quotations about love
He who has loved often ... has loved never.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Last Days of Pompeii
It is difficult here to give definite examples, but everybody knows how, in the subtle psychology of Falling in Love, there are involved innumerable minor elements, physical and mental, which strike us exactly because of their absolute adaptation to form with ourselves an adequate union. Of course we do not definitely seek out and discover such qualities; instinct works far more intuitively than that; but we find at last, by subsequent observation, how true and how trustworthy were its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do so who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.
GRANT ALLEN
"Falling in Love", Falling in Love and Other Essays
Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
What is love? To be delighted by the happiness of another.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Confessio Philosophi
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1 July 1646 - 14 November 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician. His most prominent accomplishment was the development of differential and integral calculus independently of Sir Isaac Newton's contemporaneous achievements.
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
Civilization and Its Discontents
Love is not a delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
All you need is love.
THE BEATLES
"All You Need Is Love", Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. Rooted in skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in previously unheard-of ways. The band later explored music styles ranging from ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock.
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
WASHINGTON IRVING
attributed, Golden Gleams of Thought: From the Words of Leading Orators
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
ALFRED TENNYSON
"In Memoriam"
Love can be a terrible curse. It can make you overlook even the largest flaws in a person's behavior.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
I would rather have eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.
ROBERT TIZON
attributed, Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out
As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.
APHRA BEHN
The Fair Jilt
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
Love is a powerful neurological condition like hunger or thirst, only more permanent. We talk about love being blind or unconditional, in the sense that we have no control over it. But then, that is not so surprising, since love is basically chemistry.
JIM AL-KHALILI
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
[Nature's] crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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
Songs of Experience
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby -- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid