quotations about love
There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, that each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
Love is the master of our lives,
And, e'en though happy subjects we,
We're governed by his scepter strong
Through time and through eternity.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Melody"
Love is always having to say you're sorry.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
This love, this mortal love, is of their own making ... the thing we did not intend, foresee or sanction. How then should it not fascinate us?... It is as if a fractious child had been handed a few timber shavings and a bucket of mud to keep him quiet only for him promptly to erect a cathedral.... Within the precincts of this consecrated house they afford each other sanctuary, excuse each other their failings, their sweats and smells, their lies and subterfuges, above all their ineradicable self-obsession. This is what baffles us, how they wriggled out of our grasp and somehow became free to forgive each other for all that they are not.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Infinities
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
BIBLE
I John 4:18
If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Balancing Acts
Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear, to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight in comparison with that from the desert of this world's affection to the garden of God, where there is perpetual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
There's nothing deader than a dead love.
LEONA HELMSLEY
Playboy, Nov. 1990
Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Love's tendrils round the heart doth twine,
As round the oak doth cling the vine.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Language"
We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, The Power of Hope
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
If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Day Watch
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
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
JOHN DONNE
The Ecstasy
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness -- I hope you're getting this down.
WOODY ALLEN
Love and Death