quotations about love
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Our earthly loves are but so many silver steps leading us up to the great golden love of God.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Love is said to be an involuntary passion, and it is, therefore, contended that it cannot be resisted. This is true in part only, for like all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with ailment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Eleanor Parke Custis, Jan. 16, 1795
Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela.
GEORGE MOORE
Confessions of a Young Man
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Passer Mortuus Est"
Looking back, I should have known better than to accompany Hugh to a love story. Such movies are always a danger, as unlike battling aliens or going undercover to track a serial killer, falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced at some point in their lives. The theme is universal and encourages the viewer to make a number of unhealthy comparisons, ultimately raising the question "Why can't our lives be like that?" It's a box best left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
I've heard it called a Cinderella story, I've heard it called magic. But it's not magic, it's love. And when love is true from the heart, nothing magic about it.
BILL MAHON
"Love From the Ashes", KWTX, November 13, 2017
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
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
You can run from love
And if it's really love it will find you
Catch you by the heel
U2
"A Man and a Woman", How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
One love drives out another.
SPANISH PROVERB
A man is only as good as what he loves.
SAUL BELLOW
Seize the Day
Love isn't like money--the more you give away the more you get back, and the more you have to give.
S. M. STIRLING
The Sunrise Lands
The wine of Love can be obtained by none,
Save Him who trod the winepress all alone.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH
"Love"
The kind of love my mum talks about is full of worry and work and forgiving people and putting up with things and stuff like that. It's not a lot of fun, that's for sure. If that really is love, the kind my mum talks about, then nobody can ever know if they love somebody, can they? It seems like what she's saying is, if you're pretty sure you love somebody, the way I was sure in those few weeks, then you can't love them, because that isn't what love is. Trying to understand what she means by love would do your head in.
NICK HORNBY
Slam
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
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
You don't need scores of suitors. You need only one ... if he's the right one.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
I think love and hate are really the same thing. They're what you feel when someone matters more to you than anything else; more than yourself, even.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil