quotations about love
"To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved."
OSAMU DAZAI
No Longer Human
All the love and joy that a man has ever received in perception is laid up in him as the sunshine of a hundred years is laid up in the bole of the oak.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Love subdues everything, except the felon heart.
FRENCH PROVERB
Never marry but for love; but see that thou lov'st what is lovely.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
No wound is worse than counterfeited love.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
O, high the happy bosom heaves
When love is in the dancer!
WITTER BYNNER
"Three Poplars"
Once you love someone it's like cancer. It spreads and spreads until it eats you up.
ANN WUEHLER
Interviews With Loneliness
The first love disappears, but never goes. That ache becomes reconciliation.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
journal, Apr. 4, 1831
To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Lives and Works of Goethe
We can love a partner but not necessarily trust them. But when we trust a partner, loving them becomes much easier.
VIKKI ZIEGLER
"The Top 7 Reasons Why Marriages Last", Huffington Post, November 14, 2017
What a mystery is love! We cannot define it; we can only indicate it by describing the occasion on which it arises in the soul. If human love is inexplicable, Divine love is an ocean too deep for the plummet of man or archangel; too broad to be bounded by the thought of the loftiest intelligence in the universe. He who knows not in his inmost consciousness the love of God, will find this book sealed to his understanding. It can only be unlocked by the key of experience. Love is not a product of the reason. It is the free play of the spiritual sensibilities in the possession of its object. God is not only love, but he is love revealed. The perfect love of God toward man is designed to call forth perfect love toward God in man's bosom. Though the mirror on which that love is reflected is broken into uneven planes and reflects s distorted image--though the human soul at its best earthly estate under grace is shattered by infirmities and incurable imperfections--yet the love which man cherishes toward God may flow with all the united force of his being. The history of God's intercourse with men is the chronicle of his love. This is the only history which will outlive time itself, and escape the conflagration which will burn up the world and all the works therein. This will be our textbook forever. We can contemplate no more sublime and ennobling theme. The brightness of the material universe pales before the splendors of the Divine character--that central fire which kindles the souls of seraphs in heaven and melts the hearts of sinners on earth. Thus the science of the divine Heart infinitely above the science of the almighty Hand.
DANIEL STEELE
"Love Revealed", Love Enthroned
A summer romance is something special, because it blazes like a comet across the sky and then fades out. The thing that makes it special--that makes everything move so fast--is that a summer romance is doomed to end.
JOHN VORNHOLT
Coyote Moon
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"The Buried Life"
Love is not enough. But, it is the rock on which all else stands.
NORA ROBERTS
Blood Brothers
Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Love may turn to indifference with possession.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Love takes work -- but we're so often slow to treat it as such. We'd rather endure half-hearted arrangements and let things fall apart, chalking it up as a fluke error or poor partner choice. And then we enter the next relationship, sights set high but with nothing to show by way of mindset improvement (other than blind optimism and/or a degree of jadedness.)
KRIS GAGE
"The 2 Biggest Things People Get Wrong About What Love Really Is", Your Tango, August 8, 2018
Love's fire colors once our neutral form, to blacken to eternal embers.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"