quotations about love
It is best to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.
DANISH PROVERB
Love grows with obstacles.
GERMAN PROVERB
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our perplexity when alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
You cannot depict love inside a frame of fact. It needs a mist to dissolve in.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
How to Write
Love is harsh, and it consumes. And more than anything, it demands sacrifice.
TIM LEBBON
Unnatural Selection
Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The World in Six Songs
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
This love is a lichen....
etching on the unmoved rock
the only rune it knows.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Stubbornly", Twigs and Knucklebones
Let us suppose the loved one is as madly impelled toward the lover. In a few days, in an hour, nay, in an instant -- for there is such a thing as love at first sight -- this man and woman, two unrelated individuals, who may never have seen each other before, conceive a passion, greater, intenser than all other affections, friendships, and social relations. So great, so intense is it, that the world could crumble to star-dust so long as their souls rushed together. If necessary, they would break all ties, forsake all friends, abandon all blood kin, run away from all moral responsibilities. There can be no discussion.... We see it every day, for love is the most perfectly selfish thing in the universe.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature -- it makes the proud man meek -- the cheerful, sad -- the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy fail before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Eugene Aram: A Tale
Until Obi met Clara on board the cargo boat Sasa he had thought of love as another grossly over-rated European invention.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
Love is not wanting the other to become a clone of ourselves. 'Other' offers resistance, pushing us to find what is self. Love is actively embracing our equality and pushing each other to realise our full potential and make our full contribution to the world.
HOWARD JONES
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
In love two individuals share the same interest--each being interested only in the other's welfare.
B. V. TRIPURARI
"Love Is the Answer", Huffington Post, March 29, 2016
All love's details burned bright. Surely they meant something? Surely they were enough? But they came and went and there we still were, with new unfillable space between us.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Love's the big hint life can't stop dropping, the biggest beguilement of all.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
If you want to fall in love, you can't hold everything in. You have to open up, take that risk. You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy. The one you find may not be the kind of woman you expected to fall in love with, but it wont matter, you'll love her for exactly what she is.
JEAN M. AUEL
The Valley of Horses
Love can get nasty when there's people involved.
MIKE WRATHELL
"Mozart's 'Figaro' Flies Thru Detroit!", America Jr., November 14, 2017
Love is to be the lodestar of our lives and, if blessed with the capacity to exercise it, we can aspire to imitate God.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides