived.
Søren Kierkegaard , Three Upbuilding Discourses , Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 60-61
When stinginess lives in the heart, when one gives with one eye and looks with seven to see what one obtains in return one readily discovers the multiplicity of sin. But when love lives in the heart, then the eye is never deceived, because when love gives, it does not watch the gift but keeps its eye on the Lord. When envy lives in the heart, the eye has the power to elicit the impure even from the pure; but when love lives in the heart, the eye has the power to love forth the good in the impure, but his eye sees not the impure but the pure, which it loves, and loves forth by loving it. Yes, there is a power in this world that in its language translates good into evil, but there is power from above that translates evil into good-it is the love that hides a multitude of sins. … When hate lives in the heart, sin is right there at the door of a human being, and the multitude of its cravings is present to him. But when love lives in the heart, then sin flees far away and he does not even catch a glimpse of it.
Søren Kierkegaard , Three Upbuilding Discourses , Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 61
But with love it is most joyous of all. For there is a love, that blazes up and is forgotten; there is a love that unites and divides -- a love until death. But then -- in death, in death’s decision, there is born a love that does not flame up, that is not equivocal, that is not -- until death, but beyond death, a love that endures. In this love under the pain of the wish, the sufferer is committed to the Good. Oh, you sufferer, whoever you may be, will you then with doubleness of mind seek the relief that temporal existence can give, the relief that permits you to forget your suffering (yes, so you think) but rather that allows you to forget the Eternal! Will you in doubleness of mind despair, because all is lost (yes, so you think) yet with the Eternal all is to be won! Will you in doubleness of mind despair? Have you considered what it is to despair? Alas, it is to deny that God is love! Think that over properly, one who despairs abandons himself (yes, so you think); nay, he abandons God! Oh, weary not your soul with that which is passing and with momentary relief. Grieve not your spirit with forms of comfort which this world affords. Do not in suicidal fashion murder the wish; but rather win the highest by hope, by faith, by love -- as the mightiest of all are able to do: commit yourself to the Good!
Søren Kierkegaard , Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (1847), Steere p. 149-151
Every human being can come to know everything about love, just as every human being can come to know that he, like every human being, is loved by God. Some find this thought adequate for the longest life others find this thought so insignificant ...
Søren Kierkegaard , Works of Love (1847), Hong 1995 Princeton University Press p. 364
The intoxication of self-feeling is the most intense, and the height of this intoxication is most admired. Love and friendship are the very height of self-feeling, the I intoxicated in the other-I. The more securely the two I's come together to become one I, the more this united I selfishly cuts itself off from all others.
Søren Kierkegaard , Works of Love (1847)
Perfection in the object is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object; friendship is determined by the object; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any of the more definite qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love.
Søren Kierkegaard , Works of Love (1847)
Someone absolutely in love does not know whether he is more in love or less in love than others, because anyone who knows that is definitely not absolutely in love. Neither does he know that he is the only person who has truly been in love, because if he knew that, he would not be absolutely in love-and yet he knows that a third party cannot understand him, because a third party will understand him generally in relation to an object of passion but not in relation to the absoluteness of passion.
Søren Kierkegaard , Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments P. 509
It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?
Søren Kierkegaard , Journal entry (1 August 1835)
For, once he thrilled with high romance
And tuned to love his eager voice.
Like any cavalier of France
He wooed the maiden of his choice.
And now deep in his weary heart
Are sacred flames that whitely burn.
He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn.
Joyce Kilmer , Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen
The song within your heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Joyce Kilmer , Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory
Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Joyce Kilmer , Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory
Tonight You're mine completely,
You give your love so sweetly
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow?
I'd like to know that your love
Is love I can be sure of,
So tell me now and I won't ask again,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
The people gonna treat you better,
You're gonna find, yes you will,
That you're beautiful as you feel.
If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.
Carole King , Tapestry (1971), Beautiful
We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: "Love your enemies , bless them that curse you , pray for them that despitefully use you." Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , “Give Us the Ballot” Address (1957) Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (Call to Conscience) Washington, D.C.
Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , in "Loving Your Enemies" Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)
But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , in "Loving Your Enemies" Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)
Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , Strength to Love (1963), Last paragraph of section III of Antidotes for fear, page 122 (see link at top of the section)
We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world .
Martin Luther King, Jr. , in his Nobel Lecture, delivered in the Auditorium of the University of Oslo at (11 December 1964)
Love is basic for the very survival of mankind. I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good. He who loves has somehow discovered the meaning of ultimate reality. He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God. Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
Martin Luther King, Jr. , Keep Moving From This Mountain , Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood (25 February 1965)
When love leaves the world , all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope , which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
Light of my tents, be fleet—
Morning awaits at the end of the world,
And the world is all at our feet.
Rudyard Kipling , The Gypsy Trail (1892)
The white moth to the closing vine,
The bee to the open clover,
And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
Ever the wide world over.
Rudyard Kipling , The Gypsy Trail (1892)
The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky
The deer to the wholesome wold;
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
As it was in the days of old.
Rudyard Kipling , The Gypsy Trail (1892)
Feelings of love and gratitude arise directly and spontaneously in the baby in response to the love and care of his mother.
Melanie Klein (1937, p. 311) as cited in: David Mann (2013) Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. p. 79
Agape's object is always the concrete individual, not some abstraction called humanity. Love of humanity is easy because humanity does not surprise you with inconvenient demands. You never find humanity on your doorstep, stinking and begging.
Peter Kreeft , Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics, II.A.30: "Love" [4]
What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is". Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , "Ninth Talk in Bombay, (14 March 1948) , J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. BO48Q1, published in The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 200
Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not enslaved by tradition and memory. It is attention that allows silence to come upon the mind, which is the opening of the door to creation. That is why attention is of the highest importance. Knowledge is necessary at the functional level as a means of cultivating the mind, and not as an end in itself. We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human being. How is the state of attention to be brought about? It cannot be cultivated through persuasion, comparison, reward or punishment, all of which are forms of coercion. The elimination of fear is the beginning of attention. Fear must exist as long as there is an urge to be or to become, which is the pursuit of success, with all its frustrations and tortuous contradictions. You can teach concentration, but attention cannot be taught just as you cannot possibly teach freedom from fear; but we can begin to discover the causes that produce fear, and in understanding these causes there is the elimination of fear. So attention arises spontaneously when around the student there is an atmosphere of well-being, when he has the feeling of being secure, of being at ease, and is aware of the disinterested action that comes with love. Love does not compare, and so the envy and torture of "becoming" cease.
ISBN 978-1577315179
You know, actually we have no love — that is a terrible thing to realize. Actually we have no love; we have sentiment; we have emotionality, sensuality, sexuality; we have remembrances of something which we have thought as love. But actually, brutally, we have no love. Because to have love means no violence, no fear, no competition, no ambition. If you had love you will never say, "This is my family." You may have a family and give them the best you can; but it will not be "your family" which is opposed to the world. If you love, if there is love, there is peace. If you loved, you would educate your child not to be a nationalist, not to have only a technical job and look after his own petty little affairs; you would have no nationality. There would be no divisions of religion, if you loved. But as these things actually exist — not theoretically, but brutally — in this ugly world, it shows that you have no love. Even the love of a mother for her child is not love. If the mother really loved her child, do you think the world would be like this? She would see that he had the right food, the right education, that he was sensitive, that he appreciated beauty, that he was not ambitious, greedy, envious. So the mother, however much she may think she loves her child, does not love the child. So we have not that love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , Varanasi 5th Public Talk (28 November 1964), The Collected Works, Vol. XV
Only the free mind knows what Love is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , Speech at the University of California, Berkley, as broadcast by Pacifica Radio (4 January 1969)
Can't you fall in love and not have a possessive relationship? I love someone and she loves me and we get married — that is all perfectly straightforward and simple, in that there is no conflict at all. (When I say we get married I might just as well say we decide to live together — don't let's get caught up in words.) Can't one have that without the other, without the tail as it were, necessarily following? Can't two people be in love and both be so intelligent and so sensitive that there is freedom and absence of a centre that makes for conflict? Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. The loss of energy is in the tail, in everything that follows — jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, doubt, the fear of losing that love, the constant demand for reassurance and security. Surely it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows. Of course it is.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 3 (1969), and Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 4, (1969)
The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, in being reborn in another life. When you enquire what it is that is going to be born in the next life, you come up against difficulties. What is it? Yourself? What are you? a lot of words, a lot of opinions, attachments to your possessions, to your furniture, to your conditioning. Is all that, which you call the soul, going to be reborn in the next life? Reincarnation implies that what you are today determines what you will be again in the next life. Therefore behave! — not tomorrow, but today, because what you do today you are going to pay for in the next life. People who believe in reincarnation do not bother about behavior;t all; it is just a matter of belief, which has no value. Incarnate today, afresh not in the next life! Change it now completely, change with great passion, let the mind strip itself of everything, of every conditioning, every knowledge, of everything it thinks is "right" — empty it. Then you will know what dying means; and then you will know what love is. For love is not something of the past, of thought, of culture; it is not pleasure. A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , 6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) 'The Mechanical Activity of Thought" in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6
It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and, therefore, to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees, everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now, and we will have no wars.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , Talks in Saanen (1974), p. 71
The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one's particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , The Urgency of Change (1970), Conversation 5
The very nature of intelligence is sensitivity, and this sensitivity is love. Without this intelligence there can be no compassion. Compassion is not the doing of charitable acts or social reform; it is free from sentiment, romanticism and emotional enthusiasm. It is as strong as death. It is like a great rock, immovable in the midst of confusion, misery and anxiety. Without this compassion no new culture or society can come into being. Compassion and intelligence walk together; they are not separate. Compassion acts through intelligence. It can never act through the intellect. Compassion is the essence of the wholeness of life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985), Vol. I, p. 113
Questioner: Can one love truth without loving man? Can one love man without loving truth? What comes first?
Krishnamurti: Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself, and you cannot search for the unknowable away from relationship. You cannot search for reality, or for what you will, in isolation. It comes into being only in relationship, only when there is right relationship between man and man. So the love of man is the search for reality.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 172
Please let us be clear on this point — that you cannot by any process, through any discipline, through any form of meditation, go to truth, God, or whatever name you like to give it. It is much too vast, it cannot possibly be conceived of; no description will cover it, no book can hold it, nor any word contain it. So you cannot by any devious method, by any sacrifice, by any discipline or through any guru, go to it. You must await it, it will come to you, you cannot go to it. That is the fundamental thing one has to understand, that not through any trick of the mind, not through any control, through any virtue, any compulsion, any form of suppression, can the mind possibly go to truth. All that the mind can do is be quiet but not with the intention of receiving it. And that is one of the most difficult things of all because we think truth can be experienced right away through doing certain things. Truth is not to be bought any more than love can be bought.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , The Collected Works, Second Talk in Poona (10 September 1958) , J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 580910, Vol. XI, p. 20
We know only fragmentarily this extraordinary thing called life; we have never looked at sorrow, except through the screen of escapes; we have never seen the beauty, the immensity of death, and we know it only through fear and sadness. There can be understanding of life, and of the significance and beauty of death, only when the mind on the instant perceives “what is”.You know, sirs, although we differentiate them, love, death, and sorrow are all the same; because, surely, love, death, and sorrow are the unknowable. The moment you know love, you have ceased to love. Love is beyond time; it has no beginning and no end, whereas knowledge has; and when you say, “I know what love is”, you don’t. You know only a sensation, a stimulus. You know the reaction to love, but that reaction is not love. In the same way, you don’t know what death is. You know only the reactions to death, and you will discover the full depth and significance of death only when the reactions have ceased.
Jiddu Krishnamurti , The Collected Works, Vol. XI, p. 288
If you want something very, very badly, let it go free.
If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever.
If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with. ~ Jess Lair
rightThe Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul , and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion. ~ William Law
Those that go searching for love
only make manifest their own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it. ~ D. H. Lawrence
TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. ~ Gottfried Leibniz
If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love. ~ Bruce Lee
The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow. ~ John Lennon
I love you, always forever
Near and far, close and together
Everywhere, I will be with you
Everything, I will do for you. ~ Donna Lewis
Without love no life left on earth. ~ Donna Lewis
Love is the state of enlightenment and enlightenment is the state of love. You can't make any separation between them. Enlightenment is the state of no feelings and pure knowledge and so is love. ~ Barry Long
Love is a power, a mighty principle that exists in its own right independent of any individual. Man changes, but the principle of love does not and cannot. Love does not leave men and women. Men and women leave love. ~ Barry Long
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. ~ Madeleine L'Engle
If you want something very, very badly, let it go free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.
Jess Lair, an educator, published this saying In 1969, which he obtained from a junior or senior college student according to the Quote Investigator
You may find many a brighter one
Than your own rose, but there are none
So true to thee, Love.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (5th January 1822) 'Song - Are other eyes beguiling, Love ?'
Do any thing but love ; or if thou lovest
And art a Woman, hide thy love from him
Who thou dost worship ; never let him know
How dear he is ; flit like a bird before him, —
Lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower ;
But be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird,
When caught and caged, be left to pine neglected,
And perish in forgetfulness.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (26th April 1823) 'Fragment'
Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
Intense delicious throbs!
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The London Literary Gazette (12th October 1822), 'The Basque Girl and Henri Quatre'
I loved him too as woman loves —
Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The Improvisatrice (1824), Title poem
Love is like the glass,
That throws its own rich colour over all,
And makes all beautiful.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The Improvisatrice (1824), 'Roland's Tower'
And Love is like the lightning in its might,
Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea (1827)
And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
She'll only know the name?
