quotations about love
Love is one of the last things that gives meaning and magic in a world where god is dead and nothing matters anymore.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
But the most common species of love is that which first arises from beauty, and afterwards diffuses itself into kindness and into the bodily appetite. Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. The one is, perhaps, the most refined passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar. The love of beauty is placed in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that it is so singularly fitted to produce both.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Amorous Passion, or Love Betwixt the Sexes", A Treatise of Human Nature
Ah, cruel 'tis to love,
And cruel not to love,
But cruelest of all
To love and love in vain.
ANACREON
"Ode XXIX", Odes
My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Blanche Jennings, May 8, 1909
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. His opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage".
All love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God;
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
Why is the measure of love loss?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Some sigh and cry for love
Ah, but in Pa-ree they die for love
Some waste away for love
Just the same -- hooray for love!
LEO ROBIN
"Hooray for Love"
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Hero and Leander
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The belief that love is a finite essence that will eventually run out holds a certain logic for me even now, even if I am supposed to know better.
SUSANNA MOORE
The Big Girls
Didn't love, like a plant from India, require a prepared soil, a particular temperature? Sighs in the moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over hands yielded to a lover, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness thus could not be separated from the balconies of great châteaux filled with idle amusements, a boudoir with silk blinds, a good thick carpet, full of pots of flowers, and a bed raised on a dais, nor from the sparkle of precious stones and shoulder knots on servants' livery.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
Love is love's reward.
JOHN DRYDEN
Palamon and Arcite
O, human love! thou spirit given,
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven!
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Tamerlane"
No form of love is wrong, so long as it is love.
D. H. LAWRENCE
The Ladybird
David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 - 2 March 1930) was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection on the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. His opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage".
Love is the root of creation; God's essence; worlds without number
Lie in his bosom like children; he made them for this purpose only.
Only to love and to be loved again.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Children of the Lord's Supper"
Love is meant to be put into right use full ness. Love is an action. It is an experience. Love is what love does.
MELANIE LUTZ
"Love is Meant to be put Into Right Use Full Ness", BeliefNet, November 2, 2017
Singing oh no no
Let it go
Love can take your heart
Throw it out of control
Saying oh no no
Let it go
My love yeah she's a hurricane
I pray through the storm
CREATURE CANYON
"Hurricane"
Call us what you will, we are made such by love.
JOHN DONNE
The Canonization
Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
The Country Wife
In love, first please the eye, then win the heart.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections