quotations about love
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 makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
The flame of anger, bright and brief,
Sharpens the barb of Love.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Tell Me Not Things Past all Belief
It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Love strips the mask from each of us, and we must endeavor for those we love to put the mask on so that it can be taken off again. For if there is no mask to start with, there is no pleasure in removing it.
KOBO ABE
The Face of Another
Love is the building blocks of creation, love is the substance from which we are made. From love, to love, by love.
MUNEERA RASHIDA
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
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.
Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Heart of the Matter
Is it the beloved who evokes love, or the lover who has love to give?
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
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
It must be sad to outlive aught we love.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Great Love has many attributes, and shrines
For varied worshippers, but his force divine
Shows most its many-named fulness in the man
Whose nature multitudinously mixed--
Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought--
Resists all easy gladness, all content
Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul
Flooded with consciousness of good that is
Finds life one bounteous answer.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
JOHN DONNE
The Sun Rising
Love creates, love cements, love enters and harmonizes all things.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Wit and Wisdom of E. Bulwer-Lytton
For misdirected love, the attainment of its object is, indeed, the best cure; but it cures as the guillotine cures headache.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The sweetness of human love is to be compared, therefore, to the sweetness of a flower, whose glowing colors and voluptuous fragrance are intended by Nature to attract the winged insects, whose visits are necessary for the fertilization of the seed. The color fades, the flower falls, the perfume vanishes, death soon follows after; but Nature is not mocked.
ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM
"Love's Nature", Thoughts on Love and Death
I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue
I'd go crawling down the avenue
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love
BOB DYLAN
"Make You Feel My Love", Time Out of Mind
Love is an amazing magnet.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
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
To have loved, to have been made happy thus,
What better fate has life in store for us?
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"