quotations about love
When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one who at some point or other has not been in love. If we consider the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.
AMY HEMPEL
"The Dog of the Marriage"
To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task ... tremendous and foolish and human.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
ANITA BROOKNER
attributed, Women Writers Talk
First we love within, then we love the world.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure
The single greatest predictor of happiness and success in life is a healthy love relationship.
PATRICIA LOVE
official website
Some people will only love you as long as you fit in their box. Don't be afraid to disappoint.
ANONYMOUS
Life is a song. Love is the music.
ANONYMOUS
I used to be all about the grand gestures. The big demonstrations of love. The utterly romantic, perfectly crafted moments that take your breath away. It's funny though, because after almost ten years, and two kids, later, I've come to see love and romance in a whole different light. And I can honestly say that this year, for the first time, I've made peace with the fact that we aren't buying each other the obligatory chocolates or flowers. I'm actually okay with it. I promise. Husband dearest, in case you're wondering if this is a trap, it isn't.
RASHA RUSHDY
"Love Is Sweatpants and Take-out, Actually", Huffington Post, February 14, 2016
Thy love is like deep waters all around--
Warm pulsing waters, in whose brooding sound
The lone wail of my heart is lulled with dreams,
And the far clamour of the world is drowned.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Love always has its price, come whence it may.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Miss Harriet"
There is no passion that more excites us to every thing that is noble and generous than virtuous Love.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Love needs its martyrs
Needs its sacrifices
They live for your beauty
And pay for their vices
Love will be the death of
My lonely soul brothers
But their spirits shall live on in
The hearts of all lovers
DEPECHE MODE
"The Love Thieves", Ultra
Why is the measure of love loss?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Dec. 21, 1939
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
ANITA BROOKNER
A Friend from England
It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in a play not with a woman of the outside world but with a doll inside our brain -- the only woman moreover that we have always at our disposal, the only one we shall ever possess -- whom the arbitrary power of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the Balbec of my dreams had been from the real Balbec; an artificial creation which by degrees, and to our own hurt, we shall force the real woman to resemble.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Ghost
Love is ... letting them flirt with the person next door, because you understand they need to feel like anything is possible.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016