quotations about love
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's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
JOHN DONNE
The Ecstasy
I love the one who punishes me well.
ANNE RICE
Beauty's Release
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
If love be timid it is not true.
SPANISH PROVERB
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
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 two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Balancing Acts
Love life's weariness leavens.
HENRI CAZALIS
"Always"
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
Love is a warm brain, not a leaping heart.
TIM LEBBON
Face
Love: noun. The force that allows us to overcome our seemingly irreconcilable differences and empowers us to experience the peace of one-ness.
BURT GERSHATER
"Inner Heroes", Arizona Daily Sun, August 20, 2018
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
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