- Without warning
- as a whirlwind
- swoops on an oak
- Love shakes my heart
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore.
NEIL GAIMAN, The Sandman #65
- Ah, love is a voyage with water and a star,
- in drowning air and squalls of precipitate bran;
- love is a war of lights in the lightning flashes,
- two bodies blasted in a single burst of honey.
PABLO NERUDA, Morning XII
- Since to be loved endures,
- To love is wise.
ROBERT BRIDGES, Since to be Loved Endures
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
- The way you make love
- is the way God will be with you.
RUMI, The Book of Love
- The weight of love
- Has buoyed me up
- Till my head
- Knocks against the sky.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, O Magazine, Feb. 2007
Love released from bond, and unburdened of its fetters, is love no longer
THOMAS BURKE, A Love Lesson
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all things else, when nourished and supplied plentifully with ailment, it is rapid in its progress; but let these be withdrawn and it may be stifled in its birth or much stinted in its growth.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
- With his venom
- irresistible
- and bittersweet
- that loosener
- of limbs, Love
- reptile-like
- strikes me down
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
Once you love someone it’s like cancer. It spreads and spreads until it eats you up.
ANN WUEHLER, Interviews With Loneliness
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
MOZART
- All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
- Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
- All are but ministers of Love,
- And feed his sacred flame.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, Love
No distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, Sep. 30, 1779
We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.... You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
JOHN LENNON, ATV interview, Dec. 2, 1969
I think love adds to everything. I'm an old softie about that. I think love is the most important thing in life. If you don't have [a relationship], you're always looking for one. It's the motivator, the driver.
SHERYL CROW, Dr. Drew interview, 2001
- Well they say that love is in the air, but never is it clear,
- How to pull it close and make it stay
- Butterflies are free to fly, and so they fly away
- And I'm left to carry on and wonder why
SHERYL CROW, "Always on Your Side"
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
THICH NHAT HANH, O Magazine, Feb. 2007
All you need is love.
THE BEATLES, All You Need Is Love
- Of all fires
- love is the only inexhaustible one.
PABLO NERUDA, O Magazine, Feb. 2007
- Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
- And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
- She would not love.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, "A Leave-taking"
- Love is like the wild rose-briar;
- Friendship like the holly-tree.
- The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
- But which will bloom most constantly?
Emily Brontë, Love and Friendship
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
JEAN ANOUILH, L'homme et la mort dans l'histoire
The truth about love is that it is ever changing. Throughout the life of a relationship, individuals change and life itself changes. Love has to be flexible enough to accommodate new information, new roles, and new ways of loving one another.
PATRICIA LOVE, The Truth About Love
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