quotations about love
Love is the medicine of all moral evil. By it the world is to be cured of sin.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Earthly love is a brief and penurious stream, which only flows in spring, with a long summer drought. The change from a burning desert, treeless, springless, drear, to green fields and blooming orchards in June, is slight in comparison with that from the desert of this world's affection to the garden of God, where there is perpetual, tropical luxuriance of blessed love.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind of delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Never Give All the Heart", In the Seven Woods
I love the one who punishes me well.
ANNE RICE
Beauty's Release
To love someone is to long to be loved by that someone.
CHRIS SEIDMAN
Little Buddy
In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.
EMILE ZOLA
L'Argent
Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
If thou love thine equal, it is no conquest; if thy superior, thou shalt be envied; if thine inferior, laughed at. If one that is beautiful, her colour will change before thou get thy desire; if one that is wise, she will overreach thee so far that thou shalt never touch her; if virtuous, she will eschew such fond affection; if deformed, she is not worthy of any affection; if she be rich, she needeth thee not; if poor, thou needest not her. If old, why shouldst thou love her; if young, why should she love thee?
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Their Eyes Were Watching God
We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
There's nothing deader than a dead love.
LEONA HELMSLEY
Playboy, Nov. 1990
In order to be loved, we have to love, which means we have to understand.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
The problem with love these days is that society has taught the human race to stare at people with their eyes rather than their souls.
CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER
Remington Typewriter Poetry
Of all the compound passions, which proceed from a mixture of love and hatred with other affections, no one better deserves our attention, than that love, which arises betwixt the sexes, as well on account of its force and violence, as those curious principles of philosophy, for which it affords us an uncontestable argument. It is plain, that this affection, in its most natural state, is derived from the conjunction of three different impressions or passions, viz. The pleasing sensation arising from beauty; the bodily appetite for generation; and a generous kindness or good-will. The origin of kindness from beauty may be explained from the foregoing reasoning. The question is how the bodily appetite is excited by it.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Amorous Passion, or Love Betwixt the Sexes", A Treatise of Human Nature
Love's tendrils round the heart doth twine,
As round the oak doth cling the vine.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Language"
We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
JOHN DONNE
The Ecstasy
Love is always having to say you're sorry.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, The Power of Hope