LOVE QUOTES XXIII

quotations about love

love quote

Love is the cheapest of religions.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, Dec. 21, 1939

Tags: Cesare Pavese


None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Since to be loved endures,
To love is wise.

ROBERT BRIDGES

Since to be Loved Endures

Tags: Robert Bridges


The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


The music that inspires the souls of lovers exists within themselves and the private universe they occupy. They share it with each other; they do not share it with the tribe or with society. The courage to hear that music and to honor it is one of the prerequisites of romantic love.

NATHANIEL BRANDEN

The Psychology of Romantic Love

Tags: Nathaniel Branden


The stage is more beholding to love, than the life of man; for as to the stage, love is even matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury.

JOHN LOCKE

"Of Love", The Conduct of the Understanding: Essays, Moral, Economical, and Political

Tags: John Locke


What is annoying in love, is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

My Heart Laid Bare

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

Men's Wives


"To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved."

OSAMU DAZAI

No Longer Human

Tags: Osamu Dazai


A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and clichéd notion of love. I had never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you're sorry. It was a many-splendored thing. Love was a rose and a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round.

DAVID SEDARIS

Naked

Tags: David Sedaris


A man loves with more or less passion according to the number of cords which his pretty mistress binds to his heart.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


A summer romance is something special, because it blazes like a comet across the sky and then fades out. The thing that makes it special--that makes everything move so fast--is that a summer romance is doomed to end.

JOHN VORNHOLT

Coyote Moon

Tags: John Vornholt


Ah, love, 'tis a sorrowful land!

KENNETH RAND

"The Old Lovers"

Tags: Kenneth Rand


All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Love

Tags: Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Invisible Monsters

Tags: Chuck Palahniuk


And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"For What Binds Us"

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


And you tempt me into your House of Love--
I, who have come from far
Through wintry forest and homeless heath,
Friend of the wind and star?
Ah, I fear the warmth of the ingleside
And the depths of your dear caress
Will make me forget what I learned out there
In the stubble and loneliness!

KARLE WILSON BAKER

"The Moor-child", Blue Smoke

Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960) was an American poet and author. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her last collection of poetry, Dreamers on Horseback, in 1931.

Tags: Karle Wilson Baker


Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover--except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give.

JOHN BERGER

G. John Berger

Tags: John Berger


Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance


Caressing reassures lovers that their love endures.

WITTER BYNNER

"Rose-Time"

Tags: Witter Bynner