quotations about love
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
JEAN ANOUILH
L'homme et la mort dans l'histoire
Love must be first and last, the part, the whole;
Must fill the human void as ocean fills
Its broadest channels, ancient as the hills,
And slightest shell o'er which its waters roll.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Love"
It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love--this hunger of the heart--as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the goddess of love.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Suddenly Last Summer
Love is more than just saying nice words and doing things -- it means forgetting oneself and serving others, just as Jesus did when he washed the feet of the disciples.
POPE FRANCIS
"Love is the hidden service we do for others, Pope Francis says", Angelus: The Tidings Online, March 14, 2016
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell lasts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between, to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Love me little, love me long.
FRENCH PROVERB
Love is a king who reigns without laws.
SPANISH PROVERB
So love is rest? The cosy corner? The little nook?
Sometimes it ought to be.
Sometimes it is.
DORIS LESSING
Play with a Tiger
In the beginning, love is all you know. You don't know it is love, of course, all you know is that some soft, good-smelling person holds you, feeds you, talks to you and empties your pants when they are full. As you age you come to realize this feeling is, indeed, love, and mommy and daddy become the center of your universe. You love them more than anything, other than your dog, your bike and your sister, of course, if you must. It is an all-encompassing, all-consuming love that warms you like the sun and sustains you like the air you breathe. And that brand of love is all you know until one day a blonde girl across the classroom bats her eyes at you or a dark-eyed boy in the hall gives you a crooked, pimply grin, and your insides turn to warm mush. At first you think you might have gotten a bad taco at lunch, but no, it is love.
JEFF MULLIN
"Love is a lifelong thrill ride", Enid News, February 14, 2016
Love is easy until it's tested. When it requires sacrifice, it's proven. It's easy to love people until we meet ... those people. It's easy to love our enemies until we actually have enemies.
CHRIS STEFANICK
"Love is Easy Until It's Tested", National Catholic Register, March 19, 2016
At the beginning of a relationship we love with 100 percent of our heart. However, once we are hurt, we think that if we only love with 50 percent of our heart, it will not get hurt as much the next time around. But we end up getting hurt just as much. We have to give our relationship our full attention. We should not be afraid of love.
ANDREA BRISENO
"True love is built from broken pieces", The Rampage Online, March 28, 2016
The caresses over which love presides are always pure.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Love is the possibility of possibilities. Its farthest reach is beyond us, no matter how long we love or how much. It will always remain the mute mystery to whose ecstasy and ache we can only surrender with a yes.
DAVID RICHO
How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving
To love is to find pleasure in the perfection of another.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
"Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1 July 1646 - 14 November 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician. His most prominent accomplishment was the development of differential and integral calculus independently of Sir Isaac Newton's contemporaneous achievements.
When we're young, we think it will never work out for the long-term, so we let our minds and hearts wander, missing the point of it all. But as we get older, then we realize what love is, and we think back to past situations where we would've, should've and could've done it differently but when we go to reconcile we find that he/she has moved on. We try to do the same, but it never works out because we are comparing, comparing what he have to what we want, or what we had, only to find out that it will never be the same. You may love the next person, but your heart knows that no connection will ever be as great as the first time.
IDOTHIS4THELOVE
"Dating & Relationships: Do You Ever Get Over Your First Love?", Inscribe Magazine, September 1, 2016
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of trees. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, Mar. 9, 1853
The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
O Magazine, Feb. 2007