quotations about love
If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
To Rhea
The highest evidence that love exists is its readiness to overlook and pardon faults.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
This may be the very nature of love, a passion as fickle as the sea, full of certainty when the object of desire is absent, yet dubious when confronted again with the lover's presence.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
If Love his moment overstay,
Hatred's swift repulsions play.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Visit
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
JACK LONDON
The Valley of the Moon
If they substituted the word "Lust" for "Love" in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Love made you vulnerable; if you gave your heart to another, they could leave you or die.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.
HERBERT SPENCER
The Study of Sociology
First we love within, then we love the world.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure
No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.
APHRA BEHN
The Rover
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.
Love does not seek equals; it creates them.
STENDAHL
The Red and the Black
Only little boys and old men sneer at love.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
Love is but a fire that is to be transmitted.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
Wherever love is, I want to be, I will follow it as surely as the land-locked salmon finds the sea.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
Oh, ill betide that villain love, not love,
That all its object and affection finds
In the mere contact of encircling arms!
PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA
The Painter of His Own Dishonour
Tell not thy previous loves to a woman, lest she also telleth thee hers.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
No man knoweth how another man maketh his love, for women tell not.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.
NORMAN MAILER
The Man Who Studied Yoga