quotations about love
Love is ... taking years to unpack their neuroses, then using the space you've made to store your own.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love ain't nothing but a monster with two heads.
COLEMAN HELL
"2 Heads"
He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Beware of Pity
As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERY
Pendennis
Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Jan. 19, 1938
Sex is the joining of two bodies; love is the joining of two souls.
GARY D. CHAPMAN
Making Love
Gary Demonte Chapman (born January 10, 1938) is an American author, radio talk show host, and the senior associate pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is most noted for his book The Five Love Languages, which outlines five general ways that romantic partners express and experience love.
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
JOHN DRYDEN
Tyrannic Love
LOVE.--A sentiment we all entertain for ourselves, and occasionally imagine others entertain for us.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Love never goes away; it just changes form.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Esquire, Jan. 2005
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Like thunder needs rain
Like a preacher needs pain
Like tongues of flame
Like a sweet stain
Need your love
I need your love
U2
"Hawkmoon 269", Rattle and Hum
Life is like a pipe, and love is the fuse.
THEOPHILUS MARZIALS
"Chelsea"
If I'm meant to love people, I should love everyone.
What kind of tide can an ocean bestow
if it picks and chooses the rocks it's willing to touch?
SARAH LINDSAY
"Aunt Lydia Practices Loving Komodo Dragons", Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
In this day and age, love is temporary and marriage is unnatural--the product of Madison Avenue advertising executives and television producers.
MICHAEL PALMER
The Fifth Vial
Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart
SAPPHO
Without Warning
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
Sexual ecstasy usually arises among dyads, or groups of two, but the ritual ecstasy of "primitives" emerged within groups generally composed of thirty or more participants. Thanks to psychology and the psychological concerns of Western culture generally, we have a rich language for describing the emotions drawing one person to another--from the most fleeting sexual attraction, to ego-dissolving love, all the way to the destructive force of obsession. What we lack is any way of describing and understanding the "love" that may exist among dozens of people at a time; and it is this kind of love that is expressed in ecstatic ritual.
BARBARA EHRENREICH
Dancing in the Streets