quotations about love
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
THICH NHAT HANH
Living Buddha, Living Christ
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
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.
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
ALFRED TENNYSON
"In Memoriam"
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
WASHINGTON IRVING
attributed, Golden Gleams of Thought: From the Words of Leading Orators
You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.
SARAH DESSEN
This Lullaby
Love is eternal as long as it lasts.
VINICIUS DE MORAIS
attributed, The New York Times Biographical Service, 1991
Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.
APHRA BEHN
The Lover's Watch, Four o'clock
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.
APHRA BEHN
The Fair Jilt
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Charles Caleb Colton (1777 - 1832) was an English cleric and writer. His books, including collections of epigrammatic aphorisms and short essays on conduct, though now almost forgotten, had a phenomenal popularity in their day.
I would rather have eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, lips that cannot speak, than a heart that cannot love.
ROBERT TIZON
attributed, Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out
It is difficult here to give definite examples, but everybody knows how, in the subtle psychology of Falling in Love, there are involved innumerable minor elements, physical and mental, which strike us exactly because of their absolute adaptation to form with ourselves an adequate union. Of course we do not definitely seek out and discover such qualities; instinct works far more intuitively than that; but we find at last, by subsequent observation, how true and how trustworthy were its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do so who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.
GRANT ALLEN
"Falling in Love", Falling in Love and Other Essays
We can't profess love without talking through hand puppets.
DAVID SEDARIS
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt, Master Constable
Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Lust is a sprightly servant,
Gallant where wines are poured;
Love is a bitter master,
Love is an iron lord.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
At night the grackle Love will start
To shriek and shrill,
Nor will he once be still
Till he has wide awake the backward heart.
So selfish Love,
Go hush;
Feathers and claws take off
Or seek some bush.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Three Valentines"
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
Not all men are worthy of love.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive manifestations of their aggressiveness.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
Sometimes it seems ... as though only intelligent people are stupid enough to fall in love & only stupid people are intelligent enough to let themselves be loved.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
One Art: Letters