quotations about love
If thou love thine equal, it is no conquest; if thy superior, thou shalt be envied; if thine inferior, laughed at. If one that is beautiful, her colour will change before thou get thy desire; if one that is wise, she will overreach thee so far that thou shalt never touch her; if virtuous, she will eschew such fond affection; if deformed, she is not worthy of any affection; if she be rich, she needeth thee not; if poor, thou needest not her. If old, why shouldst thou love her; if young, why should she love thee?
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
We who were loved will never
unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH
"After a Sentence in 'Malte Laurids Brigge'", Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
To have refused love is very much more picturesque than not to have been offered it.
STELLA BENSON
Pipers and a Dancer
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
JOHN DONNE
The Ecstasy
Love is not enough to keep a marriage intact but it is necessary for keeping it strong, healthy, and enjoyable. If a couple is not in love, over time, they will find themselves lacing in the drive they need to make their marriage work. Think of love like fuel; without it, a relationship will eventually break down and stop moving. Being in a loveless marriage is no fun.
VIKKI ZIEGLER
"The Top 7 Reasons Why Marriages Last", Huffington Post, November 14, 2017
If love is the first of the passions, it is because it gratifies them all.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Never Give All the Heart", In the Seven Woods
In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.
EMILE ZOLA
L'Argent
If I fell in love with you
Would you promise to be true
And help me understand
'Cause I've been in love before
And I found that love was more
Than just holding hands
THE BEATLES
"If I Fell", A Hard Day's Night
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.
Many think that love is about always being on the same page with our partner, feeling romantic and living in harmony. Threats to these experiences can feel like obstacles that get in the way of love. But love is as much about the obstacles as it is about the bliss. Love is accepting difference, recovering from conflict and tolerating discord. Fundamentally, love is allowing your partner to be entirely who they are, even when their very being needles you to the core. It is a profound acceptance of the personhood of your lover, while dropping your need for them to be anything different. Yes, it's a tall order. But who said it was going to be easy?
AARON BALICK
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
Whoever came up with the term "love is a drug" was spot on. That first time doing a drug is unreal, but afterward, you are left chasing that first high that will never come again. Love is the same way, nothing will ever compare to the first, we can chasetrack it for an eternity, might find a few suitable replacements to fill that void but in the back of your mind, you know the truth.
IDOTHIS4THELOVE
"Dating & Relationships: Do You Ever Get Over Your First Love?", Inscribe Magazine, September 1, 2016
Love is a warm brain, not a leaping heart.
TIM LEBBON
Face
In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Balancing Acts
Love makes you do crazy things. Right, and alcohol makes you drink too much. It's romantic to think that love is this uncontrollable force that sweeps us off our feet. "You can't help whom you love." "I can't help myself, I'm in love." "I have no choice but to love you." That all sounds amazing, until we consider that an uncontrollable force can't be promised or predicted. We can't commit to love that we're not responsible for. We can't give love that we don't own. If a gust of wind knocked you off your feet, you couldn't turn and offer that wind to the person behind you for as long as you both shall live. So maybe the most romantic thing someone can say to you is, "I have full capacity over all my faculties. I'm in total control. I'm thinking very clearly. I'm choosing to give you my love, because you deserve it."
JULIE MITCHELL
"Love is not written in the stars", Corsicana Daily Sun, November 6, 2017
I love the one who punishes me well.
ANNE RICE
Beauty's Release
Love makes its votaries wretched beings whose souls are not within their own keeping. Therefore man demands to be free to love in order to become cured of love and woman demands to be free to love in order to live for love: and herein the calamitous disparity.
MARIAN COX
"The Fools of Love", The Dry Rot of Society and Other Essays
A love that does not discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are worthy of love.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
The problem with love these days is that society has taught the human race to stare at people with their eyes rather than their souls.
CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER
Remington Typewriter Poetry
The longer the road to love, the keener is the pleasure.
ANDRE MAUROIS
An Art of Living