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The Improvisatrice (1824), 'Love'
What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
How wild I may not say,
One long and breathless clasp, and then
As life were past away.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The London Literary Gazette (29th March 1823), 'Song - What was our parting ?—one wild kiss'
Love is a pearl of purest hue,
But stormy waves are round it;
And dearly may a woman rue,
The hour that she found it.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823), 'Inez'
Ah! never is that cherished face
Banished from its accustomed place—
It shines upon my weariest night
It leads me on in thickest fight:
All that seems most opposed to be
Is yet associate with thee—
Together life and thee depart,
Dream—idol—treasure of my heart.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834 (1833), 'The Zenana'
There are words to paint the misery of love, but none to paint its happiness ; that childish, glad, and confiding time, to which youth gave its buoyancy and hope its colours. Its language repeated, ever seems exaggerated or foolish ; albeit there are none who have not thought such sounds "honey-sweet" in their time. The truth is, we never make for others the allowance we make for ourselves ; and we should deny even our own words, could we hear them spoken by another.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon , Francesca Carrara (1834), Vol. I, Chapter 1
Pattern love-letter — " I — I — I — you — you — you ; you — you — you — I — I — I," garnished with loves and doves ad libitum.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon The New Monthly Magazine (1834), 'A Calendar of the London Seasons' commencing page 425
These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,
With dear companions now passed out of sight,
Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live,
Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride
Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts
Will meet the offering, of so little worth,
Wanting the benison death has made divine.
Lucy Larcom , Poems (1869), Introductory poem
Give in to love, or live in fear.
Jonathan Larson , "Another Day", Rent (1996)
Well, love is a gift, a lot of people don't remember that. So, you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin' at you from a neverending parade of stupid.
"Motormouth Maybelle" Queen Latifah 's character in " Hairspray " (2007)
Now the Spirit of Love has this Original. God , as considered in himself in his Holy Being, before any thing is brought forth by him or out of him, is only an eternal Will to all Goodness . This is the one eternal immutable God, that from Eternity to Eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less nor any thing else but an eternal Will to all the Goodness that is in himself, and can come from him. The Creation of ever so many Worlds or Systems of Creatures adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God. He always was and always will be the same immutable Will to all Goodness. So that as certainly as he is the Creator, so certainly is he the Blesser of every created Thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness, and Happiness from himself because he has in himself nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the Sun to give forth Darkness, than for God to do, or be, or give forth anything but Blessing and Goodness. Now this is the Ground and Original of the Spirit of Love in the Creature; it is and must be a Will to all Goodness, and you have not the Spirit of Love till you have this Will to all Goodness at all Times and on all Occasions. You may indeed do many Works of Love and delight in them, especially at such Times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your State or Temper or Occurrences in Life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the Spirit of your Life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every Spirit acts with Freedom and Universality according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own Life, or be what it is, no more than you need bid Wrath be wrathful. And therefore when Love is the Spirit of your Life, it will have the Freedom and Universality of a Spirit; it will always live and work in Love, not because of This or That, Here or There, but because the Spirit of Love can only love, wherever it is or goes or whatever is done to it. As the Sparks know no Motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the Darkness of the Night or in the Light of the Day, so the Spirit of Love is always in the same Course; it knows no Difference of Time, Place, or Persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful Work, equally blessed from itself. For the Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul, and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion.
William Law , The Spirit of Love (1752)
The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one's wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great-quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Letter, 2 June 1912 (published in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence , Vol. 1, ed. by James T. Boulton, 1979). Lawrence wrote the letter after eloping to Germany with Frieda von Richthofen, wife of his old university professor, whom he later married.
Those that go searching for love
only make manifest their own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it.
D. H. Lawrence , Search for Love
If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.
Bruce Lee , The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 64
'Cause all of me
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
Give your all to me
I'll give my all to you
You're my end and my beginning
John Legend , All of Me (12 August 2013) from the August 2013 album Love in the Future
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Ch. 10
What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair...Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)
All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 1 “Mending the Green Pitcher” (pp. 47-48)
The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 4 “Dolphin” (p. 231)
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
Ursula K. Le Guin , The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 18 “On the Ice” (p. 249)
TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
Gottfried Leibniz , A Dialogue (c. 1696)
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.
John Lennon , in his final fading statement in " Mind Games " on Mind Games (1973)
How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?
John Lennon , in" How? " from " Imagine ", (1971)
It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 2" by Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook (1962)
Say you'll love, love me forever
Never stop, not for whatever
Near and far and always and
Everywhere and everything.
I love you, always forever
Near and far, close and together
Everywhere, I will be with you
Everything, I will do for you
I love you, always forever
Near and far, close and together
Everywhere, I will be with you
Everything, I will do for you.
Without love I mean nothing to you
Without love broken in two
Without love give me some value some worth
Without love no life left on earth.
Donna Lewis , Without Love (1996) from the 1996 album Now in a Minute
The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
More than a feeling that's the power of love
Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream
Make a bad one good make a wrong one right
Power of love that keeps you home at night
Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)
You don't need money, don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes
But it might just save your life
That's the power of love
Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)
Love is so simple and spiritual. It is not related to social status, age, or even sexual identity.
He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
H 10
Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage — he won't encounter many rivals.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg , Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788). This quote comes from Wikiquote's Lichtenberg Aphorisms section which was begun primarily with translations by R. J. Hollingdale , augmented by other sources, including Selected Writings of Georg C. Lichtenberg (1893) edited by Adolf Wilbrandt
Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything.
It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall.
So love is always growth.
I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding.
Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love.
Harold Lloyd , "What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas". Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company). [6]
I suppose the most radical part of my teaching at present is that love is not a feeling. Everybody suffers from love, or the fear of it, or the lack of it. Why? Why is love so universally and inevitably heart-breaking, whether it be through the end of a love affair, the death of a loved one or being locked in with the habitual casualness or grim indifference of a partner? The answer is because we've been taught and conditioned by the world to believe that love is a feeling.
Barry Long , Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.
Feelings are constantly changing. None is dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today, and tomorrow or next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly.
Barry Long , Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.
Love is the state of enlightenment and enlightenment is the state of love. You can't make any separation between them. Enlightenment is the state of no feelings and pure knowledge and so is love.
Barry Long , Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview An interview of Barry Long by Hal Blacker, editor of What is Enlightenment magazine, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.
Love is the state of enlightenment and enlightenment is the state of love. You can't make any separation between them. Enlightenment is the state of no feelings and pure knowledge and so is love.
Barry Long , Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview An interview of Barry Long by Hal Blacker, editor of What is Enlightenment magazine, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.
Love is not a feeling; it's a sensation. Drinking water when you're thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you're tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don't need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.'
Barry Long , Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.
Love is beyond description; but not beyond demonstrating. Love is beyond the mind because it is always new. Any product of the mind is a reaction of the past, a synthesis of what is old. So the mind is a modifier, a reactor; a renovator, but it cannot create the new.
Barry Long , Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (Barry Long Books, 1996)
Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.
Barry Long , The Way In (2000)
Human love is not love. Love is natural to every body but it becomes human love as the person learns from society to confuse love with sex.
Barry Long , The Way In (2000)
O, there is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love,—the first fluttering of its silken wings.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Hyperion (1839), Book III, Chapter VI
Ah, how skillful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love's command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love's behest
Far excelleth all the rest!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , "The Building of the Ship" in Voices of the Night: The Seaside and the Fireside; and Other Poems (1846), p. 34
That was the first sound in the song of love!
Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.
Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
And play the prelude of our fate. We hear
The voice prophetic, and are not alone.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 109
I love thee, as the good love heaven.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 146
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
It serves for food and raiment.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 5, line 52
How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Part III. Student's Tale. Emma and Eginhard, line 75
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Table-Talk (1857), First published in the Blue and Gold edition of Drift-Wood (1857)
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
James Russell Lowell , Literary Essays, vol. II (1870-1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
"Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do."
Madeleine L'Engle , A Wind in the Door , (1973)
The words " God is love" have this deep meaning: that everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned.
Halford E. Luccock , Keeping Life Out of Confusion Sermon (11 September 1938), as quoted in "Disguised Fascism Seen As A Menace" in The New York Times (12 September 1938), p. 15; also in "Fascism comes wrapped in the flag" (with online facsimile of article)
Underneath a starry sky
Time was still but hours must really have rushed by
I didn't realize
But love was in your eyes
I really should have gone
But love went on and on
Love, it's not an emotion — Love is a promise ! ~ Steven Moffat
Give love and forget that you gave it. ~ Sun Myung Moon
But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty...
George MacDonald , Phantastes (1858), On the Alder Tree
I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death .
Madonna , Frozen (February 23, 1998) from the album Ray of Light (March 3, 1998)
One plus one equals both.
Gregory Maguire , Wicked
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela , Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
I will make love my greatest weapon and none on whom I call can defend against its force.
My reasoning they may counter; my speech they may distrust; my apparel they may disapprove; my face they may reject; and even my bargains may cause them suspicion; yet my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest clay.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
Og Mandino , The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58
Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.
Og Mandino , The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58
Socrates … said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved.
Thomas Mann , Death in Venice, H. Lowe-Porter, trans. (1930), pp. 45-46
Contrary to Pascal 's saying, we don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
Jacques Maritain , Reflections on America‎ (1958), p. 20
To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
Gabriel García Márquez , Love in the Time of Cholera‎ (1985; translated by Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 100
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
Edwin Markham , "Outwitted", from The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913)
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
Johnny Marr and Morrissey , How Soon Is Now? , Hatful of Hollow (1985)
Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate .
José Martí , Letter (1881), as quoted in The Conscience of Worms and the Cowardice of Lions : Cuban Politics and Culture in an American Context (1993) by Irving Louis Horowit, p. 11
In the majority of cases which are brought to me as a consulting psychologist for love and marital adjustment, there are self-deceptions to be uncovered as well as attempts to deceive other people. Beneath such love conflicts there is almost always a festering psychological core of dishonesty.
William Moulton Martson, Lie Detector Test, p. 119 [7]
A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child's ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing-love. It's smart to be strong. It's big to be generous. But it's sissified according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving affectionate, and alluring. "Aw, that;'s girls stuff!" snorts our young comics reader. "Who wants to be a girl?" And that's the point. Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.
William Moulton Marston The Secret History of Wonder Woman, (2014) by Jill Lepore [8]
Love is... born with the pleasure of looking at each other, it is fed with the necessity of seeing each other, it is concluded with the impossibility of separation!
José Martí , Amor (1881)
Mankind is composed of two sorts of men — those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.
José Martí , "Letter to a Cuban Farmer" (1893)
Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything.
José Martí , My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online
Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
José Martí , My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online
There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so. To fulfill one's duty elevates the soul to a state of constant sweetness. Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world .
José Martí , My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online
I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.
Michael Masser and Linda Creed , songwriters of "The Greatest Love of All"
The tragedy of love is indifference .
W. Somerset Maugham , The Trembling of a Leaf, ch. 4
But when all was said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham , [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]] Ch. 70
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham , [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]], Ch. 71
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
W. Somerset Maugham , [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]], Ch. 21, p. 83 (estimated)
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
W. Somerset Maugham , A Writer's Notebook (1946), p. 13
He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.
W. Somerset Maugham , Collected short stories 1, "The pool", p. 123
When I fall in love, I feel more valuable and I treat myself with more care. We have all observed the hesitant adolescent, uncertain of himself, who, when he or she falls in love, suddenly walks with a certain inner assuredness and confidence, a mien which seems to say, "You are looking at somebody now." … this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
Rollo May , Love and Will (1969), p. 84
When we "fall" in love, as the expressive verb puts it, the world shakes and changes around us, not only in the way it looks but in our whole experience of what we are doing in the world. Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects … Love is the answer, we sing. … our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic — albeit desperate — conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.
Rollo May , Love and Will (1969), p. 100
To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive — to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.
Rollo May , Love and Will (1969), p. 100
And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
Paul McCartney , in " The End " from Abbey Road (1969)
Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.
Meister Eckhart , Meister Eckhart’s Sermons , translated into English by Claud Field (1909), Sermon III: The Angel's Greeting
All true morality, inward and outward, is comprehended in love, for love is the foundation of all the commandments.
All outward morality must be built upon this basis, not on self-interest. As long as man loves something else than God, or outside God, he is not free, because he has not love. Therefore there is no inner freedom which does not manifest itself in works of love. True freedom is the government of nature in and outside man through God; freedom is essential existence unaffected by creatures. But love often begins with fear; fear is the approach to love: fear is like the awl which draws the shoemaker's thread through the leather.
Meister Eckhart , Meister Eckhart’s Sermons , translated into English by Claud Field (1909), Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H. L. Mencken in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.
Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
Thomas Merton , Seeds of Contemplation (1949)
Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
Thomas Merton , in a letter to Dorothy Day (20 December 1961)
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
Edna St. Vincent Millay , in "Sonnet XXX" from Fatal Interview (1931)
I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.
Arthur Miller , Quentin in After the Fall (1964), Act II
I saw clearly only when I saw with love. Or can one ever remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume. And that's the truth of roses, isn't it? — The perfume?
Arthur Miller , Quentin in After the Fall (1964), Act II
Love means to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills —
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Czesław Miłosz , Rescue (1945), "The World": Love (1943), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
Imparadis'd in one another's arms.
John Milton , Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 50
Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring.
John Milton , Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 750-751
Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
John Milton , Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, lines 538-540
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life.
John Milton , Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 832
It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
But what it is, hard is to say,
Harder to hit.
John Milton , Samson Agonistes (1671), line 1,010
Love would master self; and having made the mastery stretch onward and upward toward infinitude.
Donald G. Mitchell , reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394
Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek ? Subtract Love, add Anger .
Steven Moffat , in lines written for Oswin Oswald , in Asylum of the Daleks (1 September 2012)
Love, it's not an emotion — Love is a promise !
Steven Moffat , in lines for the Twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who  : Death in Heaven (8 November 2014)
Give love and forget that you gave it.
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die!
Thomas Moore , Lalla Rookh (1817), The Light of the Harem, line 653
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa , Interview by Edward W. Desmond in TIME magazine (4 December 1989)
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand . Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation , spirit of prayer , and sacrifice, by an intense inner life .
Teresa, Mother ; Dorothy S. Hunt (1987). Love, a fruit always in season: Daily meditations from the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta . San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. ISBN 9780898701678 .
 
Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
Mother Teresa , as quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles‎ (1998) by John Templeton , p. 448
Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love....The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.
Mother Teresa , as quoted in Mother Teresa : Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk
When feudal lords love one another there will be no more war; when heads of houses love one another there will be no more mutual usurpation; when individuals love one another there will be no more mutual injury. When ruler and ruled love each other they will be gracious and loyal; when father and son love each other they will be affectionate and filial; when older and younger brothers love each other they will be harmonious. When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not overpower the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor, the honoured will not disdain the humble, and the cunning will not deceive the simple. And it is all due to mutual love that calamities, strife, complaints, and hatred are prevented from arising. Therefore the benevolent exalt it.
Mozi Book 4; Universal Love II
Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards — it will be unpreventable in the world.
Mozi Book 4; Universal Love III
My love for you is past the mind, beyond my heart, and into my soul.
Bessie: I've been lucky to have so much love in my life.
Lee: Yes, Marvin and Ruth love you so much.
Bessie: No, I’ve been lucky to be able to love them so much.
Marvin's Room
If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day's newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds.
Sir Isaac Newton , A short Schem of the true Religion, Undated manuscript: Keynes Ms. 7: '"A short Schem of the true Religion'"
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr , The Irony of American History, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1952)
Why is love intensified by absence?
Audrey Niffenegger , The Time Traveler's Wife
If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves.
Anaïs Nin , House of Incest (1936)
Love reduces the complexity of living.
Anaïs Nin , in June 1932 entry in her journal; published in Henry and June : from a journal of love : the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1990), p. 178
You cannot save people, you can only love them.
Anaïs Nin , The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Someday I'll be locked up for love insanity. "She loved too much."
Anaïs Nin , The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Oh, God, I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love. I swim in the sky; I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.
Anaïs Nin (30 May 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
No one but a woman in love ever sees the maximum of men's greatness .
Anaïs Nin (18 June 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
Love is the axis and breath of my life. The art I produce is a byproduct, an excrescence of love, the song I sing, the joy which must explode, the overabundance — that is all!
Anaïs Nin (21 October 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
You are like a person who consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are born of this.
Anaïs Nin , A Spy in the House of Love (1954)
The enemy of a love is never outside, it's not a man or woman, it's what we lack in ourselves.
Anaïs Nin , A Spy in the House of Love (1954)
I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. Aesthetics was an expression of man's need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world.
Anaïs Nin , The Novel of the Future (1969)
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
Anaïs Nin , as quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126
A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.
Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
Novalis , Blüthenstaub-Fragmente (1798), Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses.
Variant translations:
Every beloved object is the centre of a Paradise.
As quoted by Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)
Every beloved object is the midpoint to paradise.
Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
Of the world story,
We have come by curious ways
To the Light that holds the days;
We have sought in haunts of fear
For that all-enfolding sphere:
And lo! it was not far, but near.
We have found, O foolish-fond,
The shore that has no shore beyond.
Deep in every heart it lies
With its untranscended skies;
For what heaven should bend above
Hearts that own the heaven of love?
Alfred Noyes , The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan, Epilogue
Your dreamers may dream it
The shadow of a dream,
Your sages may deem it
A bubble on the stream;
Yet our kingdom draweth nigher
With each dawn and every day,
Through the earthquake and the fire
"Love will find out the way."
Alfred Noyes , Drake, an English Epic (1908), Song, Book VIII, p. 146
Heart of my heart, the world is young;
Love lies hidden in every rose!
Every song that the skylark sung
Once, we thought, must come to a close:
Now we know the spirit of song,
Song that is merged in the chant of the whole,
Hand in hand as we wander along,
What should we doubt of the years that roll?
Alfred Noyes , Unity, § I, Unity, § I
Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,
One in many, O broken and blind,
One as the waves are at one with the sea!
Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
One, still one, while the world grows old.
Alfred Noyes , Unity, § I, Unity, § III
Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and
Love is Lord of all.
Alfred Noyes , The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915), The Lord of Misrule
If you want to be loved, be lovable. ~ Ovid
Let love steal in disguised as friendship. ~ Ovid
Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person, you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. On the contrary, you are grateful that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy, sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It does many things, it is very creative; it shares all that it has, but it is not a responsibility, remember. Responsibility is an ugly word in comparison to love. Love is natural. Responsibility is created by the cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate you in the name of God, in the name of the nation, in the name of family, in the name of religion -- any fiction will do. But they don't talk about love. On the contrary, they are all against love, because love is unable to be controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no nations, and there is no question of any fight.
Osho Sat Chit Anand
Every lover is a soldier. (Love is a warfare).
Ovid , Amorum (16 BC), I. 9. 1
Qui non vult fieri desidiosus, amet.
Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love.
Ovid , Amorum (16 BC), I. 9. 46
Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum
Et videor voti nescius esse mei.
Thus I am not able to exist either with you or without you; and I seem not to know my own wishes.
Ovid , Amorum (16 BC), Book III. 10. 39
Qui finem quaeris amoris/Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.
Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you'll be safe then.
Ovid , Remedia Amoris, 143
If you want to be loved, be lovable.
Variant: To be loved, be lovable.
Ovid , Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), II, 107
Intret amicitiae nomine tectus amor.
Let love steal in disguised as friendship.
Variant: Love will enter cloaked in friendship's name.
Context: Cool off; don't let her think you too importunate. Do not betray the hope of too swift a victory; let Love steal in disguised as Friendship. I've often seen a woman thus disarmed, and friendship ripen into love.
Ovid , The Art of Love, Book 1, line 720, translated by J. Lewis May in The Love Books of Ovid, 1930
Blaise Pascal , Pensées , Section I Thoughts on Mind and Style (1-59), 14
Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C'est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c'est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur.
The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.
Blaise Pascal , Pensées , Section IV On the Means of the Belief (242-290), 277 ; The first sentence is widely quoted in English as "The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of." Also as "'The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know."
Variant translations:
The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. We find this in a thousand instances. It is the heart which feels God, and not the reasoning powers. And this is faith made perfect : — God realized by feeling in the heart.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Paul of Tarsus , I Corinthians Ch. 13 (NKJV)
Variant translation: Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perservers. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.
Paul of Tarsus , in 1 Corinthians 13:13 (New International Readers Version)
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Love is the cheapest of religions.
Cesare Pavese , This Business of Living, 1939-12-21
Over the mountains,
Edgar Allan Poe , "The Philosophy of Composition" (published 1846)
How vast a memory has Love!
Alexander Pope , "Sappho to Phaon", line 52 (1712)
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Alexander Pope , "The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 369
Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
Alexander Pope , Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 74
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
Alexander Pope , Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 77
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Alexander Pope , Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 177
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis true the hardest science to forget.
Alexander Pope , Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 189
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight;
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.
Alexander Pope , Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 273
When the heart stops for one beat it is desire, when it stops for one life time it is love
Lucy Powell, The Heart Yearns But Once (2004)
In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew , so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all...
Kissing Agathon, I held my life on my lips.
It wanted to pass over, poor thing, into him.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge ~ Bertrand Russell
Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty... and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. ~ Bertrand Russell
Love is our response to our highest values.
Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged (1957)
"Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself... The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut."
Francisco d'Anconia in Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged (1957), Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter Four: The Sanction of the Victim
"Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws—and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying."
Francisco d'Anconia in Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged (1957), Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter Four: The Sanction of the Victim
One can't love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
Ayn Rand , The Fountainhead (1943)
"We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is- for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breath air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself-and so you would not love me long. To say 'I love you' one must first know how to say the 'I'. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I'd destroy you. That's why I won't stop you. I'll let you go to your husband. I don't know how I'll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you'll remain in the battle you've chosen. A battle is never selfless. [...] You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can't help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you'll come back to me. They won't destroy me, Dominique. And they won't destroy you. You'll win, because you've chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I'll wait for you. I love you. I'm saying this now for all the years we'll have to wait. I love you, Dominique."
Howard Roark in Ayn Rand 's The Fountainhead (1943), Part II
"...love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it--the total passion for the total height--you're incapable of anything less."
Gail Wynand, speaking to Dominique Keating in Ayn Rand 's The Fountainhead (1943), Part III
"...love is exception-making."
Gail Wynand, in Ayn Rand 's The Fountainhead (1943), Part IV
To get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.
Howard Roark in Ayn Rand 's The Fountainhead (1943), Part IV, p. 578
"What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word--'Yes.' The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that 'Yes' is more than an answer to one thing, it's a kind of 'Amen' to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say 'Yes' or 'No' is the essence of all ownership. It's your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function--the act of valuing. 'Yes' or 'No,' 'I wish' or 'I do not wish.' You can't say 'Yes' without saying 'I." There's no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours.
[...]
"Howard, that 'Yes'--once granted, can it be withdrawn?"
"Never."
Ayn Rand , Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
[The hippies] were told that love - indiscriminate love for one's fellow man - is the highest virtue, and they obeyed. They were told that the merging of one's self with a herd, tribe, or community is the noblest way for a man to live, and they obeyed. There isn't a philosophical idea of today's establishment which they have not accepted, which they do not share. When they discovered this philosophy did not work, because in fact it cannot work, the hippies had neither the wit nor the courage to challenge it. They found, instead, an outlet for their impotent frustration by accusing their elders of hypocrisy, as if hypocrisy were the only obstacle to the realization of their dreams. And, left blindly, helplessly lobotomized in the face of an inexplicable reality that is not amenable to their feelings, they have no recourse but the shouting of obscenities at anything that frustrates their whims; at man, or at the rainy sky, indiscriminately, with no concept of the difference. It is typical of today's culture that the proponents of seething, raging hostility are taken as advocates of love.
Ayn Rand , Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
Liebe, Arbeit und Wissen sind die Quellen unseres Lebens. Sie sollen es auch regieren.
Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life . They should also govern it.
Wilhelm Reich 's personal motto, the English translation used at least as early as The Function of the Orgasm (1948), a translation of Die Funktion des Orgasmus (1927)
Psychic health depends on orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act. It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual's capacity for love. Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love.
Wilhelm Reich , The Function of the Orgasm (1927), General Survey
Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
Wilhelm Reich , The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Wilhelm Reich , Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Follow the voice of your heart , even if it leads you off the path of timid souls . Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily...
Wilhelm Reich , Listen, Little Man! (1948)
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
Mary Renault , The Mask of Apollo (1966)
Love is the garment of knowledge.'
Kenneth Rexroth , Eckhart, Brethren of the Free Spiritfrom Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (1974), ch. 4
The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
And in the other, the lover.
Kenneth Rexroth , In Defense of the Earth (1956)
Now I know surely and forever,
However much I have blotted our
Waking love, its memory is still
there. And I know the web, the net,
The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
One brief instant it was not blind, nor
Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
I who am lost and damned with words,
Whose words are a business and an art,
I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Is all confusion and ignorance.
But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
My heart beat one free beat and sent
Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
Tim Robbins , Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect , but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?
Tim Robbins , Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, in Phase III, Ch. 46
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules . The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey , maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
Tim Robbins , Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Bernard to Leigh-Cheri, in Phase III, Ch. 46
No matter how much others might love you, you can’t love yourself unless you’re in charge of your own actions, and you’ll never take charge as long as you can get away with blaming your shortcomings and misfortunes on your family or society or your race or gender or Satan or whatever…
You cannot love someone you do not know -- not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.
Jane Roberts , The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, p. 105
* One makes mistakes; that is life . But it is never a mistake to have loved.
Romain Rolland , as quoted in On Relationships: A Book for Teenagers (1999) by Kimberly Kirberger
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.'
Eleanor Roosevelt , You Learn by Living (1960), p. 63
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)
Eleanor Roosevelt , My Day (1935 - 1962), Her daily newspaper column (1 April 1939)
We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
Patrick Rothfuss , The Wise Man's Fear (2011)
Love makes you do the wacky.
"Willow Rosenberg" (played by Alyson Hannigan ), from Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Season 2, Episode 2, "Some Assembly Required"
Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.
Rumi , The Masnavi , Book IV, Story II, as translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) by Edward Henry Whinfield
Variant: Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
As quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Rumi as quoted in Path for Greatness : Spiritualty at Work (2000) by Linda J. Ferguson, p. 51
What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
of your love, that somehow contains
the entire universe.
Rumi , "Where are we?" in Ch. 2 : Bewilderment
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover be.
Rumi , The Essential Rumi (1995), Ch. 4 : Spring Giddiness, p. 46
Gamble everything for love,
if you are a true human being.
Rumi , The Essential Rumi (1995), "On Gambling" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 193
Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
Rumi , Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski
Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune:
every success depends upon focusing the heart.
Rumi , Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, III, 2302-5
Love rests on no foundation.
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end.
Rumi , Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva
This is a gathering of Lovers.
