Expression with the word love

Whenever I think about why we are here on this planet, the best answer I can come up with is to love one another. Love is, by far, the most beautiful, exhilarating and mind-blowing emotion we can experience.

It has its ups and downs – it may lift you up, it may bring you down. It might make you the happiest person in the world, it can also put you through hell. Anyhow, we all need somebody to love.

In this article we are going to introduce you to some of the most common English idioms about love you may use when talking about this wonderful feeling.

_{This “Idioms about Love” image was created by Kaplan International. Click here to see the original article or to discover how you can study English abroad.}

1. FALL IN LOVE WITH SOMEBODY 
start feeling love towards somebody

• I think I’m falling in love with my best friend. What should I do?

English	I think I’m falling in love with my best friend. What should I do?
Spanish	Creo que me estoy enamorando de mi mejor amigo. ¿Qué debo hacer?
French	Je pense que je suis en train de tomber amoureux de mon meilleur ami. Que dois-je faire ?
Italian	Penso che mi sto innamorando del mio migliore amico. Cosa devo fare?
German	Ich glaube, ich bin dabei, mich in meinen besten Freund zu verlieben. Was soll ich tun?
Portuguese	Penso que estou a apaixonar-me pelo meu melhor amigo. O que devo fazer?
Russian	Кажется, я влюбляюсь в свою лучшую подругу. Что мне делать?
Chinese	我想我爱上了我最好的朋友。我应该怎么做？
Japanese	親友を好きになってしまったようです。どうしたらいいですか？
Polish	Myślę, że zakochuję się w moim najlepszym przyjacielu. Co powinnam zrobić?
Hungarian	Azt hiszem, beleszerettem a legjobb barátomba. Mit tegyek?
Swedish	Jag tror att jag håller på att bli kär i min bästa vän. Vad ska jag göra?

2. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
falling in love with somebody the first time you see them

• My wife and I met at a party. It was love at first sight.

English	My wife and I met at a party. It was love at first sight.
Spanish	Mi mujer y yo nos conocimos en una fiesta. Fue amor a primera vista.
French	Ma femme et moi nous sommes rencontrés à une fête. C’était le coup de foudre.
Italian	Io e mia moglie ci siamo conosciuti a una festa. È stato amore a prima vista.
German	Meine Frau und ich haben uns auf einer Party kennengelernt. Es war Liebe auf den ersten Blick.
Portuguese	A minha mulher e eu conhecemo-nos numa festa. Foi amor à primeira vista.
Russian	Мы с женой познакомились на вечеринке. Это была любовь с первого взгляда.
Chinese	我和妻子是在一次聚会上认识的。这是一见钟情。
Japanese	私と妻は、あるパーティーで出会いました。一目惚れでした。
Polish	Moja żona i ja poznaliśmy się na imprezie. To była miłość od pierwszego wejrzenia.
Hungarian	A feleségemmel egy partin találkoztunk. Szerelem volt első látásra.
Swedish	Min fru och jag träffades på en fest. Det var kärlek vid första ögonkastet.

3. BE AN ITEM
two people are an item when they are having a romantic relationship

• I didn’t know Chris and Sue were an item. They didn’t even look at each other at dinner.

English	I didn’t know Chris and Sue were an item. They didn’t even look at each other at dinner.
Spanish	No sabía que Chris y Sue eran pareja. Ni siquiera se miraron en la cena.
French	Je ne savais pas que Chris et Sue étaient ensemble. Ils ne se sont même pas regardés au dîner.
Italian	Non sapevo che Chris e Sue fossero una coppia. Non si sono nemmeno guardati a cena.
German	Ich wusste nicht, dass Chris und Sue ein Paar sind. Sie haben sich beim Essen nicht einmal angeschaut.
Portuguese	Eu não sabia que Chris e Sue eram um item. Nem sequer olharam um para o outro ao jantar.
Russian	Я не знала, что Крис и Сью вместе. Они даже не смотрели друг на друга за ужином.
Chinese	我不知道克里斯和苏是一个项目。他们吃饭的时候连看都不看对方一眼。
Japanese	クリスとスーが付き合っているとは知らなかった。夕食の時もお互いに目を合わせなかったし。
Polish	Nie wiedziałam, że Chris i Sue są parą. Nawet nie spojrzeli na siebie przy kolacji.
Hungarian	Nem tudtam, hogy Chris és Sue együtt vannak. Még csak nem is néztek egymásra a vacsoránál.
Swedish	Jag visste inte att Chris och Sue var tillsammans. De tittade inte ens på varandra under middagen.

4. MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
a relationship in which the two people are great together, because they complement each other so well

• Do you think Matt and Amanda will get married?
• I hope they will. They’re a match made in heaven.

English	They’re a match made in heaven.
Spanish	Son una pareja perfecta.
French	Ils sont faits l’un pour l’autre.
Italian	Sono un’accoppiata perfetta.
German	Sie sind ein himmlisches Paar.
Portuguese	São um fósforo feito no céu.
Russian	Это пара, сделанная на небесах.
Chinese	他们是天作之合。
Japanese	天国のような相性ですね。
Polish	To para stworzona w niebie.
Hungarian	Ők egy mennyei párosítás.
Swedish	De är en perfekt kombination.

5. BE HEAD OVER HEELS (IN LOVE)
be in love with somebody very much

• Look at them. They’re head over heels in love with each other.

English	Look at them. They’re head over heels in love with each other.
Spanish	Míralos. Están locamente enamorados el uno del otro.
French	Regardez-les. Ils sont follement amoureux l’un de l’autre.
Italian	Guardateli. Sono innamorati pazzi l’uno dell’altro.
German	Sieh sie dir an. Sie sind Hals über Kopf ineinander verliebt.
Portuguese	Olha para eles. Eles estão apaixonados um pelo outro.
Russian	Посмотри на них. Они влюблены друг в друга с ног до головы.
Chinese	看看他们 他们是头在脚后跟的爱与对方。
Japanese	彼らを見てください。彼らはお互いに熱烈に愛し合っている。
Polish	Spójrz na nich. Są w sobie zakochani po uszy.
Hungarian	Nézd meg őket. Fülig szerelmesek egymásba.
Swedish	Titta på dem. De är förälskade i varandra.

6. BE LOVEY-DOVEY
expressing your love in public by constantly kissing and hugging

• I don’t want to go out with Jenny and David. They’re so lovey-dovey, I just can’t stand it.

English	Jenny and David are so lovey-dovey. I can’t stand it.
Spanish	Jenny y David están tan enamorados. No puedo soportarlo.
French	Jenny et David sont tellement amoureux. Je ne peux pas le supporter.
Italian	Jenny e David sono così innamorati. Non lo sopporto.
German	Jenny und David sind so verliebt ineinander. Ich kann es nicht ertragen.
Portuguese	A Jenny e o David são tão apaixonados. Não suporto isto.
Russian	Дженни и Дэвид такие влюбленные. Я этого не вынесу.
Chinese	珍妮和大卫是如此的恩爱。我无法忍受。
Japanese	ジェニーとデビッドはとてもラブラブ。我慢できません。
Polish	Jenny i David są tacy kochliwi. Nie mogę tego znieść.
Hungarian	Jenny és David annyira nyálasak. Nem bírom elviselni.
Swedish	Jenny och David är så kära. Jag står inte ut med det.

7. HAVE THE HOTS FOR SOMEBODY
finding somebody extremely attractive

• Nadine has the hots for the new apprentice. I wouldn’t be surprised if she asked him out.

English	Nadine has the hots for the new apprentice. I wouldn’t be surprised if she asked him out.
Spanish	A Nadine le gusta el nuevo aprendiz. No me sorprendería que lo invitara a salir.
French	Nadine a le béguin pour le nouvel apprenti. Je ne serais pas surpris si elle l’invitait à sortir.
Italian	Nadine ha una cotta per il nuovo apprendista. Non mi sorprenderebbe se lei gli chiedesse di uscire.
German	Nadine ist scharf auf den neuen Azubi. Es würde mich nicht überraschen, wenn sie ihn um ein Date bitten würde.
Portuguese	Nadine tem o desejo de ser a nova aprendiz. Não ficaria surpreendido se ela o convidasse para sair.
Russian	Надин очень хочет нового ученика. Я не удивлюсь, если она пригласит его на свидание.
Chinese	纳丁对这个新学徒情有独钟。如果她约他出去，我也不会惊讶。
Japanese	ナディーンは新入社員に熱を上げている。彼女が彼を誘っても不思議ではありません。
Polish	Nadine podkochuje się w nowym praktykancie. Nie zdziwiłbym się, gdyby się z nim umówiła.
Hungarian	Nadine odavan az új tanoncért. Nem lennék meglepve, ha randira hívná.
Swedish	Nadine är förtjust i den nya lärlingen. Det skulle inte förvåna mig om hon bjöd ut honom.

8. PUPPY LOVE
short-term adolescent love

• My son is only twelve, but he’s already in love. Isn’t it a bit too early?
• Don’t worry, it’s only puppy love. It won’t last.

English	It’s only puppy love. It won’t last.
Spanish	Es sólo amor de cachorro. No durará.
French	C’est seulement un amour de chiot. Ça ne durera pas.
Italian	È solo un amore da cuccioli. Non durerà.
German	Es ist nur eine Jugendliebe. Sie wird nicht von Dauer sein.
Portuguese	É apenas amor de cachorrinho. Não vai durar.
Russian	Это всего лишь детская любовь. Это не продлится долго.
Chinese	这只是小狗的爱。它不会持久。
Japanese	ただの子犬のような愛だ。長くは続かないでしょう。
Polish	To tylko szczenięca miłość. Nie będzie trwała.
Hungarian	Ez csak kölyökszerelem. Nem tart sokáig.
Swedish	Det är bara valpkärlek. Den kommer inte att hålla.

9. DOUBLE DATE
two couples going out together on a date

• I’m so glad you and Tom’s brother are an item. From now on we can go on double-dates.

English	Four of us can go on a double-date.
Spanish	Cuatro de nosotros podemos ir a una cita doble.
French	Quatre d’entre nous peuvent aller à un double rendez-vous.
Italian	Quattro di noi possono andare ad un doppio appuntamento.
German	Wir können zu viert auf ein Doppeldate gehen.
Portuguese	Quatro de nós podem ir num encontro duplo.
Russian	Мы вчетвером можем пойти на двойное свидание.
Chinese	我们四个人可以双宿双飞。
Japanese	4人でダブルデートに行ける。
Polish	Czworo z nas może pójść na podwójną randkę.
Hungarian	Négyen mehetünk egy dupla randira.
Swedish	Fyra av oss kan gå på en dubbelträff.

10. ON THE ROCKS
if there are problems in a relationship, we may say it’s on the rocks

• I wonder if they will call off the wedding. Their relationship seems to be on the rocks.

English	I wonder if they will call off the wedding. Their relationship seems to be on the rocks.
Spanish	Me pregunto si cancelarán la boda. Su relación parece estar en las rocas.
French	Je me demande s’ils vont annuler le mariage. Leur relation semble être sur les rochers.
Italian	Mi chiedo se annulleranno il matrimonio. La loro relazione sembra essere in crisi.
German	Ich frage mich, ob sie die Hochzeit absagen werden. Ihre Beziehung scheint in die Brüche zu gehen.
Portuguese	Será que vão cancelar o casamento? A sua relação parece estar com gelo.
Russian	Интересно, отменят ли они свадьбу. Их отношения, похоже, на грани.
Chinese	不知道他们会不会取消婚礼。他们的关系似乎已经岌岌可危了。
Japanese	私は、彼らが結婚式を中止するのではないかと思っています。二人の関係は揺らいでいるようです。
Polish	Ciekawe, czy odwołają ślub. Ich związek wydaje się być na skraju załamania.
Hungarian	Vajon lemondják-e az esküvőt? Úgy tűnik, hogy a kapcsolatuk zátonyra futott.
Swedish	Jag undrar om de kommer att ställa in bröllopet. Deras förhållande verkar vara på väg att gå i stöpet.

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More for you:
Love definition (love dialogue in English, love collocations and idioms)
What are the other ways to say I LOVE YOU?

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11. LOVE RAT

somebody who cheats on his/her partner

• Don’t even think about asking Jane out. How could you look your wife in the eye? Don’t be a love rat.

English	Don’t be a love rat! Don’t be a cheater on her!
Spanish	¡No seas una rata del amor! ¡No seas un tramposo con ella!
French	Ne sois pas un rat d’amour ! Ne la trompe pas !
Italian	Non essere un topo d’amore! Non essere un traditore con lei!
German	Sei keine Liebesratte! Seien Sie kein Betrüger bei ihr!
Portuguese	Não seja um rato do amor! Não sejas um traidor!
Russian	Не будь любовной крысой! Не изменяй ей!
Chinese	不要做情敌！不要做她的小三!
Japanese	愛のネズミにならないで! 彼女に浮気をするな!
Polish	Nie bądź miłosnym szczurem! Nie bądź jej zdrajcą!
Hungarian	Ne légy szerelmi patkány! Ne légy hűtlen hozzá!
Swedish	Var inte en kärleksråtta! Var inte otrogen mot henne!

12. POP THE QUESTION
ask somebody to marry you

• So, did Ben pop the question last night?
• No, he didn’t. He just took me out for dinner and that’s all.

English	Did Ben pop the question last night? Did he ask you to marry him?
Spanish	¿Ben te hizo la pregunta anoche? ¿Te pidió que te casaras con él?
French	Est-ce que Ben a posé la question hier soir ? Il vous a demandé de l’épouser ?
Italian	Ben ti ha fatto la domanda ieri sera? Ti ha chiesto di sposarlo?
German	Hat Ben letzte Nacht die Frage gestellt? Hat er Sie gebeten, ihn zu heiraten?
Portuguese	O Ben fez a pergunta ontem à noite? Pediu-lhe em casamento?
Russian	Бен задал вопрос прошлой ночью? Он просил тебя выйти за него замуж?
Chinese	本昨晚有没有向你求婚？他有没有向你求婚？
Japanese	ベンは昨夜、質問したの？彼はあなたに結婚を申し込んだの？
Polish	Czy Ben zadał ci pytanie ostatniej nocy? Poprosił cię o rękę?
Hungarian	Ben tegnap este feltette a kérdést? Megkérte a kezed?
Swedish	Ställde Ben frågan i går kväll? Frågade han dig om du vill gifta dig med honom?

13. TIE THE KNOT
get married

• When are you and Jenny going to tie the knot?
• This year, but we haven’t set a date yet.

English	When are you and Jenny going to tie the knot?
Spanish	¿Cuándo os vais a casar tú y Jenny?
French	Quand allez-vous vous marier avec Jenny ?
Italian	Quando vi sposerete tu e Jenny?
German	Wann werden Sie und Jenny den Bund fürs Leben schließen?
Portuguese	Quando é que você e a Jenny vão dar o nó?
Russian	Когда вы с Дженни завяжете узел?
Chinese	你和珍妮什么时候结婚？
Japanese	ジェニーとはいつ結婚するのですか？
Polish	Kiedy ty i Jenny zamierzacie zawrzeć węzeł?
Hungarian	Mikor fogtok Jennyvel összeházasodni?
Swedish	När ska du och Jenny gifta er?

14. BLIND DATE
when two people who have never seen each other before go on a date

• My sister keeps organising blind dates for me. She’d just love to fix me up with someone.

English	My sister keeps organizing blind dates for me.
Spanish	Mi hermana sigue organizando citas a ciegas para mí.
French	Ma soeur continue d’organiser des blind dates pour moi.
Italian	Mia sorella continua a organizzare appuntamenti al buio per me.
German	Meine Schwester organisiert ständig Blind Dates für mich.
Portuguese	A minha irmã continua a organizar encontros às cegas para mim.
Russian	Моя сестра продолжает организовывать для меня свидания вслепую.
Chinese	姐姐一直为我组织相亲。
Japanese	姉が私のためにお見合いパーティーを企画してくれます。
Polish	Moja siostra organizuje dla mnie randki w ciemno.
Hungarian	A nővérem folyamatosan vakrandikat szervez nekem.
Swedish	Min syster organiserar blindträffar åt mig.
Slovenian	Moja sestra mi vedno znova organizira zmenke na slepo.

15. FIX SOMEBODY UP (WITH SOMEBODY)
find a romantic partner for somebody

• I’m not going to the party unless you promise me you won’t try to fix me up with another friend of yours.

English	I’m not going to the party unless you promise me you won’t try to fix me up with another friend of yours.
Spanish	No iré a la fiesta a menos que me prometas que no intentarás emparejarme con otro amigo tuyo.
French	Je n’irai pas à la fête si tu ne me promets pas de ne pas essayer de me caser avec un autre de tes amis.
Italian	Non andrò alla festa se non mi prometti che non cercherai di sistemarmi con un altro tuo amico.
German	Ich gehe nicht auf die Party, es sei denn, du versprichst mir, dass du mich nicht mit einer anderen Freundin von dir verkuppeln wirst.
Portuguese	Não irei à festa a menos que me prometa que não tentará arranjar-me outro amigo seu.
Russian	Я не пойду на вечеринку, пока ты не пообещаешь мне, что не будешь пытаться свести меня с другим твоим другом.
Chinese	我不会去派对的，除非你答应我 你不会想撮合我和你的另一个朋友。
Japanese	他の友達と私をくっつけようとしないと約束してくれない限り、私はパーティーに行かないわ。
Polish	Nie pójdę na imprezę, jeśli nie obiecasz mi, że nie będziesz próbował umówić mnie z innym swoim przyjacielem.
Hungarian	Nem megyek el a partira, hacsak nem ígéred meg, hogy nem próbálsz összehozni egy másik barátoddal.
Swedish	Jag går inte på festen om du inte lovar mig att du inte kommer att försöka fixa ihop mig med en annan av dina vänner.
Slovenian	Ne grem na zabavo, če mi ne obljubiš, da me ne boš skušal spraviti s še enim svojim prijateljem.

16. THOSE THREE LITTLE WORDS
I love you (yes, that’s exactly three words)

• I think he loves me, but he hasn’t said those three little words yet.

English	I think he loves me, but he hasn’t said those three little words yet.
Spanish	Creo que me quiere, pero aún no ha dicho esas tres palabritas.
French	Je pense qu’il m’aime, mais il n’a pas encore dit ces trois petits mots.
Italian	Credo che mi ami, ma non ha ancora detto quelle tre piccole parole.
German	Ich glaube, er liebt mich, aber er hat diese drei kleinen Worte noch nicht gesagt.
Portuguese	Penso que ele me ama, mas ainda não disse essas três palavrinhas.
Russian	Я думаю, что он любит меня, но он еще не сказал эти три маленьких слова.
Chinese	我想他是爱我的，但他还没有说出那三个小字。
Japanese	彼は私を愛していると思いますが、まだその3つの小さな言葉を言っていません。
Polish	Myślę, że mnie kocha, ale nie powiedział jeszcze tych trzech małych słów.
Hungarian	Azt hiszem, szeret engem, de még nem mondta ki azt a három kis szót.
Swedish	Jag tror att han älskar mig, men han har inte sagt de tre små orden än.
Slovenian	Mislim, da me ima rad, vendar teh treh majhnih besed še ni izrekel.

17. WALK OUT ON SOMEBODY
leave your partner and end the relationship

• You’re the second men to walk out on me. I won’t let it happen ever again.

English	You’re the second men to walk out on me. I won’t let it happen ever again.
Spanish	Eres el segundo hombre que me abandona. No dejaré que suceda nunca más.
French	Tu es le deuxième homme à me laisser tomber. Je ne laisserai pas cela se reproduire.
Italian	Sei il secondo uomo che mi abbandona. Non lascerò che accada di nuovo.
German	Du bist der zweite Mann, der mich im Stich lässt. Ich werde das nicht noch einmal zulassen.
Portuguese	Vocês são os segundos homens a abandonar-me. Não vou deixar que isso volte a acontecer.
Russian	Ты второй мужчина, который ушел от меня. Я не позволю этому повториться.
Chinese	你是第二个离开我的人。我不会让它再次发生。
Japanese	あなたは私を見捨てた2人目の男性です。もう二度とそんなことはさせません。
Polish	Jesteś drugim mężczyzną, który mnie opuścił. Nie pozwolę, żeby to się powtórzyło.
Hungarian	Te vagy a második férfi, aki elhagyott. Nem hagyom, hogy ez még egyszer megtörténjen.
Swedish	Du är den andra mannen som lämnar mig. Jag kommer inte att låta det hända igen.
Slovenian	Ti si drugi moški, ki me je zapustil. Ne bom dovolila, da se to še kdaj zgodi.

18. LEAVE SOMEBODY AT THE ALTAR
decide not to marry somebody just before the wedding

• I’ve just met my ex-boyfriend. I think I still have feelings for him.
• But you’re about to get married to John. Are you going to leave him at the altar?

English	LEAVE SOMEBODY AT THE ALTAR. Decide not to marry somebody just before the wedding
Spanish	DEJAR A ALGUIEN EN EL ALTAR. Cuando decides no casarte con alguien justo antes de la boda
French	LAISSER QUELQU’UN DEVANT L’AUTEL. Lorsque vous décidez de ne pas épouser quelqu’un juste avant le mariage.
Italian	LASCIARE QUALCUNO ALL’ALTARE. Quando si decide di non sposare qualcuno poco prima del matrimonio
German	JEMANDEN VOR DEM ALTAR STEHEN LASSEN. Wenn Sie sich kurz vor der Hochzeit entscheiden, jemanden nicht zu heiraten
Portuguese	DEIXAR ALGUÉM NO ALTAR. Quando se decide não casar com alguém imediatamente antes do casamento
Russian	ОСТАВИТЬ КОГО-НИБУДЬ У АЛТАРЯ. Когда ты решаешь не жениться на ком-то прямо перед свадьбой.
Chinese	把一些人留在祭坛上。当你在婚礼前决定不与某人结婚时
Japanese	結婚式の直前に誰かと結婚しないと決めた場合
Polish	ZOSTAWIĆ KOGOŚ PRZY OŁTARZU. Kiedy zdecydujesz się nie brać z kimś ślubu tuż przed ślubem
Hungarian	VALAKIT AZ OLTÁRNÁL HAGYNI. Amikor úgy döntesz, hogy nem mész hozzá valakihez közvetlenül az esküvő előtt.
Swedish	LÄMNA NÅGON VID ALTARET. När du bestämmer dig för att inte gifta dig med någon strax före bröllopet.
Slovenian	PUSTITE NEKOGA PRED OLTARJEM. Ko se tik pred poroko odločite, da se z nekom ne boste poročili.

19. BREAK UP/ SPLIT UP (WITH SOMEBODY)
end the relationship

• Have you heard? Marian and Joseph have split up. I wonder what went wrong. They were so good together.

English	Have you heard? Marian and Joseph have split up. I wonder what went wrong. They were so good together.
Spanish	¿Te has enterado? Marian y Joseph se han separado. Me pregunto qué fue lo que salió mal. Estaban tan bien juntos.
French	Tu as entendu ? Marian et Joseph se sont séparés. Je me demande ce qui a mal tourné. Ils étaient si bien ensemble.
Italian	Avete sentito? Marian e Joseph si sono lasciati. Mi chiedo cosa sia andato storto. Stavano così bene insieme.
German	Hast du es schon gehört? Marian und Joseph haben sich getrennt. Ich frage mich, was schief gelaufen ist. Sie waren so gut zusammen.
Portuguese	Já ouviu falar? Marian e Joseph separaram-se. Pergunto-me o que terá corrido mal. Eles eram tão bons juntos.
Russian	Ты слышал? Мариан и Иосиф разошлись. Интересно, что пошло не так. Им было так хорошо вместе.
Chinese	你听说了吗？玛丽安和约瑟夫已经分手了。我不知道出了什么问题。他们在一起那么好。
Japanese	聞いていますか？マリアンとジョセフは別れてしまった。何が悪かったんだろうね。二人はとても仲が良かったのに。
Polish	Słyszałeś? Marian i Józef się rozstali. Zastanawiam się, co poszło nie tak. Było im tak dobrze razem.
Hungarian	Hallottad? Marian és Joseph szakítottak. Vajon mi lehetett a baj? Olyan jól megvoltak együtt.
Swedish	Har du hört det? Marian och Joseph har gjort slut. Jag undrar vad som gick fel. De var så bra tillsammans.
Slovenian	Ste slišali? Marian in Joseph sta se razšla. Zanima me, kaj je šlo narobe. Bila sta tako dobra skupaj.

20. KISS AND MAKE UP
make peace after and argument

• Our relationship is like a roller-coaster ride. We fight nearly every day, but then we always kiss and make up.

English	Our relationship is like a roller-coaster ride. We fight nearly every day, but then we always kiss and make up.
Spanish	Nuestra relación es como una montaña rusa. Nos peleamos casi todos los días, pero luego siempre nos besamos y nos reconciliamos.
French	Notre relation est comme un tour de montagnes russes. Nous nous disputons presque tous les jours, mais ensuite nous nous embrassons toujours et nous nous réconcilions.
Italian	La nostra relazione è come un giro sulle montagne russe. Litighiamo quasi ogni giorno, ma poi ci baciamo sempre e facciamo pace.
German	Unsere Beziehung ist wie eine Achterbahnfahrt. Wir streiten fast jeden Tag, aber dann küssen wir uns immer und versöhnen uns.
Portuguese	A nossa relação é como um passeio de montanha-russa. Lutamos quase todos os dias, mas depois beijamo-nos e fazemos sempre as pazes.
Russian	Наши отношения как американские горки. Мы ссоримся почти каждый день, но потом всегда целуемся и миримся.
Chinese	我们的关系就像坐过山车一样。我们几乎每天都会吵架，但我们总是亲吻，然后和好。
Japanese	私たちの関係は、まるでジェットコースターのようなものです。ほぼ毎日、喧嘩をしますが、その後は必ずキスをして仲直りします。
Polish	Nasz związek jest jak przejażdżka kolejką górską. Kłócimy się prawie codziennie, ale potem zawsze się całujemy i godzimy.
Hungarian	A kapcsolatunk olyan, mint egy hullámvasút. Szinte minden nap veszekszünk, de aztán mindig csókolózunk és kibékülünk.
Swedish	Vårt förhållande är som en berg- och dalbana. Vi bråkar nästan varje dag, men sedan kysser vi oss alltid och blir sams.
Slovenian	Najino razmerje je kot vožnja po toboganu. Skoraj vsak dan se prepirava, vendar se nato vedno poljubiva in spraviva.

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21. Madly in love 
to be deeply or extremely in love with somebody

• They are madly in love, they love and trust each other and will always be loyal to one another.

English	They are madly in love, they love and trust each other and will always be loyal to one another.
Spanish	Están locamente enamorados, se quieren y confían el uno en el otro y siempre se serán leales.
French	Ils sont follement amoureux, ils s’aiment, se font confiance et seront toujours fidèles l’un à l’autre.
Italian	Sono follemente innamorati, si amano e si fidano l’uno dell’altro e saranno sempre fedeli l’uno all’altro.
German	Sie sind wahnsinnig verliebt, sie lieben und vertrauen einander und werden einander immer treu sein.
Portuguese	Estão loucamente apaixonados, amam-se e confiam uns nos outros e serão sempre leais uns aos outros.
Russian	Они безумно любят друг друга, они любят и доверяют друг другу и всегда будут верны друг другу.
Chinese	他们疯狂的爱着对方，他们爱着对方，信任着对方，永远忠诚于对方。
Japanese	二人は狂おしいほどに愛し合い、信頼し合い、常に忠誠を誓い合う。
Polish	Są szaleńczo zakochani, kochają się i ufają sobie i zawsze będą wobec siebie lojalni.
Hungarian	Őrülten szerelmesek, szeretik és bíznak egymásban, és mindig hűségesek lesznek egymáshoz.
Swedish	De är galet förälskade, de älskar och litar på varandra och kommer alltid att vara lojala mot varandra.
Slovenian	Zaljubljena sta do ušes, ljubita se in si zaupata ter si bosta vedno zvesta.

22. Make love
a romantic way to refer to sexual intercourse

• They made love for the first time.

English	They made love for the first time.
Spanish	Hicieron el amor por primera vez.
French	Ils ont fait l’amour pour la première fois.
Italian	Hanno fatto l’amore per la prima volta.
German	Sie haben sich zum ersten Mal geliebt.
Portuguese	Fizeram amor pela primeira vez.
Russian	Они впервые занялись любовью.
Chinese	他们第一次做爱。
Japanese	二人は初めて愛し合った。
Polish	Kochali się po raz pierwszy.
Hungarian	Először szeretkeztek.
Swedish	De älskade för första gången.
Slovenian	Prvič sta se ljubila.

23. No love lost between
there is a mutual animosity between two people

• There is no love lost between the two colleagues, they have never liked each other.

English	There is no love lost between the two colleagues, they have never liked each other.
Spanish	No hay amor perdido entre los dos colegas, nunca se han gustado.
French	Il n’y a pas d’amour perdu entre les deux collègues, ils ne se sont jamais aimés.
Italian	Non c’è amore perso tra i due colleghi, non si sono mai piaciuti.
German	Zwischen den beiden Kollegen ist keine Liebe verloren, sie haben sich nie gemocht.
Portuguese	Não há amor perdido entre os dois colegas, eles nunca gostaram um do outro.
Russian	Между двумя коллегами нет любви, они никогда не любили друг друга.
Chinese	两个同事之间没有失恋，他们从来没有喜欢过对方。
Japanese	2人の同僚の間には、お互いに好きになったということはありません。
Polish	Między tymi dwoma kolegami nie ma żadnej straconej miłości, nigdy się nie lubili.
Hungarian	A két kolléga között nincs szerelem, sosem szerették egymást.
Swedish	Det finns ingen förlorad kärlek mellan de två kollegorna, de har aldrig gillat varandra.
Slovenian	Med sodelavcema ni izgubljene ljubezni, nikoli se nista imela rada.

24. For love nor money
this idiom means that a person won’t do something no matter what is offered to them

• I won’t sell this house, it is my family home. It has been in the family for decades! I won’t sell it for love nor money, there is nothing that you can say or do that will change my mind.

English	I won’t sell my house for love nor money, there is nothing that you can say or do that will change my mind.
Spanish	No venderé mi casa por amor ni por dinero, no hay nada que puedas decir o hacer que me haga cambiar de opinión.
French	Je ne vendrai pas ma maison par amour ou par argent, et rien de ce que vous pourrez dire ou faire ne me fera changer d’avis.
Italian	Non venderò la mia casa per amore o per soldi, non c’è niente che tu possa dire o fare che mi farà cambiare idea.
German	Ich werde mein Haus weder für Liebe noch für Geld verkaufen, es gibt nichts, was Sie sagen oder tun können, was meine Meinung ändern wird.
Portuguese	Não venderei a minha casa por amor nem por dinheiro, não há nada que possa dizer ou fazer que me faça mudar de ideias.
Russian	Я не продам свой дом ни за любовь, ни за деньги, ничего из того, что ты можешь сказать или сделать, не изменит моего мнения.
Chinese	我不会为了爱情也不会为了钱而卖房，你说什么做什么都不能改变我的想法。
Japanese	私は愛やお金のために家を売ることはありません。あなたが何を言っても、何をしても、私の気持ちは変わりません。
Polish	Nie sprzedam mojego domu z miłości ani za pieniądze, nie ma nic, co możesz powiedzieć lub zrobić, że zmieni moje zdanie.
Hungarian	Sem szerelemért, sem pénzért nem adom el a házamat, semmit sem tudsz mondani vagy tenni, ami megváltoztatná a véleményemet.
Swedish	Jag kommer inte att sälja mitt hus för kärlek eller pengar, det finns inget du kan säga eller göra som kan få mig att ändra mig.
Slovenian	Svoje hiše ne bom prodal ne zaradi ljubezni ne zaradi denarja, ničesar ne morete reči ali storiti, kar bi spremenilo mojo odločitev.

25. Blinded by love
when a person is so madly in love with somebody that they can’t see the persons faults or negative characteristics

• She is so blinded by love that she can’t see him for who he truly is. He is not a good person, he is rude and disrespectful to everyone around him, including her.

English	She is so blinded by love that she can’t see him for who he truly is. He is not a good person, he is rude and disrespectful to everyone around him, including her.
Spanish	Está tan cegada por el amor que no puede verle como es en realidad. No es una buena persona, es grosero e irrespetuoso con todos los que le rodean, incluida ella.
French	Elle est tellement aveuglée par l’amour qu’elle ne peut pas le voir tel qu’il est vraiment. Il n’est pas une bonne personne, il est grossier et irrespectueux envers tous ceux qui l’entourent, y compris elle.
Italian	Lei è così accecata dall’amore che non riesce a vederlo per quello che è veramente. Lui non è una brava persona, è maleducato e irrispettoso con tutti quelli che lo circondano, compresa lei.
German	Sie ist so geblendet von der Liebe, dass sie ihn nicht so sehen kann, wie er wirklich ist. Er ist kein guter Mensch, er ist unhöflich und respektlos zu allen um ihn herum, einschließlich ihr.
Portuguese	Ela está tão cega pelo amor que não consegue vê-lo por quem ele realmente é. Ele não é uma boa pessoa, é rude e desrespeitoso para com todos à sua volta, incluindo ela.
Russian	Она так ослеплена любовью, что не видит его таким, какой он есть на самом деле. Он нехороший человек, он груб и неуважителен ко всем окружающим, в том числе и к ней.
Chinese	她被爱情蒙蔽了双眼，看不清他的真面目。他不是个好人，他粗鲁无礼，不尊重身边的每一个人，包括她。
Japanese	彼女は愛に目がくらんでしまい、彼の本当の姿を見ることができないのです。彼は善人ではなく、彼女を含めた周りの人に失礼な態度をとっています。
Polish	Ona jest tak zaślepiona miłością, że nie widzi go takim, jakim jest naprawdę. On nie jest dobrym człowiekiem, jest niegrzeczny i lekceważący dla wszystkich wokół niego, w tym dla niej.
Hungarian	A lányt annyira elvakítja a szerelem, hogy nem látja a férfit annak, aki valójában. Nem jó ember, bunkó és tiszteletlen mindenkivel szemben, aki körülötte van, beleértve őt is.
Swedish	Hon är så förblindad av kärlek att hon inte kan se honom för den han verkligen är. Han är ingen bra människa, han är oförskämd och respektlös mot alla i sin omgivning, inklusive henne.
Slovenian	Ljubezen jo tako zaslepi, da ne vidi, kakšen je v resnici. Ni dober človek, je nesramen in nespoštljiv do vseh okoli sebe, tudi do nje.

Recommended textbook solutions

Idioms about love are used in English to talk about both the positive and negative sides of being in love or in a relationship. You may have heard some common love idioms like ‘fall in love’ and ‘love at first sight’, but there are many more that are not so well-known.

Take a look at this list of love idioms and their meanings so you can be more confident using them yourself.

Also note that we’re mainly referring to love in the sense of relationships and dating. Most of these idioms would not be appropriate for describing the love a parent has for their child, for example.

Let’s begin with some love idioms that relate to the first stage of a relationship.

Fall in love

Falling in love is the process of beginning to feel like you love someone. If you already love them, you can say you have fallen in love with them.

“Jason and I have been friends for years but I think I’m finally falling in love with him.”

Fall for

Another way to say fall in love with is fall for:

“I fell for you the moment I saw you.”

