quotations about love
Don't you feel something magical when you're in love?... I do, I certainly do ... but I think that feeling of magic is a hardwired psychological response. It's a chemical thing in the brain. It's a flow of chemicals and electrical currents, and it developed over millions of years in the process of evolution to aid in the procreation of the species.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Ghost
So soon as this want or power [of love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Love", Essays and Letters
Love's very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Epipsychidion
In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
Love was a country he knew nothing about.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Love subdues everything, except the felon heart.
FRENCH PROVERB
Love is the power that can anchor and transform both our conflicts and our compromises, as we take firm and steady steps toward big and worthy goals. Although we've banished talk of love from our public discourse, we need to place it back where it belongs -- front and center, right alongside high standards and expectations.
KEN WAGNER
"Back to School -- New Statewide Offerings Include Love", Westerly Sun, August 31, 2016
Love needs its martyrs
Needs its sacrifices
They live for your beauty
And pay for their vices
Love will be the death of
My lonely soul brothers
But their spirits shall live on in
The hearts of all lovers
DEPECHE MODE
"The Love Thieves", Ultra
Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
JACK LONDON
The Valley of the Moon
The moment you love, you lose your freedom, for the simple reason that you have to take others into account. You have to worry about them, empathise with them and feel some responsibility for them. Sociopaths are the only truly free people. That is why freedom is highly overrated.
TIM LOTT
"Love is ... a torment and a joy. And it's not for softies", The Guardian, July 22, 2016
Tim Lott (born 23 January 1956) is a novelist, travel journalist, and an occasional op-ed writer for the Independent on Sunday.
If love is indeed a mirage then how does it quench real needs like our thirst, satiate our hunger? Are thirst & hunger just a state of mind that can be manipulated, satiated simply by a mirage?
AMIT MEHRA
"As I Watch a Love End I Realize, Love is Always a Stowaway", The Good Men Project, March 14, 2016
To love is to will the good of the other.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
Perhaps love's greatest gift--that it is indeed unconditional--is also its greatest curse.
KRISTIN ARMSTRONG
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
Love forces, at last, this humility: you cannot love if you cannot be loved, you cannot see if you cannot be seen.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Though she had been besieged, courted, and pursued by men who had fallen in love with her, she did not in her heart believe in the existence of love. It seemed to her as unreal as the painted drop scenes, the temples of love, and the banks of roses that formed the settings for her dances. But though she was cold and insensitive to love, she was esteemed a wonderful mistress. She herself practiced love as a duty imposed by her profession, a part to be played that might sometimes please but always fatigued her and called for a high degree of art.
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Love is basically for teenagers, and when it comes to real life for grown-ups, you're far better off with someone who's moderately pleased to see you when you're around, but leaves you in peace when you've got things to do.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Never mingle love and business.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Barchester Towers
Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
"Beyond"
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"The Buried Life"