In this gathering
there is no high, no low,
no smart, no ignorant,
This gathering is more like a drunken party,
full of tricksters, fools,
mad men and mad women.
This is a gathering of Lovers.
Rumi , Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva
Love said to me,
there is nothing that is not me.
Be silent.
Rumi , Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva
Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.
Bertrand Russell , Political Ideals (1917), Chapter V: National Independence and Internationalism
Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.
Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 3: The Dominion of the Father
I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.
Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 3: The Dominion of the Father
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 9: The Place of Love in Human Life
Passionate mutual love while it lasts... breaks down the hard walls of the ego, producing a new being composed of two in one. Nature did not construct human beings to stand alone, since they cannot fulfil her biological purpose except with the help of another; and civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love... Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give; unconsciously, if not consciously, they feel this, and the resulting disappointment inclines them towards envy, oppression and cruelty. To give due place to passionate love should be therefore a matter which concerns the sociologist, since, if they miss this experience, men and women cannot attain their full stature, and cannot feel towards the rest of the world that kind of generous warmth without which their social activities are pretty sure to be harmful.
Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 9: The Place of Love in Human Life
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals (1929),Ch. 19: Sex and Individual Well-Being
[T]he only sex relations that have real value are those in which there is no reticence and in which the whole personality of both becomes merged in a new collective personality. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russell , The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 12: Affection
I should like to say two things. One intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: "When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts." That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple; I should say: "Love is wise – Hatred is foolish." In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact, that some people say things we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital, to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Bertrand Russell , Response to the question "Suppose Lord Russell, this film were to be looked at by our descendants, like a dead sea scroll in a thousand years time. What would you think it's worth telling that generation about the life you've lived and the lessons you've learned from it?" in a BBC interview on "Face to Face" (1959)
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge .
Bertrand Russell , What I Believe (1925)
At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination... Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. They should be taught that to bring another human being into the world is a very serious matter, only to be undertaken when the child will have a reasonable prospect of health, good surroundings, and parental care. But they should also be taught methods of birth control, so as to insure that children shall only come when they are wanted. Finally, they should be taught the dangers of venereal disease, and the methods of prevention and cure. The increase of human happiness to be expected from sex education on these lines is immeasurable.
See also: William Shakespeare quotes about love
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. ~ Carl Sagan
It's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
What is life without the radiance of love? ~ Friedrich Schiller
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Helen Schucman
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you
And longer if I can. ~ Mike Scott
The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. ~ Morrie Schwartz
Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others. ~ Albert Schweitzer
Love means never having to say you're sorry. ~ Erich Segal
If you want to be loved, love. ~ Seneca the Elder
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. ~ William Shakespeare
Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion. ~ George Bernard Shaw
All love is sweet
We are in Love’s hand to-day. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me! ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne
The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
Contact : a novel. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1985. LCC PS3569.A287 C6 1985 . ISBN 0671434004 .
 , Chapter 24 (p. 430) from the mass market paperback edition published by Pocket Books
Love your neighbor as yourself but don't take down your fence.
Carl Sandburg , The People, Yes (1936), p. 107
You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it.
Jean-Paul Sartre , The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Act 1
We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.
Jean-Paul Sartre , The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Acts 8 & 9
If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.
Jean-Paul Sartre , Jean-Paul Sartre , The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Act 10, sc. 2
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
Friedrich Schiller , Don Carlos (1787), Act II, sc. viii
The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.
Friedrich Schiller , Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini), Act III, sc. viii
O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
The golden time of first love!
The eye sees the open heaven,
The heart is intoxicated with bliss;
O that the beautiful time of young love
Could remain green forever.
Friedrich Schiller , The Song of the Bell (1799)
Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.
Friedrich Schiller , Tabulae Votivae (Votive Tablets) (1796), "The Key"; tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring , The Poems of Schiller, Complete (1851)
Variant translation:
If you want to know yourself,
Just look how others do it;
If you want to understand others,
Look into your own heart
What is life without the radiance of love?
Friedrich Schiller , Wallenstein (1798), Act IV, sc. xii, translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men.
Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
No night but hath its morn.
Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven, —
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, —
Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,
The habitants of earth.
Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —
Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find
Strength when life's surges rudest roll,
Light when thou else wert blind.
Friedrich Schiller , Hope, Faith, and Love (c. 1786); also known as "The Words of Strength", as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann , p. 386
Sarah: [voiceover] If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.
The Crow (1994 film) written by David J. Schow and John Shirley, based on The Crow by James O'Barr
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Jesus' Course in Miracles (2000) by Helen Schucman and William Thetford , Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 162
How could I think the brief years were enough
To prove the reality of endless love?
Delmore Schwartz , in "I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read" in Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)
The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.
Albert Schweitzer , Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography (1933) translated by C. T. Campion, Epilogue, p. 235
Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.
Albert Schweitzer , Reverence for Life (1969)
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you
And longer if I can
How long will I want you?
As long as you want me to
And longer by far
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
Erich Segal , screenwriter, Love Story , (1970); dialogue of Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal)
Si vis amari, ama.
If you want to be loved, love.
Seneca the Elder , Epistularum Moralium Ad Lucilium, Book 1, IX
On a day — alack the day! —
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air
William Shakespeare , Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, II. Not to be confused with The Sonnets ; this poem is not a sonnet
The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare , Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Act I, scene i
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
William Shakespeare , Helena, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Act I, scene i
Love denied blights the soul we owe to God.
The character William Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love
Love is the only inspiration.
Tagline in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love
Love is seeing God in the person next to us, and meditation is seeing God within us.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar , Wisdom for the New Millennium (2005), p. 9
* Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
George Bernard Shaw , Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #179
THE SERPENT: The voice in the garden is your own voice.
ADAM: It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a part of it.
EVE: The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you to die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
ADAM [throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of anguish]: Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something that holds us together, something that has no word —
THE SERPENT: Love. Love. Love.
ADAM: That is too short a word for so long a thing.
George Bernard Shaw , Back to Methuselah (1921), The Serpent, Adam, and Eve, in Pt. I, Act I
Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
George Bernard Shaw , Back to Methuselah (1921), Acis, in Pt. V
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
George Bernard Shaw , John Bull's Other Island, act IV, Selected Plays with Prefaces (1949), vol. 2, p. 596. These words are spoken by Broadbent
It is something that grows over time... a true friendship. A feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger through time...The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you'll know which way to go...
Yet all love is sweet
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
* * * * *
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now: but those who feel it most
Are happier still after long sufferings
As I shall soon become.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Prometheus Unbound , Asia, Act II, sc. v, l. 39
Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Prometheus Unbound , The Earth, Act IV, l. 403
Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Prometheus Unbound , The Moon , Act IV, l. 451
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Prometheus Unbound , Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 554–561
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning.
Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
And bid them love each other and be blest:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.
I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821), stanza 8
In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Essay on Christianity (1859), Unfinished essay (c. 1815), first published in Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources (1859) edited by Lady Jane Gibson Shelley; also in The Works of Shelley in Verse and Prose (1880) , edited by H. Buxton Forman. Full essay online
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. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Essay on Christianity (1859), Unfinished essay (c. 1815), first published in Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources (1859) edited by Lady Jane Gibson Shelley; also in The Works of Shelley in Verse and Prose (1880) , edited by H. Buxton Forman. Full essay online
But as a philosopher said, one day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, after all the scientific and technological achievements, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Sargent Shriver, Jr. , speech before the Democratic National Committee, accepting nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, Washington, D.C. (August 8, 1972). Transcript, The New York Times (August 9, 1972), p. 18. He was slightly paraphrasing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Evolution of Chastity", Toward the Future, trans. René Hague (1975), p. 86–87: "The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire". This was written in Peking in 1934
The problem is all inside your head, she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.
* She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light
And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover
First thing I remember when you came into my life
I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you.
Paul Simon , One-Trick Pony (1980), Late in the Evening
And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart,
Everybody sees you're blown apart,
Everybody feels the wind blow.'
Paul Simon , Surprise (2006), I Don't Believe
Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C.
And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone?
God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.
Paul Simon , Surprise (2006), Outrageous
For true evangelical faith...cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it...clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it.
Menno Simons Why I Do Not Cease Teaching and Writing, 1539
All 's fair in love and war.
Francis Edward Smedley , Frank Fairlegh : Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil (1850)
To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith , Lady Holland's Memoir (1855), "Of Friendship"
The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— for your love is more delightful than wine.
Song of Solomon , New International Version, Song of Solomon 1:2
How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!
Song of Solomon , New International Version, Song of Solomon 4:10
Eat, friends, and drink; drink your fill of love.
Song of Solomon , New International Version, Song of Solomon 5:1
Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom— there I will give you my love. The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my beloved.
Song of Solomon , New International Version, Song of Solomon 7:11-13
Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
** Song of Solomon , New International Version, Song of Solomon 8:6-7
The feeling of love - is a fervent desire of goodness to a man.
Simon Soloveychik , Parenting for Everyone (1989)
When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you.
When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you.
When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you.
Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you.
Silard Somorjay, in "The Voice Of Love" on The Streets of Beijing movie soundtrack, Video Art Beijing
The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it's over.
Nicholas Sparks in " Nights in Rodanthe "
From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 13: Note, Full text online
Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 15: Corollary, Full text online
If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III : On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31, Full text online
...it follows that everyone endeavors, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates...
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31: Corollary, Full text online
This endeavor to bring it about, that our own likes and dislikes should meet with universal approval, is really ambition; wherefore we see that everyone by nature desires (appetere), that the rest of mankind should live according to his own individual disposition: when such a desire is equally present in all, everyone stands in everyone else's way, and in wishing to be loved or praised by all, all become mutually hateful.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31: Note, Full text online
When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 33, Full text online
The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 34, Full text online
If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 35, Full text online
If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 38, Full text online
He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 39 Full text online
If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 41, Full text online
Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 43, Full text online
Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 44, Full text online
Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 49, Full text online
This pain, accompanied by the idea of our own weakness, is called humility; the pleasure, which springs from the contemplation of ourselves, is called self-love or self-complacency. And inasmuch as this feeling is renewed as often as a man contemplates his own virtues, or his own power of activity, it follows that everyone is fond of narrating his own exploits, and displaying the force both of his body and his mind, and also that, for this reason, men are troublesome to one another. Again, it follows that men are naturally envious, rejoicing in the shortcomings of their equals, and feeling pain at their virtues. For whenever a man conceives his own actions, he is affected with pleasure, in proportion as his actions display more perfection, and he conceives them more distinctly--that is, in proportion as he can distinguish them from others, and regard them as something special. Therefore, a man will take pleasure in contemplating himself, when he contemplates some quality which he denies to others. But if that which he affirms of himself be attributable to the idea of man or animals in general, he will not be so greatly pleased: he will, on the contrary, feel pain, if he conceives that his own actions fall short when compared with those of others. This pain he will endeavor to remove, by putting a wrong construction on the actions of his equals, or by, as far as he can, embellishing his own. It is thus apparent that men are naturally prone to hatred and envy, which latter is fostered by their education. For parents are accustomed to incite their children to virtue solely by the spur of honor and envy, but perhaps, some will scruple to assent to what I have said, because we not seldom admire men's virtues, and venerate their possessors. In order to remove such doubts I append the following corollary.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 55: Note, Full text online
I have explained the causes of human infirmity and inconstancy, and shown why men do not abide by the precepts of reason. It now remains for me to show what course is marked out for us by reason, which of the emotions are in harmony with the rules of human reason, and which of them are contrary thereto. But, before I begin to prove my Propositions... it is advisable to sketch them briefly in advance... As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands, that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him... everything which really brings man to greater perfection... first, that the foundation of virtue is the endeavor to preserve one's own being, and... happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being; secondly, that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and that there is nothing more excellent or more useful to us... thirdly and lastly, that suicides are weak-minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. Further... we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to have no relations with things which are outside ourselves. ...our intellect would be more imperfect, if mind were alone, and could understand nothing besides itself. There are, then, many things outside ourselves, which are useful to us... none can be discerned more excellent, than those which are in entire agreement with our nature. ...if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are united, they form a combination twice as powerful as either of them singly. Therefore, to man there is nothing more useful than man—nothing, I repeat, more excellent for preserving their being can be wished for by men, than that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body, and that all should, with one consent, as far as they are able, endeavor to preserve their being, and all with one consent seek what is useful to them all. Hence, men who are governed by reason—that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason, desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct. ...I have taken this course, in order, if possible, to gain the attention of those who believe, that the principle that every man is bound to seek what is useful for himself is the foundation of impiety, rather than of piety and virtue.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Prop. 18: Note, Full text online
He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. ...hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Prop. 66, Full text online
In so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in proportion, as they are more powerful than their fellows.
Yet minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.
Baruch Spinoza , Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Appendix, 10 - 11, Full text online
But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
Nicholas Sparks in The Wedding
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
John Steinbeck in East of Eden
In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
John Steinbeck in East of Eden , Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
Stendhal in The Pink and the Green (Le Rose et le Vert, 1837), Ch. 9, translated by Richard Howard. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988, p. 89
In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
Stendhal ,De L'Amour (On Love) (1822), Ch. 1
Les plaisirs et les soins de l'ambition la plus heureuse, même du pouvoir sans bornes, ne sont rien auprès du bonheur intime que donnent les relations de tendresse et d'amour. Je suis homme avant d'être prince, et, quand j'ai le bonheur d'aimer, ma maîtresse s'adresse à l'homme et non au prince.
The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am a man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
Stendhal , La Chartreuse de Parme ( The Charterhouse of Parma ) (1839), Ch. 7
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson , "Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911)
Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other's eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God's creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature.
Robert Louis Stevenson , Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 3
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?
Robert Louis Stevenson , Truth of Intercourse
All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
Robert Louis Stevenson , Aes Triplex (1878), The Oxford Book of Essays ed. by John Gross (New York: Oxford, 1998) [Title is Latin for "triple brass," used by Horace], p. 316
At the heart of its strength is a weakness: a lone candle can hold it back. Love is more than a candle, love can ignite the stars.
Matthew Stover in the Revenge of the Sith novelization
There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.
Theodore Sturgeon , More Than Human (1953)
Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful , strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables... Let your love flow out on all living things.
But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God , and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu , Jesus , Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets , including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone .
The italicized words being quotes of the song " Let Your Love Flow " by Larry E. Williams , as sung by The Bellamy Brothers
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
Algernon Charles Swinburne , Poems and Ballads (1866-89), "A Match"
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran,
Pleasure with pain for leaven,
Summer with flowers that fell,
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And Madness risen from hell,
Strength without hands to smite,
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And Life, the shadow of death.
[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], Atalanta in Calydon (1865), Second chorus, lines 1-12
Time found our tired love sleeping,
And kissed away his breath;
But what should we do weeping,
Though light love sleep to death?
We have drained his lips at leisure,
Till there's not left to drain
A single sob of pleasure,
A single pulse of pain.
[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], Poems and Ballads (1866-89), "Rococo", lines 17-24
Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.
In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!
I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me.
You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
The gate is strait; I shall not be there.
The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine.
These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.
Our way is where God knows
And Love knows where:
We are in Love’s hand to-day.
[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], Love at Sea
With every beat of my heart. ~ Shania Twain
Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
Rabindranath Tagore , Stray Birds (1916), 326
Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation. It is the white light of pure consciousness that emanates from Brahma. So, to be one with this sarvānubhūh, this all-feeling being who is in the external sky, as well as in our inner soul, we must attain to that summit of consciousness, which is love: Who could have breathed or moved if the sky were not filled with joy, with love?
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, on account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of him much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our own humanity...
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to answer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spirit than a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell into decay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousness of heart and led to the cheapening of man's worth; when either the state or some powerful group of men began to look upon the people as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by every means, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his own love of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustain itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man is true can only be nourished by love and justice.
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time.
Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love.
In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what brings together and inseparably connects both the act of abandoning and that of receiving.
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion — Here I am; at the other the equally strong denial — I am not. Without this ego what is love? And again, with only this ego how can love be possible?
Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound. If God were absolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth's green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.
Rabindranath Tagore , Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)
God seeks comrades and claims love,
William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40
Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace .
U Thant , "Buddhism and the Charter" in Religion and International Affairs (1968) edited by Jeffrey Rose and Michael Ignatieff , p. 114
How come we don't always know when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
Harris K. Telemacher ( Steve Martin ) in L. A. Story
God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.
Alfred Tennyson , To J. S., stanza 4, from Poems (1832)
'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred Tennyson , In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part XXVII, Stanza 4
For love reflects the thing beloved.
Love's too precious to be lost,
A little grain shall not be spilt.
There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear; I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait."
Alfred Tennyson , Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 10
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthly bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.
Alfred Tennyson , Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 11
Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien
You, methinks you think you love me well;
For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
Not ever be too curious for a boon,
Too prurient for a proof against the grain
Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
But work as vassal to the larger love,
That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien
Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.
Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
…
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1000
"Free love, so bound, were freëst," said the King.
"Let love be free; free love is for the best:
And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know."
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1370
Lady, for indeed
I loved you and I deemed you beautiful,
I cannot brook to see your beauty marred
Through evil spite: and if ye love me not,
I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn:
I had liefer ye were worthy of my love,
Than to be loved again of you — farewell;
And though ye kill my hope, not yet my love,
Vex not yourself: ye will not see me more.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Pelleas and Ettarre
We love but while we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament
I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament
My doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
Alfred Tennyson , Lover's Tale (1879), line 466
Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.
Alfred Tennyson , Lover's Tale (1879), line 813
Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales.
They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope;
At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
Alfred Tennyson , Lover's Tale (1879), line 815
Love will conquer at the last.
Alfred Tennyson , Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 280
Who are wise in love
Love most, say least
Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1000
"Free love, so bound, were freëst," said the King.
"Let love be free; free love is for the best:
And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
What should be best, if not so pure a love
Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know."
Alfred Tennyson , Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1370
We love but while we may;
And therefore is my love so large for thee,
Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
I will love thee to the death,
And out beyond into the dream to come.
My doom is, I love thee still.
Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw
The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her,
"Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?"
Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed
Within her, and she wept with these and said,
"Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke
The vast design and purpose of the King.
O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls,
Meek maidens, from the voices crying 'shame.'
I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.
Let no one dream but that he loves me still."
Love is and was my Lord and King,
And in his presence I attend
To hear the tidings of my friend,
Which every hour his couriers bring.
CXXVI
Alfred Tennyson , In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Parts I-CXXXI, CXXVI
It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too.
William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 6
As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.
William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40
You're dressed in that dress, I like. Love is swinging in the air, tonight.
Justin Timberlake , "Suit & Tie" (2013), The 20/20 Experience (2013)
They say it is to know the union with love that the soul takes union with the body.
Tiruvalluvar , Tirukkural: 80
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)
When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust — but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation.
Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)
Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)
To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
Leo Tolstoy in "What Men Live By" (1881)
What are wanted ...are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ...that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind.
Leo Tolstoy , in A Letter to a Hindu (1908)
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
Leo Tolstoy in "A Letter to a Hindu" (1908)
The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...
Leo Tolstoy in his Diary (1 November 1910)
I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Love is all around me
And so the feeling grows
It is written on the wind
Thats everywhere I go
So if you really love me
Come on and let it show
God , from a beautiful necessity , is Love in all he doeth,
Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume:
The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it:
The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever.
Martin Farquhar Tupper , in "Of Immortality" in Proverbial Philosophy (1849)
I don't wanna lose you
I don't even wanna say goodbye
I just wanna hold on
To this true love, true love
I don't wanna lose you
And I always wanna feel this way
Cause everytime I'm with you I feel true love, true love
Tina Turner , I Don't Wanna Lose You , (November 18, 1989) from the album Foreign Affair (September 13, 1989)
Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it
What's love but a second hand emotion
What's love got to do, got to do with it
Who needs a heart
When a heart can be broken
Tina Turner , What's Love Got to Do with It , (June 4, 1984[) from the album Private Dancer (May 29, 1984)
I just sware
That I'll always be there
I'd give anything and everything
And I will always care
Through weekness and strength
For better or for worse
I will love you
U2 , One (6 March 1992) from the 1990 album Achtung Baby
It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.
Miguel de Unamuno , To a Young Writer
Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total All, that the Universe, is also a person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God.
Love lifts us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
Love is where you find it. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires.
Paul Valéry , "Dance and the Soul" (1921), in Dialogues (Bollingen Series XLV 4/ Princeton University Press, 1989), translated by William McCausland Stewart, p. 47
There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light,
And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.
There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest,
But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.
Henry van Dyke , Love and Light
If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow , and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength , and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
Vincent van Gogh , The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886 (1927) Constable & Co
Variant: Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 483
I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.
Who can deceive a lover?
Virgil , Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 296. Variant: "Who could deceive a lover?"
Improbe Amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
All-powerful Love! what changes canst thou cause
In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!
Virgil , Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 412 (as translated by John Dryden ); referring to the unwise actions undertaken by Dido , actuated by amorous passion.
Variant translation: Oh wretched love! to what do you not impel the human breast?
Amor omnibus idem.
Virgil , Georgics (29 BC), III, 244
L'amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu'elle attaque à la fois la tête, le cœur et le corps.
Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.
Le Dernier Volume Des Œuvres De Voltaire : Contes - Comédie - Pensées - Poésies - Lettres (1862)
Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;
Il l'est—le fut—ou le doit être.
Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
He was—or is—or is to be.
Voltaire , Works, II, p. 765 (Ed. 1837). Used as an inscription for a statue of Cupid
Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.
Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.
Voltaire , Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762); This was written in reference to crushing superstition, and the words "écrasez l'infâme" ("Crush the Infamy") became a motto strongly identified with Voltaire
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons , "Address at Dedication of Wheaton College Library, 1973" (1974)
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. from the prologue of Slapstick (1976)
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. from the prologue of Slapstick (1976)
There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Edmund Waller , in "Of Divine Love" (c. 1686)
Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
Edmund Waller , Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)
The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.
Hugh Walpole As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 597
It's the Roman god, Janus . My mother gave it to me when I was little. She wanted to teach me that people have two sides. A good side, a bad side, a past, a future. And that we must embrace both in someone we love.
Elise Clifton-Ward (played by Angelina Jolie ) in The Tourist
Love is to die, love is to not die,
Love is to dance, love is to dance.
Love is to die,
Why don't you not die?
Why don't you dance?
Why don't you dance and dance?
Warpaint , Love Is To Die, Warpaint (2014)
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind . Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe . It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
Alan Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)
Love is not consolation, it is light .
Simone Weil , as quoted in Simone Weil (1954) by Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin , p. 47
The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.
This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.
Simone Weil , Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God , through atheism .
Simone Weil , First and Last Notebooks (1970), Last Notebook (1942) p. 84
If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just ," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right ..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
Simone Weil , Human Personality (1943), Written c. 1933; published in Selected Essays 1934-1943, p. 63
He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice .
Simone Weil , The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 192
Love is a minefield. You take a step and get blown to pieces, put yourself back together again and stupidly take another step. I guess that's human nature. It hurts so much to be alone that we'd all rather blow up than be single.
Kate Welles ( Famke Janssen ) in Love & Sex (2000)
I observed, "Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment." It is not only "the first and great" command, but all the commandments in one. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," they are all comprised in this one word, love.
John Wesley quoting his own earlier sermon on "The Circumsicion of the Heart" (1 January 1733) in the work A Plain Account Of Christian Perfection (Edition of 1777)
An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
John Wesley , The Works of the Rev. John Wesley (1830), p. 393
Lucifer: God ? God is love. I don't love you.
Lucifer: I was the first angel, loved once above all others. A perfect love. [sing-song] But like all true loves... one day it withered on the vine...
Life is ever lord of Death
And Love can never lose its own.
John Greenleaf Whittier , Snow Bound, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
Those who love each other shall become invincible...
Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass , DRUM-TAPS, Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice (1860; 1867)
* Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
The heart of man and woman all for love,
No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.
Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass , The Mystic Trumpeter
Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, that mocks time and space,
Love, that is day and night — love, that is sun and moon and stars,
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.
Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass , The Mystic Trumpeter
Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over...
Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass , SONGS OF PARTING, Ashes of Soldiers
There is no language that love does not speak.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox from Love's Language Poems of Progress 1913 edition
I find a rapture linked with each despair,
Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
More good than evil in humanity.
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
And men grow better as the world grows old.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , Poems of Pleasure (1900), Optimism
Between the finite and the infinite
The missing link of Love has left a void.
Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join
In one continued chain of endless life.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)
Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed,
No austere faith based on ignoble fear
Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
Think not to find a Paradise beyond.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)
There is no sudden entrance into Heaven.
Slow is the ascent by the path of Love.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)
* Look to the Great Eternal Cause
And not to any man, for light.
Look in; and learn the wrong, and right,
From your own soul's unwritten laws.
And when you question, or demur,
Let Love be your Interpreter.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), Assistance
Breathe "God," in any tongue — it means the same;
LOVE ABSOLUTE: Think, feel, absorb the thought;
Shut out all else; until a subtle flame
(A spark from God's creative centre caught)
Shall permeate your being, and shall glow,
Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), Knowledge
Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth
Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning.
And wheresoe'er thy pathway leads on earth,
There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), Give
Divine the Powers that on this trio wait.
Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate.
Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), Three Things
All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox , New Thought Pastels (1913), Love
le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort.
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Oscar Wilde as quoted by Alvin Redman in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde (1952)
Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
Oscar Wilde , "The Nightingale and the Rose" from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
Oscar Wilde , Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young (1894), first published in the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon (December 1894) Full text online
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
"Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing."
"But it's true-"
"Still doesn't mean anything. What you feel only matters to you. It is what you do to the people you love; that's what matters. That's the only thing that counts."
Stephen ( Tom Wilkinson ), in The Last Kiss (2006)
Taylor: Imagine me needing someone. Back on Earth I never did. Oh, there were women. Lots of women. Lots of love-making but no love. You see, that was the kind of world we'd made. So I left, because there was no one to hold me there.
Planet of the Apes (1968 film) , screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling
Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
And let your love show and you'll know what I mean
It's the season
Let your love fly like a bird on a wing
And let your love bind you to all livin' things
And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean
That's the reason.
Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow (1976)
Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
And let your love grow.
Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow (1976)
A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.
Gene Wolfe , "Bed and Breakfast", in Dante's Disciples (1995), ed. Edward E. Kramer. Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Strange Travelers (2000)
Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking.
Loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making.
David Woodard , Breed the Unmentioned (1985)
Love is the true antithesis of fear. It expands where fear constricts. It embraces where fear repels.
Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, p. 45 (1997)
A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy—how that was all that love was—ions connecting across synapses of time and air. Don't rationalize, she'd say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.
Fiction; inner thoughts of Elisha
True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.
William Wordsworth , To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824)
If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
Of young imagination have kept pure
Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought with him
Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
Is ever on himself doth look on one,
The least of Nature's works, one who might move
The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou !
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
In lowliness of heart.
Love is in the air
Every sight and every sound
And I don't know if I'm being foolish
Don't know if I'm being wise
But it's something that I must believe in
And it's there when I look in your eyes.
Love is in the air
In the whisper of the trees
Love is in the air
In the thunder of the sea
And I don't know if I'm just dreaming
Don't know if I feel sane
But it's something that I must believe in
And it's there when you call out my name.
John Paul Young , in "Love Is in the Air" (1977)
You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... Made me want to turn away and never look down again. But to see the way that mankind loves... I mean, you could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan, is... I think I love you. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange — no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me, too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.
Wounds of fire are hard to bear; harder still are those of love. ~ Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
Che amar chi t'odia, ell'è impossibil cosa.
For 'tis impossible
Vittorio Alfieri , Polinice, II. 4
Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul,
Each choosing each through all the weary hours,
And meeting strangely at one sudden goal,
Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers,
Into one beautiful and perfect whole;
And life's long night is ended, and the way
Lies open onward to eternal day.
Edwin Arnold , Somewhere There Waiteth
Ma vie a son secret, mon âme a son mystére:
Un amour éternel en un moment concu.
La mal est sans remède, aussi j'ai dû le taire,
Et elle qui l'a fait n'en a jamais rien su.
One sweet, sad secret holds my heart in thrall;
A mighty love within my breast has grown,
Unseen, unspoken, and of no one known;
And of my sweet, who gave it, least of all.
Félix Arvers , Sonnet. Translation by Joseph Knight. In The Athenæum, Jan. 13, 1906. Arvers in Mes Heures Perdues, says that the sonnet was "mite de l'italien"
How many times do I love, again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Unravelled from the trembling main
And threading the eye of a yellow star:—
So many times do I love again.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes , How Many Times
Mein Herz ich will dich fragen,
Was ist denn Liebe, sag?
"Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag."
My heart I fain would ask thee
What then is Love? say on.
"Two souls and one thought only
Two hearts that throb as one."
Von Münch Bellinghausen (Friedrich Halm)—Der Sohn der Wildniss, Act II. Translation by W. H. Charlton. (Commended by author). Popular translation. of the play is by Marie Lovell—Ingomar the Barbarian. Two souls with but a single thought, / Two hearts that beat as one
To Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole,
But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.
William Blake , Couplets and Fragments, IV
Love in a shower safe shelter took,
In a rosy bower beside a brook,
And winked and nodded with conscious pride
To his votaries drenched on the other side.
Come hither, sweet maids, there's a bridge below,
The toll-keeper, Hymen, will let you through.
Come over the stream to me.
Bloomfield , Glee, Stanza 1
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen , Gunnar, Chapter IV
Le premier soupir de l'amour
Est le dernier de la sagesse.
The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.
Antoine Bret , Ecole amoureuse, scene 7
Much ado there was, God wot;
He woold love, and she woold not,
She sayd, "Never man was trewe;"
He sayes, "None was false to you."
Nicholas Breton , Phillida and Corydon
In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Lady Geraldine's Courtship, Stanza 79
Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll—
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet XXI
Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.
I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds
All the world's loves in its unworldliness.
Robert Browning , Blot on the 'Scutcheon, Act II, scene 1
Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together.
Robert Browning , Never the Time and the Place
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.
Robert Browning , One Word More, Stanza XVII
Love has no thought of self!
Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold
The loathsome prostitution of a hand
Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things
To bless the thing it loves!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton , The Lady of Lyons, Act V, scene 2, line 23
Love thou, and if thy love be deep as mine,
Thou wilt not laugh at poets.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton , Richelieu (1839), Act I, scene 1, line 177
No matter what you do, if your heart is ever true,
And his heart was true to Poll.
F. C. Burnand , His Heart was true to Poll
To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!
The wisest man the warl' e'er saw,
He dearly loved the lasses, O.
Robert Burns , Green Grow the Rashes
The golden hours on angel wings
Flew o'er me and my dearie,
For dear to me as light and life
Was my sweet Highland Mary.
Oh my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June;
Oh my luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
Robert Burns , Red, Red Rose
What is life, when wanting love?
Night without a morning;
Love's the cloudless summer sun,
Nature gay adorning.
Robert Burns , Thine am I, my Faithful Fair
When things were as fine as could possibly be
I thought 'twas the spring; but alas it was she.
I'll bid the hyacinth to blow,
I'll teach my grotto green to be;
And sing my true love, all below
The holly bower and myrtle tree.
Thomas Campbell , Caroline, Part I
My love lies bleeding.
Thomas Campbell , O'Connor's Child, Stanza 5
He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires,
As Old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
Then fly betimes, for only they
Conquer love, that run away.
Thomas Carew , Song, Conquest by Flight
Of all the girls that are so smart
There's none like pretty Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And lives in our alley.
Henry Carey , Sally in our Alley
Let Time and Chance combine, combine!
Let Time and Chance combine!
The fairest love from heaven above,
That love of yours was mine,
My Dear!
Vivamus, mea Lesbia atque amemus.
My Lesbia, let us live and love.
Catullus , Carmina, V. 1
Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water.
Catullus , Carmina, LXX. 3
Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.
It is difficult at once to relinquish a long-cherished love.
Catullus , Carmina, LXXVI. 13
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.
I hate and I love. Why do I do so you perhaps ask.
I cannot say; but I feel it to be so, and I am tormented accordingly.
Catullus , Carmina, LXXXV
It's love, it's love that makes the world go round.
Popular French song in Chansons Nationales et Populaires de France, Volume II, p. 180 (c. 1821)
I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun,
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
George Chapman , All Fools, Act I, scene 1, line 98
None ever loved, but at first sight they loved.
George Chapman , The Blind Beggar of Alexandria
Banish that fear; my flame can never waste,
For love sincere refines upon the taste.
Colley Cibber , The Double Gallant, Act V, scene 1
Vivunt in venerem frondes omnisque vicissim
Felix arbor amat; mutant ad mutua palmæ
Fœdera.
The leaves live but to love, and in all the lofty grove the happy trees love each his neighbor.
Claudianus , De Nuptiis Honorii et Mariæ, LXV
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
Hartley Coleridge , Song, She is not Fair
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Christabel (c. 1797-1801, published 1816), Part II
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Love, Stanza 1
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why love must needs be blind,
But this is the best of all I hold—
His eyes are in his mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge , To a Lady, Stanza 2
He that can't live upon love deserves to die in a ditch.
Say what you will, 'tis better to be left
Than never to have loved.
William Congreve , Way of the World, Act II, scene 1
If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see
The heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
William Congreve , Way of the World, Act III, scene 3
I know not when the day shall be,
I know not when our eyes may meet;
What welcome you may give to me,
Or will your words be sad or sweet,
It may not be 'till years have passed,
'Till eyes are dim and tresses gray;
The world is wide, but, love, at last,
Our hands, our hearts, must meet some day.
Hugh Conway , Some Day
How wise are they that are but fools in love!
How a man may choose a Good Wife, Act I. 1. Attributed to Joshua Cooke in Dictioanry of National Biography
A mighty pain to love it is,
And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
But, of all pains, the greatest pain
Is to love, but love in vain.
Abraham Cowley , Translation of Anacreontic Odes, VII. Gold. (Anacreon's authorship doubted)
Better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.
George Crabbe , The Struggles of Conscience, Tale 14
Heaven's great artillery.
Richard Crashaw , Flaming Heart, line 56
Love's great artillery.
Richard Crashaw , Prayer, line 18
Mighty Love's artillery.
Richard Crashaw , Wounds of the Lord Jesus, line 2
And I, what is my crime I cannot tell,
Vnless it be a crime to haue lou'd too well.
Poor love is lost in men's capacious minds,
In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.
For life to come, is false to the past sweet
Of mortal life, hath killed the world above.
For why to live again if not to meet?
And why to meet if not to meet in love?
And why in love if not in that dear love of old?
Sydney Dobell , Sonnet, To a Friend in Bereavement
Give, you gods,
Give to your boy, your Cæsar,
The rattle of a globe to play withal,
This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off;
I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.
John Dryden , All for Love, Act II, scene 1
How happy the lover,
He sighs not in vain.
John Dryden , King Arthur, IV. 1. Song
Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.
John Dryden , Palamon and Arcite, Book II, line 75. Amphitron, Act I, scene 2
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
John Dryden , Tyrannic Love, Act IV, scene 1
Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart.
Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas , Divine Weekes and Workes, First Week, Part I. Sixth day, line 1,057
I'm sitting on the stile. Mary,
Where we sat side by side.
Lady Dufferin , Lament of the Irish Emigrant
Oh, tell me whence Love cometh!
Love comes uncall'd, unsent.
Oh, tell me where Love goeth!
That was not Love that went.
Burden of a Woman. Found in J. W. Ebsworth's Roxburghe Ballads
The solid, solid universe
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson , Essays, First Series. Epigraph to Friendship
Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson , Essays, Of Friendship
All mankind love a lover.
Ralph Waldo Emerson , Essays, Of Love
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,—
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson , Initial, Demoniac, and Celestial Love, Stanza 1
Mais on revient toujours
A ses premières amours.
But one always returns to one's first loves .
Quoted by Étienne in Joconde, Act III. 1. Same idea in Pliny the Elder , Natural History, X, 63
Venus, thy eternal sway
All the race of men obey.
Euripides , Iphigenia in Aulis
Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
John Ford , The Lover's Melancholy (licensed 24 November 1628; printed 1629), Act III, scene 3, line 105
Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
'Tis friendship, and 'tis something more.
Each other every wish they give;
Not to know love is not to live.
John Gay , Plutus, Cupid and Time, line 135
I saw and loved.
Edward Gibbon , Autobiographic Memoirs, p. 48
I love her doubling and anguish;
I love the love she withholds,
I love my love that loveth her,
And anew her being moulds.
R. W. Gilder , The New Day, Part III. Song XV
Love, Love, my Love.
The best things are the truest!
When the earth lies shadowy dark below
Oh, then the heavens are bluest!
R. W. Gilder , The New Day, Part IV. Song I
Not from the whole wide world I chose thee,
Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
For thou art the whole wide world to me.
I seek for one as fair and gay,
But find none to remind me,
How blest the hours pass'd away
With the girl I left behind me.
The Girl I Left Behind Me (1759)
Es ist eine der grössten Himmelsgaben,
So ein lieb' Ding im Arm zu haben.
It is one of Heaven's best gifts to hold such a dear creature in one's arms.
Und Lust und Liebe sind die Fittige zu grossen Thaten.
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Iphigenia auf Tauris, II. 1. 107
In einem Augenblick gewährt die Liebe
Was Mühe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.
Love grants in a moment
What toil can hardly achieve in an age.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Torquato Tasso, II. 3. 76
Man liebt an dem Mädchen was es ist,
Und an dem Jüngling was er ankündigt.
Girls we love for what they are;
Young men for what they promise to be.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Die Wahrheit und Dichtung, III. 14
Wenn ich dich lieb habe, was geht's dich an?
If I love you, what business is that of yours?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Wilhelm Meister, IV. 9
Thus let me hold thee to my heart,
And every care resign:
And we shall never, never part,
My life—my all that's mine!
Oliver Goldsmith , The Hermit, Stanza 39
As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there's no love lost between us.
Oliver Goldsmith , She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act IV, line 255
Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see,
Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shalt be.
George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne , Inscription for a Figure representing the God of Love. See Genuine Works. (1732) I. 129. Version of a Greek couplet from the Greek Anthology
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
Thomas Gray , The Bard, I. 3, line 12
O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of love.
Thomas Gray , The Progress of Poesy. I. 3, line 16
Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love.
Robert Greene , Alcida. Verses Written under a Carving of Cupid Blowing Bladders in the Air
Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but Lady Greensleeves?
A new Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Greensleeves, to the new tune of "Greensleeves", from "A Handful of Pleasant Deities" (1584)
The chemist of love
Were it made out of mire,
Transmute into gold.
Francis Ridley Havergal , Royal Commandments, Loving Allegiance
What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.
Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Marble Faun (1860), Volume II, Chapter XV
Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.
Hebrews, XII. 6
Du bist wie eine Blume, so hold, so schön und rein;
Ich shau' dich an und Wehmut schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.
Oh fair, oh sweet and holy as dew at morning tide,
I gaze on thee, and yearnings, sad in my bosom hide.
Heinrich Heine , Du bist wie eine Blume
Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu.
It is an ancient story
Yet is it ever new.
Heinrich Heine , Lyrisches Intermezzo, 39
And once again we plighted our troth,
And titter'd, caress'd, kiss'd so dearly.
Heinrich Heine , Youthful Sorrows. No. 57, Stanza 2
Alas! for love, if thou art all,
And nought beyond, O earth.
Felicia Hemans , The Graves of a Household
Open your heart and take us in,
Love—love and me.
William Ernest Henley , Rhymes and Rhythms, V
No, not Jove
Robert Herrick , Hesperides, To Silvia
You say to me-wards your affection's strong;
Pray love me little, so you love me long.
Robert Herrick , Love me Little, Love me Long
There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.
Ascribed to Robert Herrick in the Scottish Student's Song-Book. Found on back of leaf 53 of Popish Kingdome or reigne of Antichrist, in Latin verse by Thomas Naogeorgus, and Englished by Barnabe Googe. Printed 1570. See Notes and Queries. S. IX. X. 427. Lines from Elizabethan Song-books. Bullen, p. 31. Reprinted from Thomas Ford's Music of Sundry Kinds. (1607)
Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be:
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee,
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.
Robert Herrick , To Anthea, who may command him anything, No. 268
Let never man be bold enough to say,
Thus, and no farther shall my passion stray:
The first crime, past, compels us into more,
And guilt grows fate, that was but choice, before.
Aaron Hill , Athelwold, Act V, scene The Garden
To love is to know the sacrifices which eternity exacts from life.
John Oliver Hobbes , School for Saints, Chapter XXV
O, love, love, love!
Love is like a dizziness;
It winna let a poor body
Gang about his biziness!
Hogg , Love is like a Dizziness, line 9
Cupid "the little greatest enemy."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , Professor at the Breakfast Table
Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. , Songs of Many Seasons, Dorothy, II, Stanza 7
Who love too much, hate in the like extreme.
Homer , The Odyssey, Book XV, line 79. Pope's translation
For love deceives the best of woman kind.
Homer , The Odyssey, Book XV, line 463. Pope's translation
Si sine amore, jocisque
Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque.
If nothing is delightful without love and jokes, then live in love and jokes.
Horace , Epistles, I. 6. 65
What's our baggage? Only vows,
Happiness, and all our care,
And the flower that sweetly shows
Nestling lightly in your hair.
If you become a Nun, dear,
The bishop Love will be;
The Cupids every one, dear!
Will chant—'We trust in thee!'
From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love
To long for, pureness to desire, a mount
Of consecration it were good to scale.
Jean Ingelow , A Parson's Letter to a Young Poet, Part II, line 55
But great loves, to the last, have pulses red;
All great loves that have ever died dropped dead.
Douglas Jerrold , Jerrold's Wit, Love
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
John, XV. 13
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
John Keats , Lamia, Part II
I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth.
John Keats , Letters, No, XXXVII
When late I attempted your pity to move,
Why seemed you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love
But—why did you kick me downstairs?
J. P. Kemble , Panel, Act I, scene 1. Quoted from Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, Volume I, p. 15. (1785) where it appeared anonymously. Kemble is credited with its authorship. The Panel is adapted from Bickerstaff's 'Tis Well 'Tis No Worse, but these lines are not therein. It may also be found in Annual Register. Appendix. (1783) P. 201
What's this dull town to me?
Robin's not near—
He whom I wished to see,
Wished for to hear;
Where's all the joy and mirth
Made life a heaven on earth?
O! they're all fled with thee,
Robin Adair.
The hawk unto the open sky,
The red deer to the wold;
The Romany lass for the Romany lad,
As in the days of old.
Given in the N. Y. Times Review of Books as a previously written poem by F. C. Weatherby. Not found
Sing, for faith and hope are high—
None so true as you and I—
Sing the Lovers' Litany:
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
"Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
If Love were jester at the court of Death,
And Death the king of all, still would I pray,
"For me the motley and the bauble, yea,
Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith,
The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!"
Frederic L. Knowles , If Love were Jester at the Court of Death
Love begins with love.
Jean de La Bruyère , The Characters and Manners of the Present Age, Chapter IV
Le commencement et le déclin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras où l'on est de se trouver seuls.
The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.
Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens
On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.
O tyrant love, when held by you,
We may to prudence bid adieu.
François de La Rochefoucauld , Maxims, 114
Ce qui fait que amants et les maitresses ne s'ennuient point d'être ensemble; c'est qu'ils parlent toujours d'eux mêmes.
The reason why lovers and their mistresses never tire of being together is that they are always talking of themselves.
François de La Rochefoucauld , Maximes (1665–1678), 312
Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above—
A woman's heart, and a woman's life,
And a woman's wonderful love?
Mary T. Lathrop , A Woman's Answer to a Man's Question. Erroneously credited to Mrs. Browning
I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
She's as pure as the lily in the dell.
She's as sweet as the heather,
The bonnie, bloomin' heather,
Harry Lauder and Gerald Grafton. I Love a Lassie
Et c'est dans la première flamme
Qu'est tout le nectar du baiser.
And in that first flame
Is all the nectar of the kiss.
Lebrun , Mes Souvenirs, ou les Deux Rives de la Seine
Love leads to present rapture,—then to pain;
But all through Love in time is healed again.
A warrior so bold, and a virgin so bright,
Conversed as they sat on the green.
They gazed on each other with tender delight,
Alonzo the Brave was the name of the knight—
The maiden's the Fair Imogene.
M. G. Lewis—Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene. First appeared in his novel Ambrosio the Monk. Found in his Tales of Wonder, Volume III, p. 63. Lewis's copy of his poem is in the British Museum
Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
As in a foundering ship.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part III, line 7
Like Dian's kiss, unask'd, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Endymion (1818), Stanza 4
Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the springs to meet the sunshine.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Wedding Feast, line 153
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter XXI
I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , Masque of Pandora, Part VIII. In the Garden, line 39
So they grew, and they grew, to the church steeple tops
And they couldn't grow up any higher;
So they twin'd themselves into a true lover's knot,
For all lovers true to admire.
Lord Lovel. Old Ballad. History found in Professor Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II. 204. Also in The New Comic Minstrel. Pub. by John Cameron, Glasgow. The original version seems to be as given there
Under floods that are deepest,
Which Neptune obey,
Over rocks that are steepest,
Love will find out the way.
Love will find out the way. Ballad in Percy's Reliques
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.
. . . . . .
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore:—
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honour more.
Richard Lovelace , To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Given erroneously to Montrose by Scott
True love is but a humble, low born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthenware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this workday world.
James Russell Lowell , Love, line 1
Not as all other women are
Is she that to my soul is dear;
Her glorious fancies come from far,
Beneath the silver evening star,
And yet her heart is ever near.
James Russell Lowell , My Love, Stanza 1
Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.
He who loves not wine, woman, and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.
Attributed to Luther by Uhland in Die Geisterkelter. Found in Luther's Tischreden. Proverbs at end. Credited to J. H. Voss by Redlich, Die poetischen Beiträge zum Waudsbecker Bothen, Hamburg, 1871, p. 67
As love knoweth no lawes, so it regardeth no conditions.
John Lyly , Euphues, p. 84
Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip,—the rose
Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how)
With these, the crystal on his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes,
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! hath she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?
John Lyly , Alexander and Campaspe, Act III, scene VI. Song
It is better to poyson hir with the sweet bait of love.
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton , Advice to a Lady, Stanza 13
None without hope e'er lov'd the brightest fair:
But Love can hope where Reason would despair.
But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,
Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?
Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love,
And I will tenfold all that love repay;
Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,
Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay , Lines Written July 30, 1847
This lass so neat, with smile so sweet,
Has won my right good will,
I'd crowns resign to call her mine,
Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.
Ascribed to Leonard McNally , who married Miss I'Anson, one of the claimants for the "Lass," by Sir Joseph Barrington in Sketches of His Own Times, Volume II, p. 47. Also credited to William Upton. It appeared in Public Advertiser, Aug. 3, 1789. "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" erroneously said to have been a sweetheart of King George III
When Madelon comes out to serve us drinks,
We always know she's coming by her song.
And every man he tells his little tale,
And Madelon, she listens all day long.
Our Madelon is never too severe—
A kiss or two is nothing much to her—
She laughs us up to love and life and God—
Madelon, Madelon, Madelon.
La Madelon , song of the French Soldiers in the Great War
Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight?
Christopher Marlowe , Hero and Leander. First Sestiad, line 176. Quoted as a "dead shepherd's saw." Found in As You Like It
Love me little, love me long.
Christopher Marlowe , The Jew of Malta (c. 1592), Act IV, scene 6
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, or hills, or fields,
Or woods and steepy mountains, yield.
Christopher Marlowe , The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, Stanza 1
Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a.
If one does not possess what one loves, one should love what one has.
Jean-François Marmontel , quoted by Moore in Irish Melodies, The Irish Peasant to His Mistress, Note
Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
Hoc tantum posse dicere: non amo te.
I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; I can only say this, "I do not love thee."
Martial , Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), I. 33. 1. (Name sometimes given "Savidi.")
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
But why I cannot tell;
But this I know full well,
I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
Paraphrase of Martial by Tom Brown, as given in his Works, ed. by Drake. (1760). Answer to Dean John Fell, of Oxford, IV. 100
Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas;
Je n'en saurois dire la cause;
Je sais seulement une chose.
C'est que je ne vous aime pas.
Paraphrase of Martial by Robert Rabutin (De Bussy)—Epigram 32, Book I
I love thee not, Nell
But why I can't tell.
Paraphrase of Martial in Thomas Forde's Virtus Rediviva
I love him not, but show no reason wherefore, but this, I do not love the man.
Paraphrase of Martial by Rowland Watkyns, Antipathy
Love is a flame to burn out human wills,
Love is a flame to set the will on fire,
Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.
John Masefield , Widow in the Bye Street, Part II
Great men,
Till they have gained their ends, are giants in
Their promises, but, those obtained, weak pigmies
In their performance. And it is a maxim
Allowed among them, so they may deceive,
They may swear anything; for the queen of love,
As they hold constantly, does never punish,
But smile, at lovers' perjuries.
Philip Massinger , Great Duke of Florence, Act II, scene 3
'Tis well to be merry and wise,
'Tis well to be honest and true;
'Tis well to be off with the old love,
Before you are on with the new.
As used by Charles Maturin , for the motto to "Bertram," produced at Drury Lane, 1816
It is good to be merry and wise,
It is good to be honest and true,
It is best to be off with the old love,
Before you are on with the new.
Published in "Songs of England and Scotland." London, 1835, Volume II, p. 73
I loved you ere I knew you; know you now,
And having known you, love you better still.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Vanini
Love is all in fire, and yet is ever freezing;
Love is much in winning, yet is more in leesing:
Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;
Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing;
Love indeed is anything, yet indeed is nothing.
Thomas Middleton , Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act II, scene 2
I never heard
Of any true affection but 'twas nipped.
Thomas Middleton , Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act III, scene 2
He who for love hath undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousandfold than one
Who never loved at all.
Monckton Milnes , To Myrzha, On Returning
Such sober certainty of waking bliss.
John Milton , Comus, 263
La fleur nominée héliotrope tourne sans cesse vers cet astre du jour, aussi mon cœur dorénavant tournera-t-il toujours vers les astres resplendissants de vos yeux adorables, ainsi que son pôle unique.
The flower called heliotrope turns without ceasing to that star of the day, so also my heart henceforth will turn itself always towards the resplendent stars of your adorable eyes, as towards its only pole.
Molière , Le Malade Imaginaire, Act II, scene 6
L'amour est souvent un fruit de mariage.
Love is often a fruit of marriage.
Molière , Sganarelle, I. 1
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, Because it was he; because it was I. There is beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union.
Michel de Montaigne , Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVII
Celuy ayme peu qui ayme à la mesure.
He loves little who loves by rule.
Michel de Montaigne , Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVIII
Yes, loving is a painful thrill,
And not to love more painful still;
But oh, it is the worst of pain,
To love and not be lov'd again.
Thomas Moore , Anacreontic, Ode 29
No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose.
Thomas Moore , Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, Stanza 2
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
Thomas Moore , Come, Rest in This Bosom, Stanza 2
A boat at midnight sent alone
To drift upon the moonless sea,
A lute, whose leading chord is gone,
A wounded bird, that hath but one
Imperfect wing to soar upon,
Are like what I am, without thee.
Thomas Moore , Loves of the Angels, Second Angel's Story
But there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream.
Thomas Moore , Love's Young Dream, Stanza 1
"Tell me, what's Love;" said Youth, one day,
To drooping Age, who crost his way.—
"It is a sunny hour of play;
For which repentance dear doth pay;
Repentance! Repentance!
Thomas Moore , Youth and Age
I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
I've bourne a weary lot;
But in my wanderings far or near
Ye never were forgot.
The fount that first burst frae this heart
Still travels on its way
And channels deeper as it rins
The luve o' life's young day.
Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
But Love, the master goes in and out
Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
Just as he please—just as he please.
Ah, dearer than my soul…
Dearer than light, or life, or fame.
John Oldham , Lament for Saul and Jonathan
Jupiter ex alto perjuria ridet amantum.
Jupiter from on high laughs at the perjuries of lovers.
Ovid , Ars Amatoria, Book I. 633
Res est soliciti plena timoris amor.
Love is a thing full of anxious fears.
Ovid , Heroides, I. 12
Quicquid Amor jussit non est contemnere tutum.
Regnat, et in dominos jus habet ille deos.
It is not safe to despise what Love commands. He reigns supreme, and rules the mighty gods.
Ovid , Heroides, IV. 11
Hei mihi! quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.
Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.
Ovid , Metamorphoses, I. 523
Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur,
Majestas et amor.
Love is a credulous thing.
Ovid , Metamorphoses, VII. 826. Heroides, VI. 21
Otia si tollas, periere cupidinis arcus.
If you give up your quiet life, the bow of Cupid will lose its power.
Ovid , Remedia Amoris, CXXXIX
Qui finem quæris amoris,
(Cedit amor rebus) res age; tutus eris.
If thou wishest to put an end to love, attend to business (love yields to employment); then thou wilt be safe.
Ovid , Remedia Amoris, CXLIII
Let those love now who never lov'd before,
Let those who always loved now love the more.
Thomas Parnell—Translation of the Pervigilium Veneris. Ancient poem. Author unknown. Ascribed to Catullus. See also Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II. Memb. 5. 5
The moods of love are like the wind,
And none knows whence or why they rise.
Coventry Patmore , The Angel in the House, Sarum Plain
My merry, merry, merry roundelay
Concludes with Cupid's curse,
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods, they change for worse!
George Peele , Cupid's Curse; From the Arraignment of Paris
What thing is love?—for (well I wot) love is a thing.
It is a prick, it is a sting.
It is a pretty, pretty thing;
It is a fire, it is a coal,
Whose flame creeps in at every hole!
George Peele , Miscellaneous Poems, The Hunting of Cupid
Love will make men dare to die for their beloved—love alone; and women as well as men.
Qui amat, tamen hercle si esurit, nullum esurit.
He that is in love, faith, if he be hungry, is not hungry at all.
Plautus , Casina, IV. 2. 16
Amor et melle et felle est fœcundissimus:
Gustu dat dulce, amarum ad satietatem usque aggerit.
Love has both its gall and honey in abundance: it has sweetness to the taste, but it presents bitterness also to satiety.
Plautus , Cistellaria, I. 1. 71
Auro contra cedo modestum amatorem.
Find me a reasonable lover against his weight in gold.
Plautus , Curculio, I. 3. 45
Qui in amore præcipitavit pejus perit, quam si saxo saliat.
He who falls in love meets a worse fate than he who leaps from a rock.
Plautus , Trinummus, II. 1. 30
A lover's soul lives in the body of his mistress.
Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep,
Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.
Alexander Pope , Autumn, line 79
Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Alexander Pope , Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
Alexander Pope , Epistle to Eloisa, last line
Ye gods, annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.
Alexander Pope , Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chapter XI
O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.
Alexander Pope , Spring, line 49
Scilicent insano nemo in amore videt.
Everybody in love is blind.
Sextus Propertius , Elegiæ, II. 14. 18
Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
And can be bought with nothing but with self.
Sir Walter Raleigh , Love the Only Price of Love
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
Sir Walter Raleigh , The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd
Ach die Zeiten der Liebe rollen nicht zurück, sondern ewig weiter hinab.
Ah! The seasons of love roll not backward but onward, downward forever.
Die Liebe vermindert die weibliche
Feinheit und verstärkt die männliche.
Love lessens woman's delicacy and increases man's.
Jean Paul Richter , Titan, Zykel 34
Ein liebendes Mädchen wird unbewust kühner.
A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold.
Jean Paul Richter , Titan, Zykel 71
As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy design
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
James Whitcomb Riley , An Old Sweetheart of Mine
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart,
My rosary, my rosary.
Oh! she was good as she was fair.
None—none on earth above her!
As pure in thought as angels are,
To know her was to love her.
Samuel Rogers , Jacqueline, Part I, line 68
Love is the fulfilling of the law.
Romans, XIII. 10
Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet?
Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure?
Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet—
Fail, Sun and Breath!—yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.
John Ruskin , Trust Thou Thy Love
Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
Ruth. I. 16
Et l'on revient toujours à ses premiers amours.
One always returns to his first love .
St. Just
L'amour est un égoïsme à deux.
Love is an egotism of two.
Antoine de Salle
Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
II Samuel. I. 26
Raum ist in der kleinsten Hütte
Für ein glücklich liebend Paar.
In the smallest cot there is room enough for a loving pair.
Friedrich Schiller , Der Jüngling am Bache, Stanza 4
Arm in Arm mit dir,
So fordr' ich mein Jahrhundert in die Schranken.
Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.
Friedrich Schiller , Don Carlos, I. 9. 97
Ah, to that far distant strand
Bridge there was not to convey,
Not a bark was near at hand,
Yet true love soon found the way.
Friedrich Schiller , Hero and Leander. Bowring's translation
O dass sie ewig grünen bliebe,
Die schöne Zeit der jungen Liebe.
O that it might remain eternally green,
The beautiful time of youthful love.
Friedrich Schiller , Lied von der Glocke
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebt.
I have enjoyed earthly happiness,
I have lived and loved.
Friedrich Schiller , Piccolomini, III. 7. 9
Mortals, while through the world you go,
Hope may succor and faith befriend,
Yet happy your hearts if you can but know,
Love awaits at the journey's end!
Clinton Scollard , The Journey's End—Envoy
And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears.
Walter Scott , Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto IV, Stanza 1
In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Walter Scott , The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 2
Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
For lovers love the western star.
Walter Scott , The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 24
True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven.
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind.
Walter Scott , The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto V, Stanza 13
Where shall the lover rest,
Whom the fates sever
From his true maiden's breast,
Parted for ever?
Where, through groves deep and high,
Sounds the far billow,
Walter Scott , Marmion (1808), Canto III, Stanza 10
Magis gauderes quod habueras, quam moereres quod amiseras.
Better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all. (Free translation).
Odit verus amor nec patitur moras.
True love hates and will not bear delay.
Seneca the Younger , Hercules Furens, 588
Qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum,
Sero recusat ferre, quod subiit, jugum.
He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.
Si vis amari, ama.
If you wish to be loved, love.
Seneca the Younger , Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, IX. Ausonius—Epigrams. XCI. 6. Martial, Epigrams, VI. 11. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II. 107. Attributed to Plato by Burton
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
William Shakespeare , Sonnet CXVI
When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul. A moment only; but was it not enough? Were you not paid then for all the rest of your struggle on earth?… When I opened the gates of paradise, were you blind? Was it nothing to you? When all the stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept you the heart of heaven, were you deaf? were you dull? was I no more to you than a bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent eternity together; and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? Was it not enough?
Bernard Shaw , Getting Married
The fickleness of the woman I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
Bernard Shaw , The Philanderer, Act II
Love's Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war.
Percy Bysshe Shelley , Hellas, line 321
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for the other given;
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven.
Sir Philip Sidney , My True Love Hath my Heart
They love indeed who quake to say they love.
Sir Philip Sidney , Astrophel and Stella, LIV
Priests, altars, victims, swam before my sight.
Edmund Smith , Phædra and Hippolytus, Act I, scene 1
Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
I bow before thine altar, Love!
Tobias Smollett , Roderick Random, Chapter XL, Stanza 1
Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
Song of Solomon, VIII. 6
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
Song of Solomon, VIII. 7
And when my own Mark Antony
Against young Cæsar strove,
And Rome's whole world was set in arms,
The cause was,—all for love.
Robert Southey , All for Love, Part II, Stanza 26
Cupid "the little greatest god."
Robert Southey , Commonplace Book. 4th Series, p. 462
They sin who tell us Love can die:
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity,
In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.
Robert Southey , Curse of Kehama. Mount Meru, Stanza 10
Together linkt with adamantine chains.
Edmund Spenser , Hymn in Honour of Love. Phrase used by Drummond, Flowers of Sion. Belvoir, in Harleian Miscellany, IV. 559. Phineas Fletcher—Purple Island, Chapter XII. 64. (1633). Manilius, Book I. 921. Marini—Sospetto d'Herode. Sts. 14 and 18, Crashaw's translation. Shelley, Revolt of Islam, III. 19
To be wise and eke to love,
Is granted scarce to gods above.
Edmund Spenser , Shepheard's Calendar, March
Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , Corinne (1807), Book VIII, Chapter II
Where we really love, we often dread more than we desire the solemn moment that exchanges hope for certainty.
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , Corinne (1807), Book VIII, Chapter IV
L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un épisode dans celle des hommes.
Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's.
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël , De l'influence des passions, Works, III, p. 135. (Ed. 1820)
Sweetheart, when you walk my way,
Be it dark or be it day;
Dreary winter, fairy May,
I shall know and greet you.
For each day of grief or grace
Brings you nearer my embrace;
Love hath fashioned your dear face,
I shall know you when I meet you.
Frank L. Stanton , Greeting
To love her was a liberal education.
Steele , of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, in The Tatler, No. 49. Augustine Birrell in Obiter Dicta calls this "the most magnificent compliment ever paid by man to a woman"
I who all the Winter through,
Cherished other loves than you
And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
Now I know the false and true,
For the earnest sun looks through,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
Robert Louis Stevenson , poem written 1876
And my heart springs up anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And the old love comes to meet me, in the dawning and the dew.
Robert Louis Stevenson , poem written 1876
Just like Love is yonder rose,
Heavenly fragrance round it throws,
Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose,
And in the midst of briars it blows
Just like Love.
Viscount Strangford , Just like Love, Translation of Poems of Camoens
Why so pale and wan, fond lover,
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Sir John Suckling , Song, Stanza 1
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
Emanuel Swedenborg , True Christian Religion, Par. 31
In all I wish, how happy should I be,
Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
Love, as is told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather.
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
Algernon Charles Swinburne , The Complaint of Lisa
Love laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rose bed:
And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead.
Algernon Charles Swinburne , Love Laid his Sleepless Head
I that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live.
Cogas amantem irasci, amare si velis.
You must make a lover angry if you wish him to love.
Syrus , Maxims
Tum, ut adsolet in amore et ira, jurgia, preces, exprobrutio, satisfactio.
Then there is the usual scene when lovers are excited with each other, quarrels, entreaties, reproaches, and then fondling reconcilement.
Tacitus , Annales (AD 117), XIII. 44
When gloaming treads the heels of day
And birds sit cowering on the spray,
Along the flowery hedge I stray,
To meet mine ain dear somebody.
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Love better is than Fame.
Bayard Taylor , Christmas Sonnets, Lyrics. To J. L. G
Love's history, as Life's, is ended not
By marriage.
Bayard Taylor , Lars, Book III
For love's humility is Love's true pride.
Bayard Taylor , Poet's Journal, Third Evening. The Mother
And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old.
Alfred Tennyson , Day Dream, The Departure. I
I loved you, and my love had no return,
And therefore my true love has been my death.
Alfred Tennyson , Lancelot and Elaine, line 1,298
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have lov'd so slight a thing.
Alfred Tennyson , Locksley Hall (1835, published 1842), Stanza 74
Love is hurt with jar and fret;
Love is made a vague regret.
Alfred Tennyson , The Miller's Daughter, Stanza 28
It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
William Makepeace Thackeray , Pendennis, Chapter VI
Werther had a love for Charlotte,
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
William Makepeace Thackeray , The Sorrows of Werther
Like to a wind-blown sapling grow I from
The cliff, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul,—
Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome
By all its clouds incumbent; O be true
To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole
Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through,
Dry down and perish to the foodless root.
Francis Thompson , Manus Animam Pinxit
Why should we kill the best of passions, love?
It aids the hero, bids ambition rise
To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds,
Even softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue.
James Thomson , Sophonisba, Act V, scene 2
O, what are you waiting for here? young man!
What are you looking for over the bridge?—
A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons
Is soon to come dancing over the bridge.
Nec jurare time; Veneris perjuria venti
Irrita per terras et freta summa ferunt,
Gratia magna Jovi; vetuit pater ipse valere,
Jurasset cupide quicquid ineptus amor.
Fear not to swear; the winds carry the perjuries of lovers without effect over land and sea, thanks to Jupiter. The father of the gods himself has denied effect to what foolish lovers in their eagerness have sworn.
Tibullus , Carmina, I, 4, 21
Perjuria ridet amantium Jupiter et ventos irrita ferre jubet.
At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs and throws them idly to the winds.
Tibullus , Carmina, III, 6, 49
Die Liebe wintert nicht;
Nein, nein! Ist und bleibt Frühlings-Schein.
Love knows no winter; no, no! It is, and remains the sign of spring.
At first, she loved nought else but flowers,
And then—she only loved the rose;
And then—herself alone; and then—
She knew not what, but now—she knows.
Ridgely Torrence , House of a Hundred Lights
For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams,
And their best promise constantly redeems.
The warrior for the True, the Right,
Fights in Love's name;
The love that lures thee from that fight
Lures thee to shame:
That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves
The spirit free,—
That love, or none, is fit for one
Man-shaped like thee.
Virgil , Æneid (29-19 BC), IV. 296
For all true love is grounded on esteem.
Villiers (Duke of Buckingham)
To love is to believe, to hope, to know;
'Tis an essay, a taste of Heaven below!
Edmund Waller , Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 17
Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Edmund Waller , Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 25
And the King with his golden sceptre,
The Pope with Saint Peter's key,
Can never unlock the one little heart
That is opened only to me.
For I am the Lord of a Realm,
And I am Pope of a See;
Indeed I'm supreme in the kingdom
That is sitting, just now, on my knee.
C. H. Webb , The King and the Pope
What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer for is the test of love.
O, rank is good, and gold is fair,
And high and low mate ill;
But love has never known a law
Beyond its own sweet will!
John Greenleaf Whittier , Amy Wentworth, Stanza 18
"I'm sorry that I spell'd the word;
I hate to go above you,
Because"—the brown eyes lower fell,—
"Because, you see, I love you!"
John Greenleaf Whittier , In School-Days, Stanza 4
Your love in a cottage is hungry,
Your vine is a nest for flies—
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks in the morning
Is shod like a mountaineer.
Nathaniel Parker Willis , Low in a Cottage, Stanza 3
He loves not well whose love is bold!
I would not have thee come too nigh.
The sun's gold would not seem pure gold
Unless the sun were in the sky:
To take him thence and chain him near
Would make his beauty disappear.
The unconquerable pang of despised love.
William Wordsworth , Excursion, Book VI. Hamlet, Act III, scene 1
For mightier far
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
Of magic potent over sun and star,
Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
And though his favourite be feeble woman's breast.
William Wordsworth , Laodamia, Stanza 15
O dearer far than light and life are dear.
William Wordsworth , Poems Founded on the Affections, No. XIX. To. ——, VII. 114
While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With "sober certainties" of love is blest.
William Wordsworth , Poems Founded on the Affections, VII. 115. (Knight's ed.)
Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.
Sir Thomas Wyatt , Songs and Sonnets, A Renouncing of Love.
With every act of love we move a little closer to immortality, whereas every act of hate brings us nearer to death. Recueil de Caprices