quotations about love
I am a bit different than most, in that I have a very strict definition of love. Most people view love as a feeling, or a thing. Most of the definitions that people associate with love really define infatuation. For me, love is not a feeling or a thing; it is not a noun or an adjective. Romantic love is a verb. It is the act of mutual nurture.
BRADY CRAIN
"Altitude Sickness: Romantic love is a verb", Mountain Times, March 9, 2016
Love's the big hint life can't stop dropping, the biggest beguilement of all.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Love released from bond, and unburdened of its fetters, is love no longer.
THOMAS BURKE
A Love Lesson
Love is always right.
RICHARD LAYMON
The Stake
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit's fast.
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
The world gets grimy and the love object is in stark relief from it's surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
Love is an experiment ... what happens next is always surprising.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Ah, my friends, Love, like a froward boy, with his hands full of sugar-plums, still cries for more.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Love is when you know you are right but you bite your tongue anyway. What greater love could you show for anyone than to swallow it, to deny yourself the supreme pleasure of proving that you are right by virtue of a long legalistic argument that proves your point? But sometimes you need to just leave it be. Let them be happy rather than you be right.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
Biologically speaking, love is the backbone of the social bonds that are critical for our survival and adaptation. These intimate bonds alter the brain's circuitry and tip the hormonal balance to shape our memories, emotions and ultimately our 'self.' In essence, every important relationship we have shapes our brain, which in turn shapes our very relationships. Lucky for us, there are many different types of love: maternal love, familial love, the kind we feel when we cuddle a pet, hug a tree, or even a special blanket. While love itself is characterized as an emotion like anger and sadness, there is also a strong biological desire -- sexual desire -- which drives all living species to populate our world.
CLAUDIA AGUIRRE
"Your Brain on Love", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016
For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
So being in love is like being hooked up to a perpetual dopamine drip, and you get a little hit every time you see the person or touch them or think about them?
SEAN ILLING
"This is what love does to your brain", Vox, April 23, 2018
There are moments of passion and joy, but most of this love is enduring the long stretches of dealing with not-so-thrilling stuff because one has to do so and no one else will. Moreover, one cannot imagine doing otherwise. If that sounds like your marriage, congratulations.
ANDY SENIOR
"Love and the Single Factotum", Syncopated Times, September 26, 2018
Son, if a maiden love thee, thou shalt appear handsome in her sight; she shall praise thine eyes, and the corners of thy mouth, yea, she shall admire thy hands. Though thou wert even as the orangutan yet shall she paint thee with fancies.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Love is a negative form of hatred.
ROGER ZELAZNY
This Immortal
Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela.
GEORGE MOORE
Confessions of a Young Man
Loving is like music. Some instruments can go up two octaves, some four, and some all the way from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some of them are susceptible only of melody, so some hearts can sing but one song of love, while others will fun in a full choral harmony.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The Maker has linked together the whole race of man with this chain of love. I like to think that there is no man but has had kindly feelings for some other, and he for his neighbour, untiwl we bind together the whole family of Adam. Nor does it end here. It joins heaven and earth together. For my friend or my child of past days is still my friend or my child to me here, or in the home prepared for us by the Father of all. If identity survives the grave, as our faith tells us, is it not a consolation to think that there may be one or two souls among the purified and just, whose affection watches us invisible, and follows the poor sinner on earth?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Cornhill to Cairo