LOVE QUOTES XLVII

quotations about love

Any love is enveloping and potentially dangerous; after all, you are putting your heart into someone else's hands and with that an incredible power to cause pain of various kinds (and vice versa). That's a given. But there is an additional absolutism about first love, when you have nothing to compare it with. You don't know anything, yet you feel you know everything -- this can be calamitous.

JULIAN BARNES

interview, The Guardian, January 29, 2018

Tags: Julian Barnes


For me, however, if I understand the concept, to love properly and in earnest one would have to do it anonymously, or at least in an undeclared fashion, so as not to seem to ask anything in return, since asking and getting are the antithesis of love--if, as I say, I have the concept aright, which from all I have said and all that has been said to me so far it appears I do not. It is very puzzling. Love, the kind that I mean, would require a superhuman capacity for sacrifice and self-denial, such as a saint possesses, or a god, and saints are monsters, as we know, and as for the gods--well.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Infinities

Tags: John Banville


This is love: You stop bothering about the universal, the general, get sucked instead into the local and particular: When will I see her again? What shall we do today? Do you like these shoes? Theory and reflection are delicate old uncles bustled out of the way by the boisterous nephews action and desire. Themes evaporate, only plot remains.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

Tags: Glen Duncan


Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone -- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.

BETTE DAVIS

The Lonely Life

Tags: Bette Davis


Love endeth like the chianti flask, its drops are bitter.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


Her heart consenteth before her lips say: Yea; and in this interval lieth her Paradise; wherefore she would prolong it.

GELETT BURGESS

The Maxims of Methuselah


All love is lost but upon God alone.

WILLIAM DUNBAR

The Merle and the Nightingale

Tags: William Dunbar


To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour -- the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.

GRAHAM GREENE

The Quiet American


Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can't tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it's the last thing to go.

MARTIN AMIS

The Second Plane

Tags: Martin Amis


Love is the secret you unmask yourself to find; it is the foundation of the spiritual life, the destination where all roads of the journey lead.

ELIZABETH LESSER

The Seeker's Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure

Tags: Elizabeth Lesser


Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: Edward Abbey


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

Tags: Jean M. Auel


Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

FRED ROGERS

The World According to Mister Rogers


Love is not like the echo, which returneth only what is given; but, rather, like the pump, which returneth by the pail what it received by the pint.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts


Let me prevail as of old, as lover, as lord, as king, or have done with Love's tyrant rule.

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

To Nimue

Tags: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt


Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Written on the Body


Happy is love or friendship when returned--
The lovers whose pure flames have equal burned.

BION OF SMYRNA

"Friendship"

Tags: Bion of Smyrna


All human love is a faint type of God's;
An echoing note from a harmonious whole;
A feeble spark from an undying flame;
A single drop from an unfathomed sea:
But God's is infinite; it fills the earth
And heaven, and the broad, trackless realms of space.

ALBERT LAIGHTON

"The Love of God"

Tags: Albert Laighton


Love rays us round as glory swathes a star,
And, from the mystic touch of lips and palms,
Streams rosy warmth!

GERALD MASSEY

"To My Wife"

Tags: Gerald Massey


A little while the rose,
And after that the thorn;
An hour of dewy morn,
And then the glamour goes.
Ah, love in beauty born,
A little while the rose!

HENRY VAN DYKE

"Roseleaf"

Tags: Henry Van Dyke