quotations about love
For misdirected love, the attainment of its object is, indeed, the best cure; but it cures as the guillotine cures headache.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
When you love someone
you have to let them go.
It's the only way to keep them.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
The clearer and happier you feel inside, the more joyous and loving your outer world becomes because love attracts love.
JUDY HALL
Love Crystals
It has been hard, I know, my daughters, but one word alone wipes out all of the hardships: love.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus at Colonus
The flame of anger, bright and brief,
Sharpens the barb of Love.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Tell Me Not Things Past all Belief
Let me prevail as of old, as lover, as lord, as king, or have done with Love's tyrant rule.
WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT
To Nimue
Our love, too, proceeding from ourselves and returning to us, would suffice to make our life blessed, and would stand in need of no extraneous enjoyment.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
I swallowed hard. Was I ready for the Wager of Love? It was still a gamble and there would be no guarantee of happiness, but I would not remain one of the Cowards of Love scattered around me. I knew that one could not be the Empire's greatest lover without truly knowing how to love. And yet I no longer even aspired to this hollow title. I wanted only what every common husband can achieve--to be the greatest lover of my very own wife.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
In seeing there is love, in being seen there is abhorrence. One grins, trying to bear the pain of being seen. But not just anyone can be someone who only looks. If the one who is looked at looks back, then the person who was looking becomes the one who is looked at.
KOBO ABE
The Box Man
Love can get nasty when there's people involved.
MIKE WRATHELL
"Mozart's 'Figaro' Flies Thru Detroit!", America Jr., November 14, 2017
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Words of Wisdom: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When a man and woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better, their digestion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but periodic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an active life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Morals
It is best to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.
DANISH PROVERB
Love does not rust.
GERMAN PROVERB
You don't need scores of suitors. You need only one ... if he's the right one.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet.
TOM ROBBINS
Still Life with Woodpecker
Tom Robbins (born July 22, 1932) is an American novelist best known for his novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was made into a movie in 1993 starring Uma Thurman, Lorraine Bracco, and Keanu Reeves.
Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
Love enters the heart unawares: takes precedence of all the emotions--or, at least, will be second to none--and even reflection becomes its accomplice. While it lives, it renders blind; and when it has struck its roots deep only itself can shake them. It reminds one of hospitality as practiced among the ancients. The stranger was received upon the threshold of the half-open door, and introduced into the sanctuary reserved for the Penates. Not until every attention had been lavished upon him did the host ask his name; and the question was sometimes deferred till the very moment of departure.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine