quotations about love
Love does not seek equals; it creates them.
STENDAHL
The Red and the Black
Love called, and I could not linger,
But sought the forbidden tryst,
As music follows the finger
Of the dreaming lutanist.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Telepathy"
Life is a song. Love is the music.
ANONYMOUS
Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Even kindergarten love is hard work.
JEFF HICKS
"Kindergarten love flourishes, 50 years later", The Record, September 3, 2018
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
With his venom
irresistible
and bittersweet
that loosener
of limbs, Love
reptile-like
strikes me down
SAPPHO
With His Venom
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
"Beyond"
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.
ROBERT FROST
The Master Speed
So this love still hold true
now what you gonna do
I won't give up on you
Between the moon and sun
this life is never done
I won't give up on you
Set up set up set up my love
I wont give up on you
TREVOR HALL
"Moon/Sun"
Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Epipsychidion
Love is the cheapest of religions.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Dec. 21, 1939
Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
It is certain there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Passion of Love", Essays Moral and Humorous
Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Ghost
To love is to will the good of the other.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Dec. 20, 1810
Love is the rule of rules, the key to all mysteries.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Love ... Just Nature's way of getting one person to pay the bills for another person.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods