quotations about love
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
JEAN ANOUILH
L'homme et la mort dans l'histoire
Hurry not a woman's favor; neither forcer her hastily to surrender to thee. For she goeth into love as she goeth into the waters at the seashore; first a hand and then a lip goeth she in by littles. She diveth not, she leapeth not from the pier; but by gentle shocks and cries of protest she entereth slowly; yet when the waters of love encompass her, then she is supported. She swimmeth in her joy; she floateth on the tide of happiness.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
Love is easy until it's tested. When it requires sacrifice, it's proven. It's easy to love people until we meet ... those people. It's easy to love our enemies until we actually have enemies.
CHRIS STEFANICK
"Love is Easy Until It's Tested", National Catholic Register, March 19, 2016
Love, such as it is in society, is only the exchange of two fantasies, and the contact of two bodies.
SEBASTIEN R. N. CHAMFORT
Maximes et pensées
The stage is more beholding to love than the life of man. For as to the stage, love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mischief, sometimes like a Siren, sometimes like a Fury.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead
Enjoyment inflames love in some men, and extinguishes it in others: the wind that assists large vessels, upsets small ones.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
In a competition of love we'll all share in the victory, no matter who comes first.
MUHAMMAD ALI
The Soul of a Butterfly
Love kills.
EDNA BUCHANAN
Love Kills
Love leads to marriage, that leads to divorce
That leads to lawyers, expensive, of course
Private detectives who watch all your moves
That leads to charges which nobody proves
If there are children you hear from the court
Father can't see them but pays their support
Love is the start of it, I want no part of it
Love leads to marriage, divorce and to lawyers
Detectives and charges, supporting love children
A youngster in school falls
And only a fool falls
In love
IRVING BERLIN
"Love Leads to Marriage"
Love is the wine of existence. When you have taken that, you have taken the most precious drop that there is in the cluster.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The great unrequited love tears open your heart to the beauty of the world, its small rivers and upland meadows. It also makes you kinder to the next hundred thousand persons who cross your path.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Life's Variety Pack", A Prairie Home Companion, Nov. 3, 2009
Violent people usually express their love of a thing by their hatred of its opposite.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Deathless
All you need is love. And a tiara. And maybe a cookie.
ANONYMOUS
In myths the warrant of grace was the acceptance of sacrifice; it is this acceptance that love, the re-enactment of sacrifice, beseeches if it is not to feel under a curse.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Love me little, love me long.
FRENCH PROVERB
Love is service! A humble service, done in silence and hiddenness, as Jesus himself said: 'Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.'
POPE FRANCIS
"Love is the hidden service we do for others, Pope Francis says", Angelus: The Tidings Online, March 14, 2016
When we're young, we think it will never work out for the long-term, so we let our minds and hearts wander, missing the point of it all. But as we get older, then we realize what love is, and we think back to past situations where we would've, should've and could've done it differently but when we go to reconcile we find that he/she has moved on. We try to do the same, but it never works out because we are comparing, comparing what he have to what we want, or what we had, only to find out that it will never be the same. You may love the next person, but your heart knows that no connection will ever be as great as the first time.
IDOTHIS4THELOVE
"Dating & Relationships: Do You Ever Get Over Your First Love?", Inscribe Magazine, September 1, 2016
At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Animal Dreams