quotations about love
If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom--whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
From the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreathes heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this--love; while the women ... would all the time be feeling, this is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Love is a process -- not a static condition. It's a commitment to do the work and come back into relationship with each other. To move through whatever gets in the way of your love for one another.
SHANA PARKER
"3 Myths About Unconditional Love That Can Ruin Your Marriage", Good Men Project, December 25, 2015
Love is a negative form of hatred.
ROGER ZELAZNY
This Immortal
I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.
NORMAN MAILER
Harlot's Ghost
Love wasn't the soft, silky words the poets spoke of. Love, with it's twin edges, was the one factor that weakened so many women, that pushed them to compromise their own wants, their own needs for the needs and wants of another.
NORA ROBERTS
Sweet Revenge
To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering Something Beautiful for God.
MOTHER TERESA
A Gift for God
What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air -- you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all-consuming, a physical pain. Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. It is the point before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything.
JOJO MOYES
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Rival Ladies
Here is one of the most beautiful effects of love, its confidence not only in the present, but in the future as well. Cynics may declare that it is only the deceitful way nature uses to make human beings perform her will. To such a view all lovers are indifferent. In their confidence they bind themselves to one another, not for a day only, not even for a lifetime, but for eternity.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Love", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
When it comes to attracting men, logic escapes even the savviest of women. Probably because there is no logic involved.... You can read all the self-help books you want, you can run on a treadmill till you've reduced your tuchas to bubkes, you can stuff your face with oysters, and it won't make a bit of difference. For love, attraction, compatibility, and companionship are not a science of objectivity; they are, rather, far and away the single most subjective matter in the history of the universe. Did Cavewoman X have a romp in the cave with Caveman Y because of his universally sought-after ability to single-handedly kill a wildebeest with his bare hands and bring it to the feet of his intended? No, she probably just liked the way his mouth turned up at the corners in concentration while he chiseled out a piece of flint.
GWEN MACSAI
Lipshtick
Love's the big hint life can't stop dropping, the biggest beguilement of all.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept--our own selves--that we love.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
True love, selfless love, does not wither as beauty fades or life becomes difficult. If anything, its roots grow deeper and its branches spread farther with each shared experience.
EDITOR
"Music and the Spoken Word: What love is", Deseret News, April 2, 2016
True love is a giant cheese wheel.
DAYNA EVANS
"True Love Is a Giant Cheese Wheel", New York Magazine, December 21, 2015
Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Mon Coeur Mis a Nu
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although its height be taken.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
"sonnet cxvi"
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language.
With whom shall a young lady fall in love but with the person she sees? She is not supposed to lose her heart in a dream, like a Princess in the "Arabian Nights;" or to plight her young affections to the portrait of a gentleman in the Exhibition, or a sketch in the "Illustrated London News." You have an instinct within you which inclines you to attach yourself to some one: you meet Somebody: you hear Somebody constantly praised; you walk, or ride, or waltz, or talk, or sit in the same pew at church with Somebody: you meet again, and again, and--"Marriages are made in Heaven," your dear mamma says, pinning your orange-flower wreath on, with her blessed eyes dimmed with tears--and there is a wedding breakfast, and you take off your white satin and retire to your coach-and-four, and you and he are a happy pair--Or, the affair is broken off and then, poor dear wounded heart! Why then you meet Somebody Else, and twine your young affections round number two. It is your nature so to do. Do you suppose it is all for the man's sake that you love, and not a bit for your own? Do you suppose you would drink if you were not thirsty, or eat if you were not hungry?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Pendennis