quotations about love
We outgrow love like other things
And put it in the drawer,
Till it an antique fashion shows
Like costumes grandsires wore.
EMILY DICKINSON
"We Outgrow Love Like Other Things"
Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
UMBERTO ECO
Foucault's Pendulum
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Graziella: A Story of Italian Love
Love is ... telling someone when they have crap between their teeth.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.
JAMES JOYCE
notes for his play Exiles
In the beginning, love is all you know. You don't know it is love, of course, all you know is that some soft, good-smelling person holds you, feeds you, talks to you and empties your pants when they are full. As you age you come to realize this feeling is, indeed, love, and mommy and daddy become the center of your universe. You love them more than anything, other than your dog, your bike and your sister, of course, if you must. It is an all-encompassing, all-consuming love that warms you like the sun and sustains you like the air you breathe. And that brand of love is all you know until one day a blonde girl across the classroom bats her eyes at you or a dark-eyed boy in the hall gives you a crooked, pimply grin, and your insides turn to warm mush. At first you think you might have gotten a bad taco at lunch, but no, it is love.
JEFF MULLIN
"Love is a lifelong thrill ride", Enid News, February 14, 2016
I've found out that falling in love doesn't have anything to do with time. It can take a year or an instant. It happens when it's ready to happen.
NORA ROBERTS
The Calhouns
When people say, "God is love," I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in Christian conception, God really has love as his essence.
TIMOTHY KELLER
The Reason for God
To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand-squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth--does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people--they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Philip
Man ever is and always shall be blessed; for he loves, and love is an onward current that never ebbs; and borne upon this current humanity will at last make its far, fair haven; and meanwhile, as it voyages, it will find the course not too rough, but glorified by frequent halcyon days and calm nights set with stars.
FRANK CUMMINS LOCKWOOD
Robert Browning
Love fades, the dreamer wakes, the dream is brief.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dawn"
If you have given up your heart ... you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast.
STEPHEN KING
The Drawing of the Three
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
ZIG ZIGLAR
See You at the Top
Love is a moral drunkenness; and, whilst it lasts, the shrew seems gentle, the tigress a dove, the flirt constant, and the fiend an angel.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one's mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips--a name which comes up continually, rising, like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name which one repeats over and over again, which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a prayer.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Was it a Dream?"
If you believe yourself unfortunate, because you have "loved and lost," perish the thought. One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases, and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.
NAPOLEON HILL
Think and Grow Rich
You can fall in love with life, you can fall in love with yourself and with those around you. Tell the people important to you that you love them, and most importantly treat them like you do. Don't take love for granted because it's what binds the world together.
SONYA MATEJKO
"This Is What I Know About The World At 24", Huffington Post, April 5, 2016
Let your love flow out on all living things.
WILLIAM STYRON
Sophie's Choice
When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
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.
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over