quotations about love
They do best, who if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep quarters; and sever it wholly from their serious affairs, and actions, of life; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men's fortunes, and maketh men, that they can no ways be true to their own ends.
SIR FRANCIS BACON
"Of Love", Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral
To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering Something Beautiful for God.
MOTHER TERESA
A Gift for God
To have loved, to have been made happy thus,
What better fate has life in store for us?
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Love's dream, too, knows decay;
Awhile the soul-harp's wildly thrilling strain
Pours out those notes we ne'er forget again,
And the deep fountains of the heart burst forth
As if to gladden every spot of earth;
But O! it will not stay.
MARY T. LATHRAP
"Song of the Earth-Weary"
I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters
Love, unconquerable,
Waster of rich men, keeper
Of warm lights and all-night vigil
In the soft face of a girl:
Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor!
Even the pure immortals cannot escape you,
And mortal man, in his one day's dusk,
Trembles before your glory.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
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"
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. His opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage".
When a man and woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better, their digestion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but periodic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an active life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Morals
My love is hopeless! I know it. But it will feed me to my dying day.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol
I think love is serious. It's like an invention: sometimes it lies deep down inside you, great and quiet--and at other times it racks you and keeps you from sleeping.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
Septimus
Whatever our religious practice, love has no religion. On the contrary love is a religion of its own.
SANJAY LEELA BHANSALI
"Bajirao Mastani is a tribute to Mughal-e-Azam: Sanjay Leela Bhansali", Firstpost, December 22, 2015
The capacity to love is the fruit of age, not the monopoly of youth.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
I swallowed hard. Was I ready for the Wager of Love? It was still a gamble and there would be no guarantee of happiness, but I would not remain one of the Cowards of Love scattered around me. I knew that one could not be the Empire's greatest lover without truly knowing how to love. And yet I no longer even aspired to this hollow title. I wanted only what every common husband can achieve--to be the greatest lover of my very own wife.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
Love is like a good piece of wood: It just gets stronger and stronger as the years go by.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
Love is a farthing piece, a bloody bribe pressed in the palm of God and thrown away.
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
How far above all price Love's costly wine,
Which can the meanest chalice make divine!
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
"Love"
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
The gospel of love spread among a sex for the needs of militarism and the labor market has filled woman with the spiritual hysteria of apostleship.
MARIAN COX
"The Fools of Love", The Dry Rot of Society and Other Essays
I say love, and the world populates itself with doves.
PABLO NERUDA
"Get Used to Seeing the Shadow Behind Me"
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love