quotations about love
All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by two emotions--fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions--only two words in the language of the soul.... Fear wraps our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
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
I loved a being, an idea of my own mind, which had no real existence. I concreted this abstract of perfection, I annexed this fictitious quality to the idea presented by a name; the being, whom that name signified, was by no means worthy of this. This is the truth: Unless I am determinedly blind -- unless I am resolved causelessly and selfishly to seek destruction, I must see it. Plain! is it not plain? I loved a being; the being, whom I loved, is not what she was; consequently, as love appertains to mind, and not body, she exists no longer. I regret when I find that she never existed, but in my mind; yet does it not border on willful deception, deliberate, intentional self-deceit, to continue to love the body, when the soul is no more?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Jun. 2, 1811
I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer think that. There's nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish.
RITA MAE BROWN
Bingo
It seems to me now that true love is the only theme for either song or story.
ROBERT BARR
Over the Border
Love brooks no delay.
ROMAN PROVERB
Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing:
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
SAMUEL DANIEL
Hymen's Triumph
The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Conversations with Samuel R. Delany
Love gratified, is love satisfied -- and love satisfied, is indifference begun.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa
Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night.... You must not try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"Death", Winesburg, Ohio
I think love adds to everything. I'm an old softie about that. I think love is the most important thing in life. If you don't have [a relationship], you're always looking for one. It's the motivator, the driver.
SHERYL CROW
Dr. Drew interview, 2001
Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.
TANITH LEE
Mortal Suns
Love is a very difficult -- occupation. You got to work at it, man. It ain't a thing every Tom, Dick and Harry has got a true aptitude for.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Period of Adjustment
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
THICH NHAT HANH
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
Love is intangible and invisible. If you want to reduce it to materialism, it is a biologically adaptive impulse to ensure the survival of your genes. But nothing makes nonsense of scientific materialism more comprehensively than the mystery of love. All the truly real things are not measurable.
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.
Nothing is so strange when one is in love ... as the complete indifference of other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Love in the young requires as little of hope as of desire to feed upon.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Light in August
Now on the summit of Love's topmost peak
Kiss we and part; no farther can we go:
And better death than we from high to low
Should dwindle or decline from strong to weak.
We have found all, there is no more to seek;
All have we proved, no more is there to know;
And Time could only tutor us to eke
Out rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.
We cannot keep at such a height as this;
And even straining souls like ours inhale
But once in life so rarified a bliss.
What if we lingered till love's breath should fail!
Heaven of my Earth! one more celestial kiss,
Then down by separate pathways to the vale.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Love's Wisdom", Lyrical Poems
Alfred Austin (30 May 1835 - 2 June 1913) was an English poet and journalist who succeeded Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
Love's language everywhere is known.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Language"
Love is the desire to give, not to receive, something. Love is the art of producing something with the other's talents.
BERTOLT BRECHT
"Love of Whom?"