quotations about love
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
Since to be loved endures,
To love is wise.
ROBERT BRIDGES
Since to be Loved Endures
Love and death were what novels were about.
OAKLEY HALL
Love and War in California
In love, first please the eye, then win the heart.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Ah, love, 'tis a sorrowful land!
KENNETH RAND
"The Old Lovers"
Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.
JAMES JOYCE
notes for his play Exiles
There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Salmon of Doubt
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Love and blindness are twin sisters.
RUSSIAN PROVERB
Of all fires
love is the only inexhaustible one.
PABLO NERUDA
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
Heav'nly love shall outdo Hellish hate.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Fraternity
Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?
EMILY BRONTE
Love and Friendship
Love is like a friendship caught on fire.
In the beginning a flame,
Very pretty, often hot and fierce
But still only light and flickering.
As love grows older, our hearts mature
And our love becomes as coals,
Deep-burning and unquenchable.
BRUCE LEE
attributed, Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew
I felt I had stepped into something big and splendid, as if I had been a caterpillar walking into the heart of a red rose. I felt prim and small and petty. Until then I had never known what love meant.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
Simon the Jester
Wisdom and love have nothing to do with one another. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love -- you'll stick your finger in anything.
ROBERT ALTMAN
attributed, Esquire the Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives
If Love his moment overstay,
Hatred's swift repulsions play.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Visit
True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human phantasy,
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors,
fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Epipsychidion
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"