Have a crush on

If you have a crush on someone, it means you find them attractive (often to the point of infatuation):

“Have you got a crush on someone?”

In British English, you could also say that you fancy someone.

Have the hots for

Slightly stronger in meaning, to have the hots for someone means to be sexually attracted to them.

“I have the hots for a guy at work but I’m too shy to make the first move.”

We have another article which covers more meanings of the word hot, as well as some hot idioms.

Love at first sight

We talk about love at first sight when two people fall in love as soon as they see or meet each other.

“We could all tell it was love at first sight when Jerry met Asha.”

Go out with

The phrasal verb go out with means date:

“I’ve been going out with Elaine for 3 months and it’s going really well.”

This expression is most often used in British English.

You can check out some more idioms about relationships and dating – these cover the good and bad sides of romance!

Idioms about being in love

Once you have fallen in love, you’ll need some more love idioms to describe how you’re feeling. These idioms about happiness might also come in handy.

Madly in love

To be madly in love means to be completely infatuated or feeling a very strong sense of love.

“Adrian must be madly in love with you; I can tell from how he treats you.”

This is one of the love idioms which would be ok to use when talking about parental love. A new mum could be madly in love with her newborn baby.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Sometimes, spending time away from someone can make you fall deeper in love with them, and that’s what this heart idiom alludes to (or is it more of a proverb?). Tell someone that absence makes the heart grow fonder if you want to reassure them that time apart from their loved one will strengthen their relationship in the end.

“I know three months seems like a long time, but absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Loved-up (British)

We could describe a couple as loved-up when they are clearly expressing love towards each other.

“The loved-up couple are planning to get married next year.”

Note that in American English, loved-up can be associated with a feeling from drug use. So, be careful when you use this love idiom!

Head over heels in love

If you are strongly in love with someone you can say you are head over heels in love with them:

“It looks like Jessica has fallen head over heels in love with Ahmed.”

You can check out more idioms with parts of the body in our separate article.

Have eyes only for someone

When you are completely besotted with someone you may say that you have eyes only for that person, meaning that you wouldn’t be interested in anyone else:

“It’s clear that they have eyes only for each other.”

You can also say only have eyes for someone.

Made for each other

Two people who are a perfect match can be described as made for each other.

“It’s lovely to see a couple who are so obviously made for each other.”

A match made in heaven

Similarly, you can describe a couple as a match made in heaven when they seem just perfect for each other.

We could also use this idiom to describe two inanimate objects that go very well together:

“Vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce are a match made in heaven.”

One and only

When you describe someone as your one and only it means that they are the only person you will ever love.

Finally, we have a few more love idioms that aren’t about falling or being in love, but still deserve a mention on this list.

Puppy Love

Puppy love is a teenage infatuation; an adolescent exploration into love which is probably not going to last long.

“Bridget and I started dating when we were both 17. Everyone thought is was just puppy love, but we proved them wrong!”

Discover more dog idioms and expressions involving other animals in our separate guides.

Love nest

A love nest is the home of two people who are in love, especially in the earlier stages of their relationship.

“After getting married, they bought an apartment and turned it into a little love nest.”

This phrase can also refer to a place where lovers go when they are having an affair.

No love lost

This is not really an idiom about love; in fact quite the opposite! We say there is no love lost between two or more people or groups when they actually do not like each other at all.

“There is no love lost between Kyle and his brother.”

We can also say little love lost to mean the same thing.

Love is blind

The saying love is blind means that when you are in love with someone, you tend to overlook their faults. This may be considered a good thing or a bad thing!

“They say that love is blind, but I still have my limits!”

And that’s all for this list of love idioms and their meanings. We hope you found it helpful. If you’re in love with someone and considering proposing marriage to them, you might find these marriage idioms helpful.

If there are any other idioms about love you can think of then please leave a comment below to share them.

Love is a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that ranges from interpersonal affection («I love my mother») to pleasure («I loved that meal»). It can refer to an emotion of a strong attraction and personal attachment. It can also be a virtue representing kindness, compassion, and affection—»the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another».

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• Love flowers best in openness and freedom.
  • Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968), «Cliffrose and Bayonets», p. 26

• Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.
  • Edward Abbey, Down the River (1982)

• “Love,” Asa said, “is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.”
  “How so?”
  “Where it lands hasn’t got much to do with who deserves it.”
  • Daniel Abraham, The Meaning of Love, in George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (eds.) Rogues (2014), p. 397

• Well, when you think you love somebody, you love them. That’s what love is. Thoughts…
  • Commander William Adama (played by Edward James Olmos), Battlestar Galactica, The Farm

• There is, in the human Breast, a social Affection, which extends to our whole Species.
  • John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams (19 October 1775).

• The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on Love states that it is far too complicated to define. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: «Avoid, if at all possible.»
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005), film based on the novel by Douglas Adams

• Mysterious love, uncertain treasure,
  Hast thou more of pain or pleasure!
  Endless torments dwell about thee:
  Yet who would live, and live without thee!
  • Joseph Addison, Rosamond (c. 1707), Act III, scene 2

• When love’s well-timed ’tis not a fault to love;
  The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
  Sink in the soft captivity together.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act III, scene 1

• When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
  (In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
  The woman that deliberates is lost.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act IV, scene 1

• Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other, each is enriched by the other.
  Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships.
  • Felix Adler, Life and Destiny (1913), Section 5: Love and Marriage

• Love can create universes.
  Love and Wisdom are equal.
  • Agni Yoga, Leaves of Morya’s Garden I, 28. (1924)

• Regarding the various qualities of love, let us note the love that holds back and the love that impels forward. Essentially, the first type is earthly, while the second is heavenly. What a multitude of creations have been destroyed by the first, and what a similar number have been winged on by the second! The first is aware of all the limitations of space and consciousness, but the second has no need to measure things by earthly standards.
  • Agni Yoga, Heart, 242, (1932)

• Let us accept love as the motive force in the expansion of consciousness. The heart will not be aflame without love; it will not be invincible, nor will it be self-sacrificing. So let us bring gratitude to every receptacle of love, for love lies on the border of the New World, where hatred and intolerance have been abolished. The path of love unfolds with the intensity of cosmic energy.
  • Agni Yoga, Heart, 243, (1932)

• The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
  • eden ahbez, «Nature Boy» (1948)

• Love is a great beautifier.
  • Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868), chapter 24: Gossip

• Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.
  • Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868), chapter 40: The Valley Of The Shadow

• The more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts.
  • Lloyd Alexander, Adaon in The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1973), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 3

• Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too.
  • Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1973), Book II: The Black Cauldron (1965), Chapter 8

• Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.
  • Woody Allen, reported in James Robert Parish, The Hollywood Book of Love, (2003), p. 35

• Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
  • Henri Frederic Amiel, When a Woman Meets Jesus: Finding the Love Every Woman Longs For, Dorothy Valcarcel, p. 17.

• Love is merely a trick the DNA plays to replicate itself.
  • the character Tyr Anasazi played by Keith Hamilton Cobb in the episode “Star-Crossed” of Season 1 of the American-Canadian television series Andromeda

• Who sings of all of Love’s eternity
  Who shines so bright
  In all the songs of Love’s unending spells?
  Holy lightning strikes all that’s evil
  Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
  Hear the music of Love Eternal
  Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.
  • Jon Anderson, in «Loved by the Sun», from movie Legend (1985) (YouTube video)

• We, unaccustomed to courage
  exiles from delight
  live coiled in shells of loneliness
  until love leaves its high holy temple
  and comes into our sight
  to liberate us into life.
  • Maya Angelou, Love’s Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
  • Maya Angelou, Love’s Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• Love costs all we are
  and will ever be.
  Yet it is only love
  which sets us free.
  • Maya Angelou, Love’s Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• Love recognizes no barriers.
  • Maya Angelou, Love’s Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• Σχέτλι᾽ Ἔρως, μέγα πῆμα, μέγα στύγος ἀνθρώποισιν,
  ἐκ σέθεν οὐλόμεναί τ᾽ ἔριδες στοναχαί τε γόοι τε,
  ἄλγεά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσιν ἀπείρονα τετρήχασιν.
  • Unconscionable Love, bane and tormentor of mankind, parent of strife, fountain of tears, source of a thousand ills.
  • Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV, lines 445–447 (tr. E. V. Rieu)

• Whatever we do or suffer for a friend is pleasant, because love is the principal cause of pleasure.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), I-II, q. 32, art. 6

• To love is to will the good of the other.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (1265–1274), II-II, q. 26, art. 6

• Álomban és szerelemben nincs lehetetlenség.
  • In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
    • János Arany, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11

• Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
  • Attributed to Aristotle in Richard Alan Krieger, Civilization’s Quotations: Life’s Ideal (2002), p. 47, misquoting earlier reports of the quote which used «friendship» rather than «love».

• Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.
  • Aristotle, Free Translation from the French version of a letter named «The Letter of Aristotle to Alexander on the Policy toward the Cities». Basis for translation: Lettre d’Aristote à Alexandre sur la politique envers les cités, Arabic text edition and translated/edited by Józef Bielawski and Marian Plezia (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 1970), page 72

• All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there’s someone perfect who might be searching for us.
  • Kevin Arnold (played by Daniel Stern) narrating in The Wonder Years (1988)

• Alas! is even love too weak
  To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
  Are even lovers powerless to reveal
  To one another what indeed they feel?
  I knew the mass of men conceal’d
  Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal’d
  They would by other men be met
  With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
  I knew they lived and moved
  Trick’d in disguises, alien to the rest
  Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
  The same heart beats in every human breast!
  • Matthew Arnold, «The Buried Life» (1852), st. 2

• Ah, love, let us be true
  To one another! for the world, which seems
  To lie before us like a land of dreams,
  So various, so beautiful, so new,
  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
  And we are here as on a darkling plain
  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
  Where ignorant armies clash by night.
  • Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1867), St. 4

• Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
  • Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light Full text online

• What love will make you do
  All the things that we accept
  Be the things that we regret.
  • Ashanti, Foolish (January 29, 2002) from the April 2, 2002 album Ashanti

• The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
  • Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (1972) p. 107
  • Variant: The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.

• Hunger allows no choice
  To the citizen or the police;
  We must love one another or die.
  • W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939 (1939) Lines 78-88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to «We must love one another and die» to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.

• Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
  • W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand, and other essays‎ (1962), p. 372

• It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.
  • Augustine of Hippo, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392

• Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
  • Augustine of Hippo, In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos, Tractatus VII, 8 (Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Homily 7)
  • Latin: «dilige et quod vis fac.»; falsely often: «ama et fac quod vis.»
  • Translation by Professor Joseph Fletcher: Love and then what you will, do.

• What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
  • Augustine of Hippo, as quoted in Quote, Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory, p. 197

• What sort of countenance does love have? What sort of shape does it have? What sort of height does it have? What sort of feet does it have? What sort of hands does it have? No one can say. Yet it has feet, for they lead to the Church. It has hands, for they stretch out to the poor person. It has eyes, for that is how he is in need is understood: Blessed, it says, is he who understands.
  • Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Trans. Boniface Ramsey, Works of St. Augustine, Part III, Vol. 14 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008), Homily 7, Para 10, p. 111.

• Quantum in te crescit amor, tantum crescit pulchritudo; quia ipsa charitas est animae pulchritudo.
  • Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul’s beauty.
    • Augustine of Hippo in Homilies on the First Epistle of John Ninth Homily, §9, as translated by Boniface Ramsey (2008) Augustinian Heritage Institute
  • Variant translations:
  • Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.
    • Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (1995), The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Ninth Homily, §9, as translated by H. Browne and J. H. Meyers
  • Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
    • As translated in The Little Book of Bathroom Philosophy : Daily Wisdom from the Greatest Thinkers (2004) by Gregory Bergman, p. 50.

• Nondum amabam, et amare amabam…quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.
  • I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love. … I sought what I might love, in love with loving.
    • Augustine of Hippo in Confessions (c. 397), III, 1

• Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam.
  • Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
    • Augustine of Hippo in Confessions (c. 397), X, 27, as translated in Theology and Discovery: Essays in honor of Karl Rahner, S.J. (1980) edited by William J. Kelly
  • Variant translations:
    • So late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! So late I loved you!
      • The Ethics of Modernism: Moral Ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, and Beckett‎ (2007), by Lee Oser, p. 29
    • Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.
      • Introduction to a Philosophy of Religion (1970) by Alice Von Hildebrand

• Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother.
  • Augustine of Hippo in On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 436. From The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, 1938, 1962, Fr. Emile Mersch, S. J., (1890-1940), John R. Kelly, S.J., tr., London, Dennis Dobson LTD.

• Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, «I love only God, God the Father.» Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, «I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love.» Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.
  • Augustine of Hippo in On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 438. From The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition, 1938, 1962, Fr. Emile Mersch, S. J., (1890-1940), John R. Kelly, S.J., tr., London, Dennis Dobson LTD.

• We cannot help loving what is beautiful.
  • Augustine of Hippo, On Music (387–391), VI, 13

• Only the beautiful is loved.
  • Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (c. 397), IV, 13

B[edit]

See also: Bible quotes about love

• Happiest is he who expects no happiness from others. Love delights and glorifies in giving, not receiving. So learn to love and give, and not to expect anything from others.
  • Meher Baba, Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba (1986) by Bhau Kalchuri, 7:2457

• I know not how, but martial men are given to love; I think it is, but as they are given to wine, for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleasures. There is in man’s nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupted and embaseth it.
  • Francis Bacon, Bacon’s Essays, and Wisdom of the Ancients by Francis Bacon, XX. (1884)

• If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure.
  • Bahá’u’lláh, Lawh-i-Maqsúd (Tablet of Maqsúd)

• It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
  • Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 250

• The mass of men need arousing to see that good comes to all men alike and not just to a few privileged groups, and to learn also that «hatred ceases not by hatred but that hatred ceases by love». This love is not a sentiment, but practical goodwill, expressing itself through individuals, in communities and among nations.
  • Alice Bailey in Problems Of Humanity, Chapter VI — The Problem of International Unity (1944)

• Arrest each unloving thought; stamp out each critical action, and teach yourself to love all beings — not in theory but in deed and in truth.
  • Alice Bailey, Discipleship in the New Age (1944)

• As evolution proceeds it shows itself as a gradual expansion of the love faculty, passing through the stages of love of mate, love of family, love of surrounding associates, to love of one’s entire environment; patriotism gives place later to love of humanity.
  • Alice Bailey A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, (1925) p. 595

• Let love be the keynote in all relationships, for the power which must salvage the world is the precipitation of love.
  • Alice Bailey The Externalization of the Hierarchy, (1957) p. 333

• Arrest each unloving thought; stamp out each critical action, and teach yourself to love all beings — not in theory but in deed and in truth.
  • Alice Bailey Discipleship in the New Age, (1944) p. 475

• Ask not of me, love, what is love?
  Ask what is good of God above;
  Ask of the great sun what is light;
  Ask what is darkness of the night;
  Ask sin of what may be forgiven;
  Ask what is happiness of heaven;
  Ask what is folly of the crowd;
  Ask what is fashion of the shroud;
  Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss;
  Ask of thyself what beauty is.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• Could I love less, I should be happier now.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Garden and Bower by the Sea

• I cannot love as I have loved,
  And yet I know not why;
  It is the one great woe of life
  To feel all feeling die.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• Love spends his all, and still hath store.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Alcove and Garden

• Is love afar? If I desire love, then love is at hand!
  • Ancient Chinese saying, quoted by Ban Zhao (45–114 CE) in Lessons for Women (女誡)

• Ὥστε ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν πλησίον ὡς ἑαυτὸν οὐδὲν περισσότερον κέκτηται τοῦ πλησίον·
  • Those who love their neighbor as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor.
  • Basil of Caesarea, Homily to the Rich (c. 368), in Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 43

• ἀλλὰ μὴν φαίνῃ ἔχων κτήματα πολλά. Πόθεν ταῦτα; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι τὴν οἰκείαν ἀπόλαυσιν προτι μοτέραν τῆς τῶν πολλῶν παραμυθίας ποιούμενος. Ὅσον οὖν πλεονάζεις τῷ πλούτῳ, τοσοῦτον ἐλλείπεις τῇ ἀγάπῃ.
  • You seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.
  • Basil of Caesarea, Homily to the Rich (c. 368), in Saint Basil on Social Justice, edited and translated by C. P. Schroeder (2009), p. 43

• If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
  • Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories‎ (1990), p. 153

• Bright are the stars that shine
  Dark is the sky
  I know this love of mine
  Will never die
  And I love her.
  • The Beatles, And I Love Her (1964)from the 1964 album A Hard Day’s Night

• One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
  • Simone de Beauvoir, As quoted in Successful Aging : A Conference Report (1974) by Eric Pfeiffer, p. 142

• Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God’s plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6).
  • Pope Benedict XVI, in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)

• Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.
  • Pope Benedict XVI, in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)

• Nature expresses a design of love and truth.
  • Pope Benedict XVI, in Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009)

• Authentic love is obviously something good. When we love we become most fully human. But people often consider themselves loving when actually they are possessive or manipulative. People sometimes treat others as objects to satisfy their own needs. How easy it is to be deceived by the many voices in our society that advocate a permissive approach to sexuality, without regard for modesty, self-respect or the moral values that bring quality into human relationships! This is worship of a false god; instead of bringing life, it brings death.
  • Pope Benedict XVI, Disadvantaged Youth (18 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia

• Love has a particular trait: it has a task or purpose to fulfill — to abide. By its nature, love is enduring. The Holy Spirit offers our world love that dispels uncertainty; love that overcomes the fear of betrayal; love that carries eternity within; the true love that draws us into a unity that abides!
  • Pope Benedict XVI, Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia

• Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and gift alike, he is even now working through you. Let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving love your mission!
  • Pope Benedict XVI, Youth Day Vigil (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia

• A new generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God’s gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished-not rejected, feared as a threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty — a new age in which hope liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption that deaden our souls and poison our relationships.
  • Pope Benedict XVI, Closing Mass (19 July 2007) at World Youth Day 2008 in Australia

• Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.
  • Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (1990), chapter The Responsibility of the Poet

• I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
  • Wendell Berry, Another Turn of the Crank (1996), chapter Health is Membership

• We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know.
  • Wendell Berry, Life Is A Miracle : An Essay Against Modern Superstition (2000)

• Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
  • Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary (1906).

• Love seeketh not itself to please,
  Nor for itself hath any care,
  But for another gives its ease,
  And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
  • William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1 in: Songs of Experience (1794)

• Man, you got to have love just to set it straight
  Take control of your mind and meditate
  Let your soul gravitate to the love y’all.
  • The Black Eyed Peas, Where Is the Love? (2003)

• If you never know truth then you never know love.
  • The Black Eyed Peas, Where Is the Love? (2003)

• Pure divine love is not merely the blossom of a human heart, but has its roots in eternity. Spiritual holy love is immortal, and Karma brings sooner or later all those who loved each other with such a spiritual affection to incarnate once more in the same family group. Again we say that love beyond the grave, illusion though you may call it, has a magic and divine potency which reacts on the living.
  • Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy (1889)

• A mother’s… love… will always be felt by the children in flesh. It will manifest in their dreams, and often in various events—in providential protections and escapes, for love is a strong shield, and is not limited by space or time.
  • Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in The Key to Theosophy (1889)

• What is the real object of modern education? Is it to cultivate and develop the mind in the right direction; to teach the disinherited and hapless people to carry with fortitude the burden of life (allotted them by Karma); to strengthen their will; to inculcate in them the love of one’s neighbor and the feeling of mutual interdependence and brotherhood; and thus to train and form the character for practical life? Not a bit of it. And yet, these are undeniably the objects of all true education. No one denies it; all your educationalists admit it, and talk very big indeed on the subject. But what is the practical result of their action? Every young man and boy, nay, every one of the younger generation of schoolmasters will answer: “The object of modern education is to pass examinations,” a system not to develop right emulation, but to generate and breed jealousy, envy, hatred almost, in young people for one another, and thus train them for a life of ferocious selfishness and struggle for honors and emoluments instead of kindly feeling.
  • H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy p. 210, (1889)

• Children should above all be taught self-reliance, love for all men, altruism, mutual charity, and more than anything else, to think and reason for themselves. We would reduce the purely mechanical work of the memory to an absolute minimum, and devote the time to the development and training of the inner senses, faculties and latent capacities. We would endeavour to deal with each child as a unit, and to educate it so as to produce the most harmonious and equal unfoldment of its powers, in order that its special aptitudes should find their full natural development. We should aim at creating free men and women, free intellectually, free morally, unprejudiced in all respects, and above all things, unselfish.
  • H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy p. 215, (1889)

• The mightiest love was granted him
  Love that does not expect to be loved.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, of Baruch Spinoza in «Baruch Spinoza», as translated in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989) by Yirmiyahu Yovel

• Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, «The Threatened», The Book of Sand [El Libro de arena] (1975)

• There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.
  • Paul Bourget, Cosmopolis (1892), Ch. 5 «Countess Steno»

• There is no such thing as an age for love … because the man capable of loving — in the complex and modern sense of love as a sort of ideal exaltation — never ceases to love.
  • Paul Bourget, The Age for Love (Whether or not the interview with Pierre Fauchery by «Jules Labarthe» in this short story represents an actual one by Bourget is not known.) Full text online

• I have been thinking about our conversation and about your book, and I am afraid that I expressed myself badly yesterday. When I said that one may love and be loved at any age I ought to have added that sometimes this love comes too late. It comes when one no longer has the right to prove to the loved one how much she is loved, except by love’s sacrifice.
  • Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character «Jules Labarthe»
  • Paul Bourget, The Age for Love (Whether or not the interview with Pierre Fauchery by «Jules Labarthe» in this short story represents an actual one by Bourget is not known.) Full text online

• We have common cause against the night. … Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear the music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokecherry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain. … We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.
  • Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), p. 145

• At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.
  • Ray Bradbury, as quoted in «Sci-fi legend «Ray Bradbury on God, ‘monsters and angels'» by John Blake, CNN : Living (2 August 2010), p. 1

• In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other.
  • Ray Bradbury, Ray Bradbury, Interviewed by Sam Geller The Art of Fiction No. 203, The Paris Review; Spring, 2010

• If you want to know what love is, have a child. If you want to know what pain is, bury him.
  • Giannina Braschi in Yo-Yo Boing! (1998)

• I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world.
  • Giannina Braschi in «Empire of Dreams» (1988)

• Love is what is new—so old and necessary—the old god that interchanges values, meaning, sentimentality, food, and languages—the missing link in this culture of destruction and death.
  • Giannina Braschi in United States of Banana (2011)

• Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
  • Phillips Brooks, as quoted in Primary Education (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody, p. 190

• There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section IX

• If thou must love me, let it be for nought
  Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
  «I love her for her smile — her look — her way
  Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
  That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
  A sense of pleasant ease on such a day» —
  For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
  Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought,
  May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
  Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, —
  A creature might forget to weep, who fbore
  Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
  But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
  Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portugese, No. XIV

• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
  For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
  I love thee to the level of everyday’s
  Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
  I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
  I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
  I love thee with the passion put to use
  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
  With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
  Smiles, tears, of all my life! —and, if God choose,
  I shall but love thee better after death.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, No. XLIII

• Whoever lives true life, will love true love.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book I, line 1,096

• I would not be a rose upon the wall
  A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
  To say to a courtier, «Pluck that rose for me,
  It’s prettier than the rest.» O Romney Leigh!
  I’d rather far be trodden by his foot,
  Than lie in a great queen’s bosom.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IV

• But I love you, sir:
  And when a woman says she loves a man,
  The man must hear her, though he love her not.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IX

• The game of love is whatever you make it to be.
  • Michelle Branch, «The Game of Love» (September 2002), by Santana, Shaman

• For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
  And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
  Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,—
  How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
  • Robert Browning, A Death in the Desert (1864)

• Le temps, qui fortifie les amitiés, affaiblit l’amour.
  • Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Du Coeur, [«Of the Heart» also translated as «Of the Affections»], Aphorism 4

• L’amour qui naît subitement est le plus long à guérir.
  • Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Du Coeur, [«Of the Heart» also translated as «Of the Affections»], Aphorism 13

• Le commencement et le déclin de l’amour se font sentir par l’embarras où l’on est de se trouver seuls.
  • We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Du Coeur, [«Of the Heart» also translated as «Of the Affections»], Aphorism 33

• L’on veut faire tout le bonheur, ou si cela ne se peut ainsi, tout le malheur de ce qu’on aime.
  • One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Du Coeur, [«Of the Heart» also translated as «Of the Affections»], Aphorism 39

• Regretter ce que l’on aime est un bien, en comparaison de vivre avec ce que l’on hait.
  • Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, Du Coeur, [«Of the Heart» also translated as «Of the Affections»], Aphorism 40

• Loveliest of lovely things are they,
  On earth, that soonest pass away.
  The rose that lives its little hour
  Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
  • William Cullen Bryant, A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson, st. 3 (1828)

• Every morning
  I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
  Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
  And pressing forward honor reality.

  We cannot avoid
  Using power,
  Cannot escape the compulsion
  To afflict the world,
  So let us, cautious in diction
  And mighty in contradiction,
  Love powerfully.

  • Martin Buber, in «Power and Love» (1926)

• Hatred has never stopped hatred. Only love stops hate. This is the eternal law.
  • Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada, chapter 1, verse 3-5, The Still Point: Dhammapada — Living the Buddha’s Essential Teachings — A Contemporary Rendering and Stories by Geri Larkin (2003), Harper San Francisco

• Just as a mother with her own life
  Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
  So within yourself let grow
  A boundless love for all creatures.

  Let your love flow outward through the universe,
  To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
  A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

  Then as you stand or walk,
  Sit or lie down,
  As long as you are awake,
  Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
  Your life will bring heaven to earth.

  • Buddha Discourse on Goodwill, From the Metta Sutta, part of the Sutta Nipata, a collection of dialogues with the Buddha said to be among the oldest parts of the Pali Buddhist canon

• You couldn’t love anything as much as I loved investments and not get fairly good at it.
  • Warren Buffet, (November 12, 2014)»Warren E. Buffett, 25th Anniversary of The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.». The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., YouTube. (quote at 38:14 of 43:23)

• Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory (1996)

• Love. What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.
  • William S. Burroughs, Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs (2000)

• And this is that Homer’s golden chain, which reacheth down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 1. Memb. 1. Subsec. 7

• No cord nor cable can so forcibly draw, or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 2. Memb. 1. Subsec. 2

• The falling out of lovers is the renewing of love.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section 2. Terence—Andria, III. 23

• To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
  • Leo Buscaglia, Living, Loving, and Learning (1985)

• A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
  • Leo Buscaglia, in interview with Veronica M. Hay, in A Magazine of People and Possibilities (1998)

• It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.
  • Samuel Butler, Ramblings In Cheapside (1890), First published in Universal Review (December 1890)

• To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
  • Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV — Higgledy-Piggledy, Life and Love

• A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.
  • Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)

• Love in your hearts as idly burns
  As fire in antique Roman urns.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I

• Love is a boy by poets styl’d:
  Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I, line 843

• What mad lover ever dy’d,
  To gain a soft and gentle bride?
  Or for a lady tender-hearted,
  In purling streams or hemp departed?
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto I

• Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
  Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
  These hours, and only these, redeem Life’s years of ill.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 81

• The cold in clime are cold in blood,
  Their love can scarce deserve the name.
  • Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813), line 1,099

• Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
  A spark of that immortal fire
  With angels shared, by Allah given
  To lift from earth our low desire.
  • Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813), line 1,131

• Why did she love him? Curious fool!—be still—
  Is human love the growth of human will?
  • Lord Byron, Lara, A Tale (1814), Canto II, Stanza 22

• And to his eye
  There was but one beloved face on earth,
  And that was shining on him.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), Stanza 2

• She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew
  For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
  Was darken’d with her shadow.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), Stanza 3

• Who loves, raves—’tis youth’s frenzy—but the cure
  Is bitterer still.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 123

• O! that the Desert were my dwelling place,
  With one fair Spirit for my minister,
  That I might all forget the human race,
  And, hating no one, love but only her!
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 177

• Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
  ‘Tis woman’s whole existence: man may range
  The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart,
  Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
  Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
  And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
  Men have all these resources, we but one,
  To love again, and be again undone.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 194

• Alas! the love of women! it is known
  To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 199

• In her first passion woman loves her lover;
  In all the others, all she loves is love.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto III, Stanza 3. La Rochefoucauld. Maxims. No. 497

• All I have is my love of love and love is not loving.
  • David Bowie, Soul Love (song) (1972)

• You are at the beginning of your life, perhaps you will have many loves, but if you are fortunate, you will have only one love.
  • Jolee Bindo, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, version 1.03

• If everything is imperfect in this imperfect world, love is most perfect in its perfect imperfection.
  • Gunar Björnstrand, The Seventh Seal (1957)

C[edit]

• Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
  One thing unshaken stays:
  Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
  Whereby decays
    Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
  Of hourly change begot,
  Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
  And changes not; —

  Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers
  Find altered by-and-bye,
  When, with possession, time anon discovers
  Trapped dreams must die, —
  For he that visions God, of mankind gathers
  One manlike trait alone,
  And reverently imputes to Him a father’s
  Love for his son.

  • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), «To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour«

• What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.
  • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), «Auctorial Induction»

• Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood.
  • James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917), Horvendile, in Ch. 2 : Introduces the Ageless Woman

• There is no gift more great than love.
  • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion (1926), Morvyth, in Book Two : The Mathematics of Gonfal, Ch. X : Relative to Gonfal’s Head

• I fall in love too easily
  I fall in love too fast
  I fall in love too terribly hard
  For love to ever last

  My heart should be well-schooled
  Cause I’ve been fooled in the past
  But still I fall in love so easily
  I fall in love too fast

  • Sammy Cahn, I Fall in Love Too Easily (1944)

• Love is the substance of all life. Everything is connected in love, absolutely everything.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we’ve planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• The growth of one blesses all. I am commited to grow in love. All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• Love is not love if it compelled by reason and driven by logic — love exists in spite of those things, not because of them. It is a emotion which needs no fuel to fire it or oxygen to feed it; if you have to look for the why, then stop looking; it was never there at all.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver,
  É ferida que dói, e não se sente;
  É um contentamento descontente,
  É dor que desatina sem doer.
  É um não querer mais que bem querer;
  É um andar solitário entre a gente;
  É nunca contentar-se de contente;
  É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.
  É querer estar preso por vontade;
  É servir a quem vence, o vencedor;
  É ter com quem nos mata, lealdade.
  Mas como causar pode seu favor
  Nos corações humanos amizade,
  Se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?
  • Love is a fire that burns, but is never seen;
    a wound that hurts, but is never perceived;
    a pleasure that starts a pain that’s unrelieved;
    a pain that maddens without any pain; a serene
    desire for nothing, but wishing her only the best;
    a lonely passage through the crowd; the resentment
    of never being content with one’s contentment;
    a caring that gains only when losing; an obsessed
    desire to be bound, for love, in jail;
    a capitulation to the one you’ve conquered yourself;
    a devotion to your own assassin every single day.
    So how can Love conform, without fail,
    every captive human heart, if Love itself
    is so contradictory in every possible way?
  • Luís de Camões, Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver, translated by William Baer

• Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d`abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.
  • We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
  • Albert Camus, quoted in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1998) edited by Connie Robertson, «Camus, Albert 1913–1960», p. 73

• There is not love of life without despair about life.
  • Albert Camus, Preface, Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)

• There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
  • Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)

• In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.
  • Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)

• The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.
  • Albert Camus, A Happy Death (1971)

• When love hurts, it won’t work.
  • Blu Cantrell, «Breathe (Remix)» (2003), Bittersweet, New York: Arista Records, Inc.

• That’s love too. It ain’t sex, and maybe that’s too bad, but you know, Cindy, when a man and a woman care for each other, that doesn’t always mean they have to sleep together or live together.
  • Orson Scott Card in Homebody (1998)

• The biblical assertion, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord, is often quoted to portray justice as punishment, as retribution. This is a far cry from the concept of the justice of love… This quandary arises not only through a misconception of justice, but of love as well. For love is often thought to be sentimental weakness. Surely the more we study and meditate on the gospel —- the good news —- of Christ, both in Palestine long ago and in His Messages today, the more truly we will come to understand that love means justice, and justice is the way of love. In the Sermon on the Mount, as reported by Matthew, Christ says (speaking through Jesus): You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you…if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also… Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father… for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (from Matt. chapter 5)
  • Rev. Howard Ray Carey, in The Joy of Christ’s Coming, Chapter 11. Love: the key to sharing],  (1988)

• That our love is to be unconditional —- that is, not demanding anything in return —- is clearly indicated in the words of Jesus to His chosen 12 disciples just before His crucifixion…A corollary of unconditional love is unlimited forgiveness. This is demonstrated in Jesus’ words to Peter when that disciple inquired whether he should forgive as many as seven times
  • Rev. Howard Ray Carey, The Joy of Christ’s Coming, Chapter 48. From unlimited revenge to unconditional love],   (1988)

• For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Death of Goethe. Quote reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23

• One can give without loving, but one cannot love without giving
  • Amy Carmichael, A Chance to Die.The life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael, Elisabeth Elliot, Revell, 1987.

• Give me the love that leads the way,
  The faith that nothing can dismay,
  The hope no disappointments tire,
  The passion that will burn like fire;
  Let me not sink to be a clod:
  Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God
  • Amy Carmichael, from The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael, CLC, Fort Washington, USA 1999, ISBN 0-87508-790-6.

• True love is not the helpless desire to possess the cherished object of one’s fervent affection; true love is the disciplined generosity we require of ourselves for the sake of another when we would rather be selfish; that, at least, is how I have taught myself to love my wife.
  • Stephen L. Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park Ch. 17, The Brass Ring, IV (2002)

• Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.
  • «Catechism of the Catholic Church», 2nd Edition, Paragraph 2392, Vatican. Archived from the original on March 4, 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-20.

• Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles.
  • Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Book I, Ch. 4

• I have often had occasion to observe, that a warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.
  • Richard Cecil, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394

• Isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
  • «Celine» (played by Julie Delpy), in Before Sunrise (1995)

• There’s no love lost between us.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), Book IV, Chapter 13. Also used by Henry Fielding, Grub Street, Act I, scene 4; David Garrick, Correspondence (1759); Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act IV. Ben Jonson, Every Man Out of His Humour, Act II, scene 1. Alain-René Lesage, Gil Blas (1715-1735), Book IX, Chapter VII, as translated by Tobias Smollett

• Each one gave the other the only assistance one man can expect from another: that his friend support him and ask only that he remain himself. It is no great accomplishment to take people as they are, and we must always do so eventually, but to wish them to be as they are, that is a genuine love.
  • Émile Chartier, Alain On Happiness (1973), Poets

• The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
  • G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News (16 July 1910)

• Try not to change the world. You will fail. Try to love the world. Lo, the world is changed. Changed forever.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970), August 31

• What is love? From the spiritual and inner point of view, love is self-expansion. Human love binds and is bound. Divine Love expands, enlarges itself.
  • Sri Chinmoy, My Rose Petals (1971)

• First of all, let us try to know what love is. If love means to possess someone or something, then that is not real love, not pure love. If loves means to give oneself, to become one with everything and everyone, then that is real love. Real love is total oneness with the object loved and with the Possessor of love.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Rainbow-Flowers (1973)

• Where love is thick, faults are thin. If you really love someone, then it is difficult to find fault with him. His faults seem negligible, for love means oneness.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Fifty Freedom-Boats To One Golden Shore (1974), Citation- ffb-132, Part 4

• Love the world. Otherwise, you will be forced to carry the heaviest load: your own bitter self.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979), #1908, Part 20

• Hatred is a disguised form of love. You can only hate someone whom you really wish to love, because if you were totally indifferent to that person, you could not even get up enough energy to hate him.
  • Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy (1997)

• If you really want to love humanity, then you have to love humanity as it is now.
  • Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy (1997)

• Life is nothing but the expansion of love. We can cultivate divine love by entering into the Source. The Source is God, who is all Love.
  • Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy (1997)

• Man is by nature a lover. Only he has yet to discover the real thing to love. This quest awakens him to the fulfillment of his real Self.
  • Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy (1997)

• Is the world so unbearable? No! What we need is only a little more love for the world.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998), #4386, Part 5

• Love is something that never cared to learn how to judge anybody.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998),#7310, Part 8

• Instead of creating a reason why you cannot love the world, try to create a reason why you should and must love the world.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Seventy Seven Thousand Service-Trees series 1-50 (1998), #14550, Part 15

• World-peace can be achieved when the power of love replaces the love of power.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Words of Wisdom (2010)

• Do not judge but love and be loved, if you want to be really happy.
  • Sri Chinmoy, Words of Wisdom (2010)

• Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.
  • Ray Charles, Brother Ray : Ray Charles’ Own Story (1978) by Ray Charles and David Ritz, (2003 edition), For the Love of Women, p. 239

• «There have been women I have loved … A lot, as discreetly as possible.»
  • Jacques Chirac, undated, quoted in «‘Affair’ story will continue to rumble» Christian Fraser, BBC News, 14 January 2014

• So mourn’d the dame of Ephesus her love.
  • Colley Cibber, Richard III (1700), Act II; altered from Shakespeare

• What have I done? What horrid crime committed?
  To me the worst of crimes—outliv’d my liking.
  • Colley Cibber, Richard III (1700), Act III, scene 2; altered from Shakespeare

• There are no signs,
  There are no stars aligned,
  No amulets no charms,
  To bring you back to my arms.
  There’s just this human heart.
  That’s built with this human fault.
  What was your question?
  Love is the answer.
  • Annie Clark (St. Vincent), in «All My Stars Aligned» on Marry Me (2007)

• Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
  Ye shall grow a part
  Of the laughing Sea;
  Of the moaning heart
  Of the glittered wave
  Of the sun-gleam’s dart
  In the ocean-grave.

  Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
  For that I love
  Thy heart of stone!
  From the heights above
  To the depths below,
  Where dread things move,

  There is naught can show
  A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
  Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!

  • Voltairine de Cleyre, «The Dirge of the Sea» (April 1891)

• And sometimes when I am weary,
  When the path is thorny and Wild,
  I’ll look back to the Eyes in the twilight,
  Back to the eyes that smiled.

  And pray that a wreath like a rainbow
  May slip from the beautiful past,
  And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love
  And keep me, and hold me fast.

  • Voltairine de Cleyre, And Thou Too (1888)

• The wise are wise only because they love.
  • Paulo Coelho, As quoted in Elders on Love: Dialogues on the Consciousness, Cultivation, and Expression of Love (1999) by Kenneth R. Lakritz and Thomas M. Knoblauch
  • Unsourced variant: The wise are wise only because they love. The fools are fools only because they think they can understand love.

• One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
  • Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, p. 128

• Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. … It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.
  • Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (1988), p. 157

• We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
  • As translated by Alan R. Clarke (1996)

• The gods throw the dice, and they don’t ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don’t care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don’t care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don’t want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they’re throwing the dice — and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck.
  The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• There’s nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
  The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
  And to save us.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• Even if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• I am going to sit here with you by the river. If you go home to sleep, I will sleep in front of your house. And if you go away, I will follow you — until you tell me to go away. Then I’ll leave. But I have to love you for the rest of my life.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
• Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.
  • Paulo Coelho, By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

• When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
  • Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes (2003), page 9

• My aim is to understand love. I know how alive I felt when I was in love, and I know that everything I have now, however interesting it might seem, doesn’t really excited me.
  But love is a terrible thing: I’ve seen my girlfriends suffer and I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. … Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touched my heart failed to arouse my body, and that those who aroused my body failed to touch my heart.
  • Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes (2003), Maria’s diary entry at the age of 17, p. 16

• In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
  • Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 90

• Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they’re not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or — such is the pleasure they experience — they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.
  • Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 164

• Love simply is. That is the testament of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia — love is. No definitions. Love and don’t ask too many questions. Just love.
  • Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 258

• The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I’m not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• Love is the only thing that will save us, independent of any mistakes we may make. Love is always stronger.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• Love always triumphs over what we call death. That’s why there’s no need to grieve for our loved ones, because they continue to be loved and remain by our side.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• I love you like a river that creates the right conditions for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks. I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• I love you like a river that understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows. I love you because we are all born in the same place, at the same source, which keeps us provided with a constant supply of water. And so, when we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little. The spring returns, and the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• I love you like a river that begins as a solitary trickle in the mountains and gradually grows and joins other rivers until, after a certain point, it can flow around any obstacle in order to get where it wants.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• I receive your love, and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures, but a love with no name and no explanation, like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course but simply flows onward. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours, and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you, I love you, I love you.
  • Paulo Coelho, Aleph (2011)

• The God who appears to me is the comforter of the poor and their avenger in world history. This avenger of the poor is the God I love. … In the poor man I see humanity. I can’t think of humanity without feeling sympathy for him, without feeling love for him. It is not the physical universe, but rather the moral universe, the social existence of mankind, that I must think and love, if my thought of God is to be called love.
  • Hermann Cohen, The Concept of Religion in the System of Philosophy (1915), p. 81

• What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
  • Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)

• «You have loved enough, now let me be the lover.» You could say that God is speaking to you or the cosmos, or your lover. It just means, like, Forget it. Lean back and be loved by all that is already loving you. It is your effort at love that is preventing you from experiencing it. It is like if you ever taught kids how to swim. The most difficult thing is for them to understand that they will float, if they relax, if they hold their breath and relax, they will actually float. For most kids it is difficult to swim. They feel they are going to sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake.
  • Leonard Cohen, On the lyrics to «You Have Loved Enough» in an interview released at the Ten New Songs site (2001); but see alternate version at leonardcohenfiles.com

• When they lay down beside me I made my confession to them.
  They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
  If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,
  They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
  • Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Sisters of Mercy

• I swept the marble chambers,
  But you sent me down below.
  You kept me from believing
  Until you let me know:
  That ‘I am not the one who loves —
  It’s love that chooses me.
  When hatred with his package comes,
  You forbid delivery.
  • Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs (2001), You Have Loved Enough

• The light came through the window,
  Straight from the sun above,
  And so inside my little room
  There plunged the rays of Love.

  In streams of light I clearly saw
  The dust you seldom see,
  Out of which the Nameless makes
  A Name for one like me.

  • Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs (2001), «Love Itself»

• Anything that’s worth havin’
  Sure enough worth fighting for.
  Quittin’s out of the question
  When it gets tough, gotta fight some more. …
  We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love.
  If its woth having, it’s worth fightin for.
  • Cheryl Cole, Fight for This Love (2009)

• Now everyday ain’t gonna be no picnic
  Love ain’t no walk in the park
  All you can do is make the best of it now
  Can’t be afraid of the dark
  Just know that you’re not in this thing alone
  There’s always a place in me that you can call home.
  • Cheryl Cole, Fight for This Love (2009)

• All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of Love,
  And feed his sacred flame.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love, st. 1 (1799)

• And in Life’s noisiest hour,
  There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
  The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy.

  You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Presence of Love (1807), lines 1-4

• And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
  How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Presence of Love (1807), lines 10-11

• Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
  Friendship is a sheltering tree;
  Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
  Of friendship, love, and liberty,
  Ere I was old!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Youth and Age, st. 2 (1823-1832)

• In many ways doth the full heart reveal
  The presence of the love it would conceal.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems Written in Later Life, motto (1826)

• I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T. Coleridge (1835) by Henry N. Coleridge. The remark was made on 10 July 1834

• To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
  Makes up life’s tale to many a feeling heart!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge,’Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), On taking Leave of ———— (1817)

• I have heard of reasons manifold
  Why Love must needs be blind,
  But this the best of all I hold,—
  His eyes are in his mind.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation

• Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
  To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
  He prayeth well, who loveth well
  Both man and bird and beast.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817), Stanza 22

• He prayeth best, who loveth best
  All things both great and small;
  For the dear God who loveth us,
  He made and loveth all.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817), Stanza 22

• Now here we are, The two of us,
  And nothing’s gonna come between us again.
  Forever love, I feel you’re with me,
  You’re the sun that chases away the rain.
  I cherish all the love you bring,
  It’s here forever and a day,
  I love you more than anything,
  I can’t throw that away. My Love.
  …
  For the memory of you,
  For all the times we shared together,
  For all we’ve been through,
  Forever Love.
  • Color Me Badd, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Forever Love (1992)

• Is it possible to understand what God’s love means for the oppressed without making wrath an essential ingredient of that love? What could love possibly mean in a racist society except the righteous condemnation of everything racist? … A God minus wrath seems to be a God who is basically not against anything.
  • James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), p. 73

• Fan Ch’ih asked, … What is love?
  The Master said: «To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.»
  • Confucius, Analects, 6.20, The Harvard Classics, Volume 44, p. 20

• The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.
  • Confucius, in Oriental Philosophy, p. 46

• Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love — and to put its trust in life!!
  • Joseph Conrad, Victory: An Island Tale, part IV, chap. 14

• Our love is principle, and has its root
  In reason, is judicious, manly, free.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 353

• Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.
  • Dinah Craik, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394

• When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.
  • Dinah Craik, Christian’s Mistake (1865). p. 64

• Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
  Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
  Love given willingly, full and free,
  Love for love’s sake — as mine to thee.
  Duty’s a slave that keeps the keys,
  But Love, the master, goes in and out
  Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
  Just as he please — just as he please.
  • Dinah Craik, Poems (1866), «Plighted»

• You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip.
  • Jonathan Samuel Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum (1991)

• Love’s for a lifetime not for a moment.
  • The Corrs, All The Love In The World (2001)

• I was searching for an answer
  In a world so full of strangers
  But what I found was never really enough
  Now that I’ve found you
  I’m looking in the eyes of love (In the eyes of love)

  Baby you’ve been good to me
  Oh, so much more that you could know, yeah, yeah
  I never thought that I would find
  Someone who’s so sweet and kind
  Like you…

  Please believe me when I say
  This time I won’t run away
  I swear by all the heaven’s stars above
  Now that I’ve found you
  I’m looking in the eyes of love

  Looking in the eyes of love…
  I can see forever, yeah…
  I can see you and me
  Walking in this world together

  Oh, my heart’s found a hope…
  I’ve been dreaming of…
  Now that I’ve found you
  I’m looking in the eyes of love

  • The Corrs, Looking in the Eyes of Love from the In Blue (2004)

• Love which does not act is hardly love at all. Love in action is the essence of love.
  • Benjamin Creme in Maitreya’s Mission Vol. III (1997), p. 26

• Love is a powerful, active, magnetic force which draws together all the fragmented building bricks of cosmos and holds them together, without which it would all fall asunder. Our solar system, the galaxies, would disappear without that magnetic, attracting force which we call love.
  • Benjamin Creme in Maitreya’s Mission Vol. III (1997), p. 26

• Christ said: «God is Love.» This is a fact. It is an experiential fact for many people. «God is energy» is equally a fact. Love — what we call love — is a great energy, a great magnetic, all pervading energy.
  • Benjamin Creme in The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980) p. 45

• Love is a great impersonal energy, and released into the world by the Christ its effect is twofold…While it can and does stimulate goodwill, at the same time it can stimulate the opposite of that, which is hatred. It is essentially impersonal. All men will feel, and do feel now, this energy — the good and the bad, the altruistic and the selfish; all of us feel and react to this energy in one way or another. A tremendous intensification of these qualities is taking place and will continue. This energy of Love is the Sword of Cleavage. A great polarization will take place in humanity, between those who are ready to go forward with the Christ, into the future, on the only rational basis of sharing and co-operation for the good of all, creating right relationships; and those who are holding on to the old separatist ways, who are ready (though they would not see it in these terms, it would be the inevitable result) to plunge the world into chaos, and war — a war which now could annihilate the planet.
  • Benjamin Creme in The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980) p. 63

• Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…
  • E. E. Cummings, «being to timelessness as it’s to time» (1958)

• and nothing quite so least as truth
  —i say though hate were why men breathe—
  because my father lived his soul
  love is the whole and more than all
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #34

• love is the every only god
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #38

• love is more thicker than forget
  …it is more sane and sunly
  and more it cannot die
  than all the sky which only
  is higher than the sky
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #42

• measureless our pure living complete love
  whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #50

• ‘and liars kill their kind
  but’ her,my ‘love creates love only’ our
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXII

• nothing false and possible is love
  (who’s imagined, therefore limitless)
  love’s to giving as to keeping’s give; as yes is to if, love is to yes
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXIV

• true lovers in each happening of their hearts
  live longer than all which and every who;
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVI

• yes is a pleasant country…
  love is a deeper season
  than reason
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVIII

• i feel that(false and true are merely to know)
  Love only has ever been,is,and will ever be,So
  • E. E. Cummings, XAIPE (1950), 33

• no evil is
  so worse than worst you fall in hate with love

  —human one mortally immortal i
  can turn immense all time’s because to why

  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #7

• lovers alone wear sunlight
  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #91

• The whole truth…
  sings only —and all lovers are the song
  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #91

• it’s love by whom (my beautiful friend) the gift to live is without until:
  …love was and shall be this only truth (a dream of a deed, born not to die)
  • E. E. Cummings, 73 poems (1963), poem#4

• the axis of the universe
  —love
  • E. E. Cummings, 73 poems (1963), poem#73

• Forget the haters ’cause somebody loves ya.
  • Miley Cyrus, performed in the song W:We Can’t Stop (2013) which is written by various songwriters

D[edit]

• Surely goodness and loyal love will pursue me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the house of Jehovah for all my days.

• David, Psalms 23:6, NWT

• He loves righteousness and justice.

The earth is filled with Jehovah’s loyal love.

• David, Psalms 33:5, NWT

• For you, O Jehovah, are good and ready to forgive;

You abound in loyal love for all those who call on you.

• David, Psalm 86:5, NWT

• I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
  you were very dear to me.
  Your love for me was wonderful,
  more wonderful than that of women.
  • David, 2 Samuel 1:26 (TNIV)

• Love, Fear, and Esteem, — Write these on three stones.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations, «Of servants», as translated by Edward MacCurdy

• The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy

• The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy

• When that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. There will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy

• The Caladrius is a bird of which it is related that, when it is carried into the presence of a sick person, if the sick man is going to die, the bird turns away its head and never looks at him; but if the sick man is to be saved the bird never loses sight of him but is the cause of curing him of all his sickness. Like unto this is the love of virtue. It never looks at any vile or base thing, but rather clings always to pure and virtuous things and takes up its abode in a noble heart; as the birds do in green woods on flowery branches. And this Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.
  • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XX Humorous Writings, as translated by Edward MacCurdy

• Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna,
  legato con amore in un volume,
  ciò che per l’universo si squaderna.
  • I saw within Its depth how It conceives
    all things in a single volume bound by Love,
    of which the universe is the scattered leaves.
  • Dante Alighieri, Paradiso XXXIII, lines 85–87 (tr. Ciardi).

• L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
  • The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.
  • Dante Alighieri, Paradiso XXXIII, 145

• Qual è ‘l geomètra che tutto s’affige
  per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
  pensando, quel principio ond’ elli indige,

  tal era io a quella vista nova:
  veder voleva come si convenne
  l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova;

  ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
  se non che la mia mente fu percossa
  da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne.

  A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
  ma già volgeva il mio disio e ‘l velle,
  sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa,

  l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

  • As the geometrician, who endeavours
    To square the circle, and discovers not,
    By taking thought, the principle he wants,

    Even such was I at that new apparition;
    I wished to see how the image to the circle
    Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;

    But my own wings were not enough for this,
    Had it not been that then my mind there smote
    A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.

    Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
    But now was turning my desire and will,
    Even as a wheel that equally is moved,

    The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

  • Dante Alighieri, Canto XXXIII, closing lines, as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• Amor, ch’al cor gentil ratto s’apprende.
  • Love, that all gentle hearts so quickly know.
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, V. 100

• Amor ch’ a nullo amato amar perdona.
  • Love, which insists that love shall mutual be.
  • Dante Alighieri, Inferno, V. 103

• If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
  • Robertson Davies, «The Pleasures of Love,» in Saturday Night (23 December 1961); reprinted in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1990)

• Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end: we fancy that we have always possessed what we love, so difficult is it to imagine how we could have lived without it.
  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Bk. 8, Ch. 2, as translated by Isabel Hill (1833)
  • Variant translation: It is certainly through love that eternity can be understood; it confuses all thoughts about time; it destroys the ideas of beginning and end; one thinks one has always been in love with the person one loves, so difficult is it to conceive that one could live without him.
    • As translated by Sylvia Raphael (1998)

• If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.
  • Diana, Princess of Wales

• The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
  • Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker (April 1964)

• We are not expecting Utopia here on this earth. But God meant things to be much easier than we have made them. A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter. A certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. A family needs work as well as bread. Property is proper to man. We must keep repeating these things. Eternal life begins now. «All the way to heaven is heaven, because He said, «I am the Way.» The cross is there, of course, but «in the cross is joy of spirit.» And love makes all things easy.
  • Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage (1948)

• Even sticking to the higher plane of love, is it so very obvious that you can’t love more than one person? We seem to manage it with parental love (parents are reproached if they don’t at least pretend to love all their children equally), love of books, of food, of wine (love of Chateau Margaux does not preclude love of a fine Hock, and we don’t feel unfaithful to the red when we dally with the white), love of composers, poets, holiday beaches, friends . . . why is erotic love the one exception that everybody instantly acknowledges without even thinking about it?
  • Richard Dawkins Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster, November 2007

• I somehow see what’s beautiful
  In things that are ephemeral
  I’m my only friend of mine
  And love is just a piece of time
  in the world
  in the world.
  And I couldn’t help but fall in love again.
  • Zooey Deschanel, She & Him : Volume One (2008), «I Thought I Saw Your Face Today»

• O-o-old habits die hard when you got, when you got a sentimental heart
  Piece of the puzzle, you’re my missing part
  Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart?
  • Zooey Deschanel, She & Him : Volume One (2008), «Sentimental Heart»

• Love is not a feeling to pass away
  Like the balmy breath of a Summer’s day…….
  Love is not a passion of earthly mould
  As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold
  • Charles Dickens, From Lucy’s Song in The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens, Chapman & Hall, London 1903

• Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are very often its powerful auxiliaries. «Out of sight, out of mind,» is well enough as a proverb applicable to cases of friendship, though absence is not always necessary to hollowness of heart even between friends, and truth and honesty, like precious stones, are perhaps most easily imitated at a distance, when the counterfeits often pass for real. Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will thrive for a considerable time on very slight and sparing food.
  • Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, ch. XL: In Which Nicholas Falls in Love. He Employs a Mediator, Whose Proceedings Are Crowned with Unexpected Success, Excepting in one Solitary Particular (1839)

• [A] loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom…
  • Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), Chapter 9. Often quoted as «A loving heart is the truest wisdom».

• It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.
  • Denis Diderot, Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1773 — 1777)

• Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
  • Bette Davis, U.S. screen actor. The Lonely Life, ch. 19 (1962)

• Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. . . . When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
  • Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70), French writers. The Goncourt Journals (1888-96; repr. in Pages from the Goncourt Journal, ed. by Robert Baldick, 1962), entry for 15 Nov. 1859

• We are all born for love.
  It is the principle of existence and its only end.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (1845), Book V, Chapter IV

• The daily actions of religious people have accomplished uncounted good deeds throughout history, alleviating suffering, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick. Religions have brought the comfort of belonging and companionship to many who would otherwise have passed through this life all alone, without glory or adventure. They have not just provided first aid, in effect, for people in difficulties; they have provided the means for changing the world in ways that remove those difficulties. As Alan Wolfe says, «Religion can lead people out of cycles of poverty and dependency just as it led Moses out of Egypt». There is much for religion lovers to be proud of in their traditions, and much for all of us to be grateful for.

  The fact that so many people love their religions as much as, or more than, anything else in their lives is a weighty fact indeed. I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love. Would a world with peace, but without love, be a better world? Not if the peace was achieved by drugging the love (and hate) out of us, or by suppression. Would a world with justice and freedom, but without love, be a better world? Not if it was achieved by somehow turning us all into loveless law-abiders with none of the yearnings or envies or hatreds that are wellsprings of injustice and subjugation.

  It is hard to consider such hypotheticals, and I doubt if we should trust our first intuitions about them, but, for what it is worth, I surmise that we almost all want a world in which love, justice, freedom, and peace are all present, as much as possible, but if we had to give up one of these, it wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — be love. But, sad to say, even if it is true that nothing could matter more than love, it wouldn’t follow from this that we don’t have reason to question the things that we, and others, love. Love is blind, as they say, and because love is blind, it often leads to tragedy: to conflicts in which one love is pitted against another love, and something has to give, with suffering guaranteed in any resolution.

  • Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (2006)

• The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
  • Benjamin Disraeli, Henrietta Temple (1837), Book 4, chapter 1. Often misquoted as «The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end».

• Love comes unseen,—we only see it go.
  • Austin Dobson, «The Story of Rosina», line 126, in Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societé (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1873), p. 41

• It is so important for us to have faith, trust, confidence in one another. It is the only way we can communicate. Without faith there is no communication, there is no love, or if there was a little love, it will die without hope, trust, and confidence. Even if it doesn’t die right away, it will be so weak, so ill, and so tired that communication will be miserable as well.
  • Catherine Doherty, Poustinia (1975), Ch. 12

• «There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio: What is sacred? Of what is spirit made? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The answer to each is only love.»
  • Don Juan, Don Juan DeMarco, (1995)

• «They were renewed by love. The heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.»
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and punishment (1866), chapter II

• The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1868)

• On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don’t want, I won’t accept life on any other!»
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III

• Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it’s an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V

• If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett)

• «It’s just the same story as a doctor once told me,» observed the elder. «He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. ‘I love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams,’ he said, ‘I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.'»
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)

• Brothers, have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God’s intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
  My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880), Book VI, chapter 3: «Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds» (translated by Constance Garnett)

• Fathers and teachers, I ponder, «What is hell?» I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), as translated by Constance Garnett, p. 312
  • Variant: Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.

• To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)

• I have seen the truth… It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever…. In one day, one hour, everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love.
  • Fyodor Dostoevsky, quoted by Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 402

• A purple robe he wore, o’erwrought with gold
  With the device of a great snake, whose breath
  Was a fiery flame: which when I did behold
  I fell a-weeping and I cried, «Sweet youth,
  Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
  These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
  What is thy name?» He said, «My name is Love.»
  Then straight the first did turn himself to me
  And cried, «He lieth, for his name is Shame,
  But I am Love, and I was wont to be
  Alone in this fair garden, till he came
  Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
  The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.»
  Then sighing said the other, «Have thy will,
  «I am the Love that dare not speak its name.»

• Lord Alfred Douglas from Two Loves (1894)

• It’s afterwards you realize that the feeling of happiness you had with a man didn’t neccessarily prove that you loved him.
  • Marguerite Duras The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990)

• It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
  • Marguerite Duras The Chimneys of India Song, from Practicalities (1987, trans. 1990)

• Love is a passion
  Which kindles honor into noble acts.
  • John Dryden, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392

• Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife
  Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
  • John Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia (1700), line 134

• Pains of love be sweeter far
  Than all other pleasures are.
  • John Dryden, Tyrannick Love (1669), Act IV, scene i

• My heart’s so full of joy,
  That I shall do some wild extravagance
  Of love in public, and the foolish world,
  Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.
  • John Dryden, All for Love (1678), Act II, scene i

• For pity melts the mind to love.
  • John Dryden, Alexander’s Feast (1697), l. 96

• Joy rul’d the day, and Love the night.
  • John Dryden, The Secular Masque (1700), Line 82

• Love will begin when the world ends.
  • Aleksandr Dugin, as quoted in «Dugin’s Evil Theology» (18 June 2014), by Robert Zubrin, National Review

• Love one another. My final lesson of history is the same as that of Jesus.
  You may think that’s a lot of lollipop but just try it. Love is the most practical thing in the world. If you take an attitude of love toward everybody you meet, you’ll eventually get along.
  • Will Durant, When asked, at the age of 92, if he could summarize the lessons of history into a single sentence. As quoted in «Durants on History from the Ages, with Love,» by Pam Proctor, Parade (6 August 1978) p. 12. Durant is quoting Jesus (from John 13:34) here, and might also be quoting Jiddu Krishnamurti: «Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself — these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society.»

• Love is all there is, it makes the world go round.
  • Bob Dylan, «I Threw It All Away», from Nashville Skyline (1969)

• You can’t be wise and in love at the same time.
  • Bob Dylan, No Direction Home (2005)

E[edit]

• Love is so exquisitely elusive. It cannot be bought, cannot be badgered, cannot be hijacked. It is available only in one rare form: as the natural response of a healthy mind and healthy heart.
  • Eknath Easwaran, Original goodness: On the beatitudes of the sermon on the mount (1989)

• To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they’d truly get to love us — or at least know why we’re the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.
  • Roger Ebert, Review of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (25 May 1990)

• I was not, I lived and loved, I am not.
  • Eric Rücker Eddison, A Fish Dinner in Memison, published 1941

• Love is no ingredient in a merely speculative faith, but it is the life and soul of a practical faith… A speculative faith consists only in the assent of the understanding, but in a saving faith there is also the consent of the heart.
  • Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits (1738)

• Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. «Faith works by love.»
  • Jonathan Edwards, Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 396

• Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion towards men and towards objective things.
  • Albert Einstein, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein, The Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives (1979), p. 46 — 30 July 47 — letter

• Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do — but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.
  • Albert Einstein, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein, The Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives (1979), p. 56 — Jotted (in German) on the margins of a letter to him (1933).
  • Unsourced variants: Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. / You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

• I believe that we don’t need to worry about what happens after this life, as long as we do our duty here—to love and to serve.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted by William Hermanns Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983), p. 94

• My God may not be your idea of God, but one thing I know of my God — he makes me a humanitarian… Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And for me God is the First Cause. David and the prophets knew that there could be no love without justice or justice without love. I don’t need any other religious trappings.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted in Einstein’s God (1997) p. 108

• The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.
  • Albert Einstein, as quoted Principles of Research (1918)

• Whose is the world? Whose is thought? His who loves them.
  • Vilhelm Ekelund, as translated by Lennart Bruce in The Second Light (1986), p. 71

• But is it what we love, or how we love,
  That makes true good?
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I

• ‘Tis what I love determines how I love.
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I

• Women know no perfect love:
  Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
  Man clings because the being whom he loves
  Is weak and needs him.
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III

• I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
  • George Eliot, Letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones, wife of the artist Edward Burne-Jones (1875)

• Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.
  • George Eliot, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393

• Lady of silences
  Calm and distressed
  Torn and most whole
  Rose of memory
  Rose of forgetfulness
  Exhausted and life-giving
  Worried reposeful
  The single Rose
  Is now the Garden
  Where all loves end
  Terminate torment
  Of love unsatisfied
  The greater torment
  Of love satisfied
  End of the endless
  Journey to no end
  Conclusion of all that
  Is inconclusible
  Speech without word and
  Word of no speech
  Grace to the Mother
  For the Garden
  Where all love ends.
  • T. S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday (1930)

• Can we only love
  Something created in our own imaginations?
  Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
  Then one is alone, and if one is alone
  Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
  And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
  • T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)

• Desire itself is movement
  Not in itself desirable;
  Love is itself unmoving,
  Only the cause and end of movement,
  Timeless, and undesiring
  Except in the aspect of time
  Caught in the form of limitation
  Between un-being and being.
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton (1935), (V)

• Love is most nearly itself
  When here and now cease to matter.
  Old men ought to be explorers
  Here or there does not matter
  We must be still and still moving
  Into another intensity
  For a further union, a deeper communion
  Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
  The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
  Of the petrel and the porpoise.
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker (1940), (V)

• Who then devised the torment? Love.
  Love is the unfamiliar Name
  Behind the hands that wove
  The intolerable shirt of flame
  Which human power cannot remove.
  We only live, only suspire
  Consumed by either fire or fire. (IV)
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets,Little Gidding (1942), (IV)

• The hutzpah of our love is pleasing to you, O Lord, just as it pleased you that we should steal from your bounty.
  • Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Faith 16:5

• Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.
  • Epictetus, Fragments, Fragment xxii

• Let no man think that he is loved by any who loveth none.
  • Epictetus, Fragments, Fragment xxiii

• Both the preservation of the species and selfish sexual pleasure reduce the partner to a mere tool and destroy his [or her] dignity. Love alone bestows a spiritual meaning upon marriage, and justifies it by elevating it to perceive the countenance of the beloved in God.
  • Paul Evdimokov, The Sacrament of Love: The Nuptial Mystery in the Light of the Orthodox Tradition (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), p. 43.

• L’expérience nous montre qu’aimer ce n’est point nous regarder l’un l’autre mais regarder ensemble dans la même direction. (Page 203)
  • Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. (Translated by Lewis Galantière in «Wind, Sand and Stars»)
  • Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Terre des Hommes (1939), translated into English as Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)

• Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.
  • Ezekiel 33:31 NIV

F[edit]

• Love is the gift that brings us nearer Heaven
  Than any other gift the world can hold,
  And perfect Love is nearest perfect bliss.
  • Violet Fane, «I live my life away from thee!», line 40, in From Noon to Dawn: Poems (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1872), p. 71

• Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
  For Love, the vine that round your base
  Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
  And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
  Without the asking on your cold
  Unsmiling and unfrowning face.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• Upon your shattered ruins where
  This vine will flourish still, as rare,
  As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
  Love will not crumble.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• Dropt tears have hastened your decay
  And brought you one step nigher death;
  And you have heard, unthrilled, unmoved,
  The music of Love’s golden breath
  And seen the light in eyes that loved.
  You think you hold the core and kernel
  Of all the world beneath your crust,
  Old dial? But when you lie in dust,
  This vine will bloom, strong, green, and proved.
  Love is eternal.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• Every man’s life (and … every woman’s life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal … love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)

• No love-story has ever been told twice. I never heard any tale of lovers that did not seem to me as new as the world on its first morning.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)

• I will fight for you, yes, and you will fight for me. And if you have sacrificed joy and courage and beauty and wisdom for my sake, I will give them all to you again; and yet you must also give them to me, for they are things in which without you I am wanting. But together we can make them.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)

• ‘In love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received.’ And he bent his head and kissed her long and deeply, and in that kiss neither knew themselves, or even each other, but something beyond all consciousness that was both of them.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922)

• He loved her, both for her fault and her redemption of it, more than he had ever thought that he could love her; for he had believed that in their kiss love had reached its uttermost. But love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922), p. 172

• Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light, though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun. And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard‎ (1922), p. 174

• Prometheus, I have no Titan’s might,
  Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
  For daytime’s vulture talons tear apart
  The tender alcoves built by love at night.
  • Philip José Farmer, «In Common» in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

• One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love
  That fights to keep us rooted in the earth,
  But also urges us to dare the stars,
  This irresistible, this ancient power
  Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light
  That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space.
  • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

• The way is open, comrades, free as Space
  Alone is free. The only gold is love,
  A coin that we have minted from the light
  Of others who have cared for us on Earth
  And who have deposited in us the power
  That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
  • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

• Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
  We hope to breed a race of men whose power
  Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
  Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
  That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
  Above will be below when man has Love.
  • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

• God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth
  In our fingers, give us power, give us light
  To hold all love within our breast’s small space.
  • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)

• They say love dies between two people. That’s wrong. It doesn’t die. It just leaves you, goes away, if you are not good enough, worthy enough. It doesn’t die; you’re the one that dies.
  • Charlotte Rittenmeyer in William Faulkner, The Wild Palms (1939). New York: Vintage Books, 1966, p. 83

• The whole human race is just a family scattered across the face of the whole earth. All peoples are brothers, and must love each other as such.
  • Francois Fenelon, The Adventures of Telemachus (1699) Bk. 9, p. 67; translation p. 162.

• When you come to be sensibly touched, the scales will fall from your eyes; and by the penetrating eyes of love you will discern that which your other eyes will never see.
  • Francois Fenelon, (1651-1715) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980)

• «Love» may enter the vocabulary with increasing frequency; for all its ambiguity, its connotations of sentimentality, no word in English better approximates the new sense of caring and connectedness.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 100

• Integrative power recognizes that men as well as women have been the victims of history and narrowly defined roles…. It is a caring form of power—power aligned with love. Work for social justice, for peace, for overcoming poverty and alienation, for building a more truly humanizing future… is not even possible without a combination of love and power. Love itself is not possible without power or self-assertion. And power without love is easily reduced to manipulation and exploitation.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 227

• Those who love us may well push us when we’re ready to fly. The too-soft teacher reinforces the learner’s natural wish to retreat and stay safe, never venturing out for new knowledge, never risking. The teacher must know when to let the learner struggle, realizing that «help» or comfort, even when asked, can interrupt a transformation. This is the same good sense that knows the swimmer must let go, the bicyclist must achieve a new, internal equilibrium. Even in the name of love or sympathy, we must not be spared our learnings.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 227

• No real solution can come until both men and women truly see the nature of the problem, which lives in each of us . . . . Seeing the patterns changes you. As long as men and women are hooked into romance, they can never meet each other totally. If we are to open opportunities to meet human beings, we must leave the whole context of conquest. It takes equals to create the possibility of mature love.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy,(1980) p. 399

• Studies of infants in institutions have shown that the development of normal intelligence requires human interaction. Without love, without input and response from the world, we can make no sense of the world. Retardation is the result for babies who are fed but not played with, safe but not spoken to. An atmosphere of trust, love, and humor can nourish extraordinary human capacity.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 400

• Frederick Perls, the famous psychologist, once said that dissociation—the split between emotions and conscious thinking—begins with a parent’s conditional love. Because many adults were betrayed as children—not rewarded for being themselves, always urged to «do better» however hard they tried—they find it difficult to trust that they are loved. The chain is perpetuated if they become parents because they may find it hard to accept their own children unconditionally. Not until we have discovered the extent of our own programmed fears can we forgive the imperfections and weaknesses of others. When we have touched the healthy center in ourselves, we know it exists in others, whatever their outward behavior. Consciousness enables us to care about them.
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 401

• Love and fraternity, once part of an ideal, have become crucial to our survival. Jesus enjoined his followers to love one another; Teilhard added, «or you perish.» Without human affection, we become sick, frightened, hostile. Lovelessness is a broken circuit, loss of order. The worldwide quest for community typified by the networks of the Aquarian Conspiracy is an attempt to boost that attenuated power. To cohere. To kindle wider consciousness. When man reclaims this energy source, the sublimation of spiritual-sensual love, Teilhard once said, «for the second time he will have discovered fire.»
  • Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 403

• Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough!
  • Richard Feynman, Note to the mother of Marcus Chown, who had admired the profile of Feynman presented in the BBC TV Horizon program «The Pleasure of Finding Things Out» (1981). Written after Chown asked Feynman to write her a birthday note, hoping it would increase her interest in science.
  • Photo of note published in No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (1996), by Christopher Sykes, page 161.
  • In a «Quantum theory via 40-tonne trucks», The Independent (17 January 2010), and in a audio interview on BBC 4 (September 2010), Chown recalled the note as: «Ignore your son’s attempts to teach you physics. Physics is not the most important thing, love is.»

• Just one step at a time
  And closer to destiny
  I knew at a glance
  There’d always be a chance for me
  With someone I could live for
  Nowhere I would rather be.
  Is your love strong enough
  Like a rock in the sea?
  Am I asking too much?
  Is your love strong enough?
  • «Is Your Love Strong Enough?» by Bryan Ferry (YouTube Video)

• Love divides an existence which is in itself dead, as it were into a two-fold being, holding it up before its own contemplation, — and thereby makes it an Ego or Self, which beholds and is cognizant of itself; and in this personality lies the root of all Life. Love again reunites and intimately binds together this divided personality, which, without Love, would regard itself coldly and without interest. This latter unity, within a duality which is not thereby destroyed but eternally remains subsistent, is Life itself; as every one who strictly considers these ideas and combines them together must at once distinctly perceive.
  • Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) The Way Towards the Blessed Life; or, The doctrine of religion

• At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), «The Diamond As Big As The Ritz»

• All the time in the world—his life and hers. But for an instant as he kissed her he knew that though he search through eternity he could never recapture those lost April hours. He might press her close now till the muscles knotted on his arms—she was something desirable and rare that he had fought for and made his own—but never again an intangible whisper in the dusk, or on the breeze of night. . . .
  Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.
        THE END
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Sensible Thing, 15 July 1924, Liberty

• All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase— ‘I love you.’
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald, Short Stories, The Offshore Pirate

• I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

• I believe that a woman should love a man for what he is, not for what she wants him to be.
  • Weebo in film Flubber

• I wish I could take what I’m feeling right now and put it in the water system so everybody could drink it and we would all love each other.
  • Jamie Foxx, at the Golden Globes ceremony (2005)

• I love love
  I love being in love
  I don’t care what it does to me
  • The Format, in «Inches and Failing»

• Masood, a young lady has fallen in love with me—at least so I judge from her letters. Awkward is it not—awkward and surprising. You would be flattered and twirl your moustache, but I am merely uncomfortable. I wish she would stop, as she is very nice, and I enjoyed being friends. What an ill constructed world this is! Love is always being given where it is not required.
  • E. M. Forster, Selected Letters: Letter 137, to Syed Ross Masood (5 December 1914)

• En art comme en amour, l’instinct suffit.
  • In art as in love, instinct is enough.
    • Anatole France, Le Jardin d’Épicure [The Garden of Epicurus] (1894)

• Un conte sans amour est comme du boudin sans moutarde; c’est chose insipide.
  • A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.
    • Anatole France, La Révolte des Anges [The Revolt of the Angels], (1914), ch. VIII

• Les amants qui aiment bien n’écrivent pas leur bonheur.
  • Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
    • Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), La Bûche [The Log] (30 November 1859)

• A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
  • Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946; 1959)

• If you would be loved, love and be lovable.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard (1755)

• How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.
  • Sigmund Freud in a letter to his fiancée Martha Bernays (27 June 1882); published in Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939 (1961), 10-12

• Psychoanalysis is in essence a cure through love.
  • Sigmund Freud in a letter to Carl Jung (1906), as quoted in Freud and Man’s Soul (1984) by Bruno Bettelheim

• …three of life’s most important areas: work, love, and taking responsibility.
  • Sigmund Freud in From The Wolf-man and Sigmund Freud Muriel Gardiner, p. 365 (cf. books.google.com)

• Towards the outside, at any rate, the ego seems to maintain clear and sharp lines of demarcation. There is only one state — admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological — in which it does not do this. At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that «I» and «you» are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact.
  • Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by Joan Riviere (1961)

• It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive manifestations of their aggressiveness.
  • Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 5, as translated by James Strachey and Anna Freud (1961)

• Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibilty would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person’s individuality.
  • Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947), Ch. 3
  • In Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made:

Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.

• Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. «Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by «patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 3: The Human Situation, Sect. C «Rootedness — Brotherliness vs. Incest”

• I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.
  • Erich Fromm, Art of Loving (1956)

• Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

• Only if he [man] develops his reason and his love, if he can experience the natural and the social world in a human way, can he feel at home, secure in himself, and the master of his life.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 4: Mental Health and Society, p. 68

• Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 5: Man in Capitalistic Society, p. 147

• It is considered immoral to keep one «love» partner beyond a relatively short period of time. «Love» is short-lived sexual desire, which must be satisfied immediately.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 4: Mental Health and Society, Ch. 5: Man in Capitalistic Society, p. 165

• Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion.
  Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a «standing in,» not a «falling for.» In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 1

• Immature love says: «I love you because I need you.» Mature love says: «I need you because I love you.»
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

• In spite of the universalistic spirit of the monotheistic Western religions and of the progressive political concepts that are expressed in the idea «that all men are created equal,» love for mankind has not become a common experience. Love for mankind is looked upon as an achievement which, at best, follows love for an individual or as an abstract concept to be realized only in the future. But love for man cannot be separated from love for one individual. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2

• If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

• The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

• Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton — well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)
  • The portion of this statement, «Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence» has been widely quoted alone, resulting in a less reserved expression, and sometimes the portion following it has been as well: «Any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.»

• To speak of love is not «preaching,» for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

• I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the «growth» of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.
  I believe that the experience of love is the most human and humanizing act that it is given to man to enjoy and that it, like reason, makes no sense if conceived in a partial way.
  • Erich Fromm, Credo (1965)

• I believe that one can and must hope for a sane society that furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work and create, to develop his reason and his objectivity of a sense of himself that is based on the experience of his productive energy.
  I believe that one can and must hope for the collective regaining of a mental health that is characterized by the capacity to love and to create…
  • Erich Fromm, Credo (1965)

• Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
  • Robert Frost, as quoted in a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957) by Sydney Cox in Vermont History, Vol. 25 (1957), p. 355

• Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
  • Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Sermons (1958), p. 100

• I got love, I got so much love, love in my heart, and this feeling I can’t let it go.
  • Jonny ‘Itch’ Fox of The King Blues, in «I Got Love» from Save the World. Get the Girl (2008)

• I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
  That myth is more potent than history.
  I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
  That hope always triumphs over experience —
  That laughter is the only cure for grief.
  And I believe that love is stronger than death.
  • Robert Fulghum, «Credo» at his official website; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in «What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck» The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

• You want my opinion? We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
  • Robert Fulghum, True Love (1998)

• Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
  Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
  Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
  Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
  Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.
  • Robert Fulghum, «Alice-Alice» in Third Wish (2006)

• Truth is cosmically total: synergetic. Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, with no exceptions. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral.
  • Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.54

• The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
  • Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.56

G[edit]

• We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.
  • Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm (2014)

• It isn’t enough to love people because they’re good to you, or because in some way or other you’re going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.
  • John Galsworthy, A Bit O’ Love (1915)

• Only love makes fruitful the soul. The sense of form that both had in such high degree prevented much demonstration; but to be with him, do things for him, to admire, and credit him with perfection; and, since she could not exactly wear the same clothes or speak in the same clipped, quiet, decisive voice, to dislike the clothes and voices of other men — all this was precious to her beyond everything.
  • John Galsworthy, Beyond (1917)

• Love! Beyond measure — beyond death — it nearly kills. But one wouldn’t have been without it.
  • John Galsworthy, Beyond (1917)

• Nothing is impossible for pure love.
  • Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography (1927), Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband

• Ainsi germa l’amour dans mon âme surprise ;
  Je croyais ne semer qu’une fleur de printemps :
  C’est un grand aloès dont la racine brise
  Le pot de porcelaine aux dessins éclatants.
  • And thus sprouted the love in my surprised soul;
    I believed it to be but a spring flower:
    Now it’s a great aloe whose roots broke
    The porcelain pot with dazzling designs.
    • Théophile Gautier, Un Pot de Fleurs (1845)

• Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t’aime davantage,
  Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain.
  • For, you see, each day I love you more,
    Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
  • Rosemonde Gérard, «L’éternelle chanson», IX, Les Pipeaux; in P. Dupré, Encyclopédie des Citations (1959), p. 176

• When love beckons to you, follow him,
  Though his ways are hard and steep.
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 11

• All these things shall love do unto you
  that you may know the secrets of your heart,
  and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 12

• Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13

• And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13

• Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
  But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
  To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
  To know the pain of too much tenderness.
  To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
  And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
  To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
  To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude;
  And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Love, page 13

• Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
  Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
  Fill each other’s cup, but drink not from one cup.
  Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.
  Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
  Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

  Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
  For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
  And stand together yet not too near together:
  For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
  And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Marriage, page 15

• And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
  • Khalil Gibran, in The Prophet (1923), chapter On Time

• He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons might look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: «All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself.
  • Khalil Gibran, Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

• Love is a sacred mystery.
  To those who love, it remains forever wordless;
  But to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest.
  • Khalil Gibran, Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

• Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy.
  • Khalil Gibran, «Peace», Tears and Laughter, trans. Anthony R. Ferris (1949), p. 30

• Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
  • Khalil Gibran, Chapter: Children of Gods, Scions of Apes in The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994), Edited by Robin H. Waterfield, translated by Juan R. I. Cole

• My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.
  • Khalil Gibran, The Vision : Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994) edited by Robin H. Waterfield, translated by Juan R. I. Cole

• Aimer qui vous aime, admirer qui vous admire, en un mot, être l’idole de son idole!… C’est trop, c’est dépasser les joies humaines, c’est déruber le feu du ciel!
  • To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, to be the idol of your idol!… It is too much, it exceeds human happiness, it is stealing fire from heaven!
  • Delphine de Girardin, Le Croix de Berny (1845), Lettre XXXIX. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle, 1855, p. 299

• Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
  Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
  • Emma Goldman, «Marriage and Love» in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)

• The bashful virgin’s sidelong looks of love.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 29

• How long will I love you?
  As long as stars are above you,
  And longer if I may
  • Ellie Goulding, How Long Will I Love You (10 November 2013) from the 2013 album Halcyon Days

• Love is a universal migraine.
  A bright stain on the vision
  Blotting out reason.
  • Robert Graves, «Symptoms of Love,» lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961)

• New beginnings and new shoots
  Spring again from hidden roots
  Pull or stab or cut or burn,
  Love must ever yet return.
  • Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), «Marigolds»

• Lovers to-day and for all time
  Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
  Love is not kindly nor yet grim
  But does to you as you to him.
  • Robert Graves, Country Sentiment (1920), «Advice To Lovers»

• Then all you lovers have good heed
  Vex not young Love in word or deed:
  Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
  He will not pardon nor forget.
  • Robert Graves, Country Sentiment (1920), «Advice To Lovers»

• Love is like a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the snow weasels come.
  • Matt Groening in the book, Love is Hell (1986)

• Che mai
  Non v’avere ò provate, ò possedute.

  Far worse it is
  To lose than never to have tasted bliss.

  • Giovanni Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido (1590)

• At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
  The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
  In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
  • Excerpts from the two paragraphs above have sometimes been quoted in abbreviated form: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality… We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
  • Variant translation: One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
  • Che Guevara, Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965), A letter to Carlos Quijano, editor of Marcha a radical weekly published in Montevideo, Uruguay; published as «From Algiers, for Marcha : The Cuban Revolution Today» (12 March 1965); also published in Verde Olivo, the magazine of the Cuban armed forces «Socialism and Man in Cuba» — Variant translation by Margarita Zimmermann

• Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
  Love of feeling evokes the opposite
  Love of body depends only on type and polarity.
  • G. I. Gurdjieff, All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (1950)

• From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Compassion and the Individual

• Ultimately, the reason why love and compassion bring the greatest happiness is simply that our nature cherishes them above all else. The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence. It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Compassion and the Individual

• Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
  • Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection (2004); also quoted in A Small Drop of Ink: A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages (2003) by Linda Pendleton

• If there is love, there is hope that one may have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue
  • Tenzin Gyatso, The Little Book of Buddhism (2000) ISBN 0712602402

H[edit]

• What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.
  • Nestor Alexander Haddaway, «What Is Love» (1993), written by Dieter Lünstedt and Karin Hartmann-Eisenblätter, The Album (May 1993), Germany: Coconut Records

• All religions are incorporated in the principle of Truth, Simplicity and Love.
  • Haidakhan Babaji, The Teachings of Babaji, 25 December 1981.

• Your first love has no beginning or end. Your first love is not your first love, and it is not your last. It is just love. It is one with everything.
  • Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love (2005) Full Circle Publishing ISBN 81-216-0676-4

• Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself — if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself — it is very difficult to take care of another person.
  • Nhat Hanh, Quoted on his official website (30 December 2008)

• I need your love
  I need your time
  When everything’s wrong
  You make it right
  I feel so high
  I come alive
  I need to be free with you tonight
  I need your love
  • Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding, I Need Your Love (2013) from the 2012 album 18 Months

• The principal difference between love and hate is that love is an irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred. All the fearful counterfeits of love — possessiveness, lust, vanity, jealousy — are closer to hate: they concentrate on the object, guard it, suck it dry.
  • Sydney J. Harris, Strictly Personal (1953), «Love and Its Loveless Counterfeits»

• Freud’s prescription for personal happiness as consisting of work and love must be taken with the proviso that the work has to be loved, and the love has to be worked at.
  • Sydney J. Harris, Pieces of Eight (1982)

• When I’m not near the girl I love,
  I love the girl I’m near.
  • Yip Harburg, «When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love» in Finian’s Rainbow (1946) — Tommy Steele version

• Love, whether newly-born or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the hearts so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter (1850), p. 153

• If you wish to be loved, love
  • Hecato of Rhodes, as cited in Seneca, Letters, 9 (Robin Campbell trans.)

• Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
  • «Jubal Harshaw» in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 «Uncut» edition didn’t have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the «Uncut» edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: «Dr. Harshaw says that ‘the word «love» designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one’s own happiness.'»
  • Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961, 1991), chapter His Scandalous Career

• Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.
  • Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), chapter His Scandalous Career

• The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.
  • Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (1973)

• Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
  Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
  Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
  Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
  So man and woman will keep their trust,
  Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
  Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
  Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
  For the strife of Love’s the abysmal strife,
  And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
  And they that go with the Word unsaid,
  Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.
  • William Ernest Henley, Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XXI

• The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
  • Matthew Henry in Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1, under Genesis 2:21. [1]

• Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651)

• Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
  • Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind (1904)

• That’s the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!
  • Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind (1904)

• You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation… and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. Give yourself to it. It is only your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
  • Hermann Hesse in his 1918 diary, quoted by Marilyn Ferguson in The Aquarian Conspiracy, (1980) p. 76

• Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.’
  • Hermann Hesse, Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair’s Youth (1919), first published under the pseudonym «Emil Sinclair»

• Here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
  • Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (1922)

• If I know what love is, it is because of you.
  • Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

• Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
  • Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)

• I’ll never regret the years I’m giving, they’re easy to give when you’re in love, and I’m so in love!
  • Billie Holiday, «Easy Living»

• The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393

• The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.
  • Josiah Gilbert Holland, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394

• Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as «Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness».

• Love is the irreconcilable foe of the prevailing rationality, for lovers preserve and protect neither themselves nor the collectivity. They throw themselves away; that is why wrath is heaped upon them. Romeo and Juliet died in conflict with society for that which was heralded by this society. In unreasonably surrendering themselves to one another they sustained the freedom of the individual as against the dominion of the world of things.
  • Max Horkheimer, “The End of Reason,” The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 43

• In the world of exchange the one who gives more is in the wrong; but the one who loves is always the one who loves more.
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, E. Jephcott, trans., p. 57

• One can no more pray too much than love too much.
  • Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), page 55, as translated by Charles Wilbour and provided by A.L. Bert Publishers. Source: Shawn Thomas (June 24, 2013): Quotes & Illustrations From Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Archived from the original on March 11, 2023.

• To love or to have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life. To love is a consummation.
  • Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), page 1190, as translated by Charles Wilbour and provided by A.L. Bert Publishers. Source: Shawn Thomas (June 24, 2013): Quotes & Illustrations From Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. Archived from the original on March 11, 2023.

• Le premier symptôme de l’amour vrai chez un jeune homme, c’est la timidité, chez une jeune fille, c’est la hardiesse.
  • The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness.
    • Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo, Book III — The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VI: The Battle Commences. As translated by Isabel Hapgood.

• You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
  Love! A dark and starry transfiguration is mingled with that torment. There is ecstacy in the agony.
  • Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo, Book V — An End Unlike the Beginning, Ch. IV — A Heart Beneath A Stone

• Vous aurez beau faire, vous n’anéantirez pas cet éternel reste du cœur de l’homme, l’amour.
  • The endeavor is vain, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love.
    • Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo, Book VII — Argot, Chapter II: Roots

• Love each other dearly always. There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.
  • Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo, Book IX — Supreme Shadow, Supreme Dawn, Ch. V — Night Behind Which Is Dawn

• Aimer, c’est agir
  • To love is to act
    • Victor Hugo, Last words of his diary, written two weeks before his death. Victor Hugo complete writings, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, editor, 1970

I[edit]

• If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.~ George Orwell ,(1984)

• Hold the person that you love closely if they’re next to you, the one you love, not the person that’ll simply have sex with you.
  • Immortal Technique, «You Never Know», Revolutionary Vol. 2 (2003)

• Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
  • Robert G. Ingersoll, Orthodoxy, Works, Vol. II (1884), p. 420

• Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world’s history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love.
  • The Writings of Robert G. Ingersoll (1900), Dresden Edition, publishing house: C.P. Farrell, Is Divorce Wrong (1889), page 426

J[edit]

• Eja, Mater, fons amoris,
  me sentire vim doloris
    fac, ut tecum lugeam;
  Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
  in amando Christum Deum,
    ut sibi complaceam.
  • O Mother, fountain of love,
    make me feel the power of sorrow,
    that I may grieve with you
    Grant that my heart may burn
    in the love of Christ my Lord,
    that I may greatly please Him.
  • Stabat Mater, authorship unknown, variously attributed to Jacopone da Todi and to Pope Innocent III

• Better get ready gonna see the light
  Love, love is the answer and that’s all right
  So don’t you give up now so easy to find
  Just look to your soul and open your mind
  • Tommy James, Eddie Gray and Mike Vale, Crystal Blue Persuasion (1969)

• Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet’s lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.
  • William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology

• If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.
  • William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals, 1911

• Love finds nothing hard; no task is difficult to the eager. Think of all that Jacob bore for Rachel, the wife who had been promised to him. Jacob, the Scripture says, served seven years for Rachel. And they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her. Genesis 29:20
  • Jerome, Letter 22 to Eustochium, p.40; as qtd. in «CHURCH FATHERS: Letter 22 (Jerome)», New Advent, translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight.

• Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
  • Jesus Christ in Matthew 6:21

• Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
  • Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:37-40

• Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
  • Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:5

• I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
  • Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:44-45

• But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
  • Jesus Christ in Luke 6:34–35

• A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
  • Jesus Christ, in John 13:34-35

• My Father is glorified in this, that you keep bearing much fruit and prove yourselves my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love. “These things I have spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends. You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because I have made known to you all the things I have heard from my Father.
  • 15:8-15, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

• Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
  • Jesus Christ, in John 15:13

• So I tell you this. Her many sins have been forgiven. She has loved a lot. But the one who has been forgiven little loves only a little.
  • Jesus Christ, from Parable of the Two Debtors in Luke 7:47

• Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
  • Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement address (12 June 2005)

• Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
  • Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement address (12 June 2005)

• At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.
  • John of the Cross, reported in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2002), p. 231

• In search of my Love
  I will go over mountains and strands;
  I will gather no flowers,
  I will fear no wild beasts;
  And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, stanza 3

• My sole occupation is love.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, stanza 28

• I have said that God is pleased with nothing but love; but before I explain this, it will be as well to set forth the grounds on which the assertion rests. All our works, and all our labours, how grand soever they may be, are nothing in the sight of God, for we can give Him nothing, neither can we by them fulfil His desire, which is the growth of our soul. As to Himself He desires nothing of this, for He has need of nothing, and so, if He is pleased with anything it is with the growth of the soul; and as there is no way in which the soul can grow but in becoming in a manner equal to Him, for this reason only is He pleased with our love. It is the property of love to place him who loves on an equality with the object of his love. Hence the soul, because of its perfect love, is called the bride of the Son of God, which signifies equality with Him. In this equality and friendship all things are common, as the Bridegroom Himself said to His disciples: I have called you friends, because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza 27

• My sole occupation is love.
  All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas, Explanation of Stanza 28 part 8

• There is nothing better or more necessary than love.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza, 28 part 1

• When the soul, then, in any degree possesses the spirit of solitary love, we must not interfere with it. We should inflict a grievous wrong upon it, and upon the Church also, if we were to occupy it, were it only for a moment, in exterior or active duties, however important they might be. When God Himself adjures all not to waken it from its love, who shall venture to do so, and be blameless? In a word, it is for this love that we are all created. Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing unto God — setting aside the good example they would give if they would spend at least one half their time in prayer, even though they may have not attained to the state of unitive love.
  • John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas, Note to Stanza 28 part 3

• Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.
  • John of the Cross, The Sayings of Light and Love, Dichos de Luz y Amor, as translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)

• Love causes man to find fulfillment through the sincere gift of self. To love means to give and to receive something which can be neither bought nor sold, but only given freely and mutually
  • Pope John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, February 2, 1994, n. 11

• We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.
  • John the Evangelist, 1 John 3:14, NKJV

• … let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
  • John the Evangelist, 1 John 3:18, NKJV

• He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
  • John the Evangelist, 1 John 4:8, NKJV

• No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
  • John the Evangelist, in 1 John 4:12

• And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
  • John the Evangelist, 1 John 4:16, NKJV

• There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
  • John the Evangelist, in 1 John 4:18

• If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
  • 1 John 4:20, NKJV

• We’ve loved these people since the day we arrived. When you love something, you protect it.
  • Thena (played by Angelina Jolie) in the 2021-09-16 Youtube trailer «Marvel Studios’ Eternals | Final Trailer» for the 2021 Film Eternals. As quoted in: ABC News (August 19, 2021): “When you love something, you protect it”: Check out the new trailer for Marvel Studios’ ‘The Eternals’. In: Everett Post. Archived from the original on September 12, 2021. See also: Emily Tannenbaum (September 4, 2021): Watch Angelina Jolie Shove Salma Hayek’s Face Into a Cake in Honor of Her 55th Birthday. In: Glamour. Archived from the original on September 12, 2021.

• She’s the goddess of all things sweaty and sticky.
  • Arthur M. Jolly Cupid (referring to Venus) in The Waiting Room of the Gods (2009)

• Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk everything, you risk even more.
  • Erica Jong in How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

• Theodore: No, don’t do this to me. Don’t turn this around on me. You’re the one that’s being selfish. We’re in a relationship.

Samantha: But the heart is not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love. I’m different from you. This doesn’t make me love you anyless, it actually makes me love you more.

Theodore: No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re mine or you’re not mine.

Samantha: No, Theodore. I’m yours and I’m not yours.

• Her (film) written by Spike Jonze

• Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother’s milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.
  • Alejandro Jodorowsky Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

• 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.
  • Notes (1913) made by James Joyce, for his play Exiles

• One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.
  • James Joyce, Dubliners (1914), chapter «A Painful Case»

• Love loves to love love.
  • James Joyce, Ulysses (1946), ch. 12: Cyclops, p. 327

• He that made all things for love, by the same love keepeth them, and shall keep them without end.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 8

• Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 22

• Peace and love are ever in us, being and working; but we be not alway in peace and in love.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 39

• We give our intent to love and meekness, by the working of mercy and grace we are made all fair and clean.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 40

• Truth seeth God, and Wisdom beholdeth God, and of these two cometh the third: that is, a holy marvellous delight in God; which is Love. Where Truth and Wisdom are verily, there is Love verily, coming of them both. And all of God’s making: for He is endless sovereign Truth, endless sovereign Wisdom, endless sovereign Love, unmade; and man’s Soul is a creature in God which hath the same properties made, and evermore it doeth that it was made for: it seeth God, it beholdeth God, and it loveth God. Whereof God enjoyeth in the creature; and the creature in God, endlessly marvelling.
  In which marvelling he seeth his God, his Lord, his Maker so high, so great, and so good, in comparison with him that is made, that scarcely the creature seemeth ought to the self. But the clarity and the clearness of Truth and Wisdom maketh him to see and to bear witness that he is made for Love, in which God endlessly keepeth him.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 44

• The ground of mercy is love, and the working of mercy is our keeping in love. And this was shewed in such manner that I could not have perceived of the part of mercy but as it were alone in love; that is to say, as to my sight.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48

• Mercy is a sweet gracious working in love, mingled with plenteous pity: for mercy worketh in keeping us, and mercy worketh turning to us all things to good. Mercy, by love, suffereth us to fail in measure and in as much as we fail, in so much we fall; and in as much as we fall, in so much we die: for it needs must be that we die in so much as we fail of the sight and feeling of God that is our life. Our failing is dreadful, our falling is shameful, and our dying is sorrowful: but in all this the sweet eye of pity and love is lifted never off us, nor the working of mercy ceaseth.
  For I beheld the property of mercy, and I beheld the property of grace: which have two manners of working in one love.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48

• Our life is all grounded and rooted in love, and without love we may not live.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 48

• Love and Dread are brethren, and they are rooted in us by the Goodness of our Maker, and they shall never be taken from us without end. We have of nature to love and we have of grace to love: and we have of nature to dread and we have of grace to dread.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 70

• All that is contrary to love and peace is of the Fiend and of his part.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 77

• Where I say that He abideth sorrowfully and moaning, it meaneth all the true feeling that we have in our self, in contrition and compassion, and all sorrowing and moaning that we are not oned with our Lord. And all such that is speedful, it is Christ in us. And though some of us feel it seldom, it passeth never from Christ till what time He hath brought us out of all our woe. For love suffereth never to be without pity.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 80

• If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 82

• Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 84

• Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 84

• I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.
  • Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (c. 1393), Ch. 86

• Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen machtwillen, und wo die macht den vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine ist der Schatten des andern.
  • Translation: Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
  • Carl Jung, The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943), P. 97

K[edit]

• You are what you love, not what loves you.
  • «Donald Kaufman» (Nicolas Cage) in Adaptation (2001 film)

• Love is the reason of all things. It was here before all and will remain after all else is gone.
  • Eyran Katsenelenbogen, One Time (2015)

• The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.
  • Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God (1923), «Italy», Ch. 18, p. 182

• I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!
  • Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), p. 249

• I said only one word, brought only one message: Love. Love — nothing else.
  • Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (1951), p. 478

• When I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
  Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
  When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
  And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
  And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
  That I shall never look upon thee more,
  Never have relish in the faery power
  Of unreflecting love! — then on the shore
  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
  Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
  • John Keats, «When I have fears that I may cease to be» (1817)

• A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
  Its loveliness increases; it will never
  Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
  A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
  Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 1

• Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
  Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot;
  Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
  Where long ago a giant battle was;
  And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
  In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
  Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
  Into a sort of oneness, and our state
  Is like a floating spirit’s. But there are
  Richer entanglements, enthralments far
  More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
  To the chief intensity: the crown of these
  Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
  Upon the forehead of humanity.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 789

• Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
  Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.
  • John Keats, Poems (1820), «Lamia», Pt. II, l. 1

• And there shall be for thee all soft delight
  That shadowy thought can win,
  A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
  To let the warm Love in!
  • John Keats, Poems (1820), «Ode to Psyche», st. 5

• Ruth is so loyal and gentle-hearted, we cannot help loving her, as she stands with the reapers amid the waving corn. Her beautiful, unselfish spirit shines out like a bright star in the night of a dark and cruel age. Love like Ruth’s, love which can rise above conflicting creeds and deep-seated racial prejudices, is hard to find in all the world.
  • Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (1903), Ch. 21

• The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
  • Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (1905), p. 203

• Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people?
  • Friedrich Kellner, diary entry (30 March 1940)

• Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.
  • Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471), in The Imitation of Christ, pt. 3, ch. 6 (1471)

• Love will come find you
  Just to remind you
  Of who you are
  […] See that’s the thing about love
  […] Then life
  It will embrace you
  Totally amaze you
  So you don’t give up
  • Alicia Keys, The Thing About Love from the 2007 album As I Am

• Baby lets go have that wreckless love, that crazy love
  That off the wall, wont stop till I get enough kind of love
  I need that love

  So baby lets go have that wreckless love, that crazy love
  That I dont really care we can have it anywhere kind of love
  That wreckless love

  • Alicia Keys, Wreckless Love from the 2007 album As I Am

• Our souls are brought together so that we could love each other.
  • Alicia Keys, We Are Here (15 September 2014)

• Love is a word, what matters is the connection that word implies.
  • Rama Chandra (Bernard White), The Matrix Revolutions

• Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
  To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
  Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
  Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire?
  • Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza IX. FitzGerald’s Trans

• The resolving of the ethical, is freedom; the negative resolution also has this, but the freedom, blank and bare, is as if tongue-tied, hard to express, and generally has something hard in its nature. Falling in love, however, promptly sets it to music, even if this composition contains a very difficult passage.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life’s Way, Hong p. 111

• And what is the ugly? It is the neighbor, whom one shall love. One shall love him; that simple wise man knew nothing at all about this. He did not know that the neighbor existed and that one should love him; when he spoke about loving the ugly, it was only teasing. The neighbor is the unlovable object, is not anything to offer to inclination and passion, which turn away from him and say, “Is that anything to love!” But for that very reason there is no advantage connected with speaking about having to love the un-lovable object. Yet the true love is love for the neighbor, or it is not to find the lovable object but to find the un-lovable object lovable.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), pp. 373-374, italics and bold in original

• When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)

• In order to eliminate misunderstandings, the main point is that marriage is a τέλος, yet not for nature’s striving so that we touch on the meaning of the τέλος in the mysteries, but for the individuality. But if it is a τέλος, it is not something immediate but an act of freedom, and belonging under freedom as it does, the task is actualized only through a resolution. Erotic love or falling in love is altogether immediate; marriage is a resolution; yet falling in love must be taken up into marriage or into the resolution; to will to marry-that is the most immediate of all immediacies must also be the freest resolution, that which is so inexplicable in its immediacy that it must be attributed to a deity must also come about by virtue of deliberation, and such exhaustive deliberation that from it a resolution results. Furthermore, the one must not follow the other; the resolution must not come slinking along behind but must occur simultaneously; both parts must be present in the moment of decision. If deliberation has not exhausted thought, then I make no resolution; I act either on inspiration or on the basis of a whim.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Stages On Life’s Way, 1845, Hong p. 101-102

• The eternal fears no future, hopes for no future, but love possesses everything without ceasing, and there is no shadow of variation. As soon as he returns to himself, he understands this no more. He understands what bitter experiences have only all too unforgettably inculcated, the self-accusation, if the past has the kind of claim upon his soul that no repentance can entirely redeem, no trusting in God can entirely wipe out, but only God himself in the inexpressible silence of beatitude. The more of the past a person’s soul can still keep when he is left to himself, the more profound he is.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Four Upbuilding Discourses, 1844 p. 338 (Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses)

• Above all do not forget your duty to love yourself.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Letter to Hans Peter, Kierkegaard’s cousin (1848)

• Oh, can I really believe the poet’s tales, that when one first sees the object of one’s love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it’s good to be here.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, On Regine Olsen, (2 February 1839)

• What is it that makes a person great, admired by creation, well pleasing in the eyes of God? What is it that makes a person strong, stronger than the whole world; what is it that makes him weak, weaker than a child? What is it that makes a person unwavering, unwavering as a rock; what is it that makes him soft, softer than wax? –It is love! What is it that is older than everything? It is love. What is it that outlives everything? It is love. What is it that cannot be taken but itself takes all? It is love. What is it that cannot be given but itself gives all? It is love. What is it that perseveres when everything falls away? It is love. What is it that comforts when all comfort fails? It is love. What is it that endures when everything is changed? It is love. What is it that remains when the imperfect is abolished? It is love. What is it that witnesses when prophecy is silent? It is love. What is it that does not cease when the vision ends? It is love. What is it that sheds light when the dark saying ends? It is love. What is it that gives blessing to the abundance of the gift? It is love. What is it that gives pith to the angel’s words? It is love. What is it that makes the widow’s gift an abundance? It is love. What is it that turns the words of the simple person into wisdom? It is love. What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love; and that alone is love, that which never becomes something else. It is love!
  • Søren Kierkegaard,Three Upbuilding Discourses, Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 55

• What is it that is never changed even though everything is changed? It is love. And only that which never becomes something else is love, that which gives away everything and for that reason demands nothing, that which demands nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, that which blesses and blesses when it is cursed, that which loves its neighbor but whose enemy is also its neighbor, that which leaves revenge to the Lord because it takes comfort in the thought that he is even more merciful.
  • Søren Kierkegaard,Three Upbuilding Discourses, Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 57

• When love lives in the heart, the eye is shut and does not discover the open act of sin, to say nothing of the concealed act … When love lives in the heart, the ear is shut and does not hear what the world says, does not hear the bitterness of blasphemy, because he who says, “you fool”, to his brother is guilty before the council, but he who hears it when it is said to him is not perfect in love. … When rashness lives in the heart, a person is quick to discover the multiplicity of sin, then he understands splendidly a fragmentary utterance, hastily comprehends at a distance something scarcely enunciated. When love lives in the heart, a person understands slowly and does not hear at all words said in haste and does not understand them when repeated because he assigns them good position and a good meaning. He does not understand a long angry and insulting verbal assault, because he is waiting for one more word that will give it meaning. When fear lives in the heart, a person easily discovers the multiplicity of sin, discovers deceit and delusion and disloyalty and scheming, discovers that; Every heart is a net, Every rogue like a child, Every promise like a shadow. But the love that hides a multitude of sins is never deceived.
  • Søren Kierkegaard,Three Upbuilding Discourses, Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 60-61

• When stinginess lives in the heart, when one gives with one eye and looks with seven to see what one obtains in return one readily discovers the multiplicity of sin. But when love lives in the heart, then the eye is never deceived, because when love gives, it does not watch the gift but keeps its eye on the Lord. When envy lives in the heart, the eye has the power to elicit the impure even from the pure; but when love lives in the heart, the eye has the power to love forth the good in the impure, but his eye sees not the impure but the pure, which it loves, and loves forth by loving it. Yes, there is a power in this world that in its language translates good into evil, but there is power from above that translates evil into good-it is the love that hides a multitude of sins. … When hate lives in the heart, sin is right there at the door of a human being, and the multitude of its cravings is present to him. But when love lives in the heart, then sin flees far away and he does not even catch a glimpse of it.
  • Søren Kierkegaard,Three Upbuilding Discourses, Love Will Hide a Multitude of Sins, p. 61

• But with love it is most joyous of all. For there is a love, that blazes up and is forgotten; there is a love that unites and divides — a love until death. But then — in death, in death’s decision, there is born a love that does not flame up, that is not equivocal, that is not — until death, but beyond death, a love that endures. In this love under the pain of the wish, the sufferer is committed to the Good. Oh, you sufferer, whoever you may be, will you then with doubleness of mind seek the relief that temporal existence can give, the relief that permits you to forget your suffering (yes, so you think) but rather that allows you to forget the Eternal! Will you in doubleness of mind despair, because all is lost (yes, so you think) yet with the Eternal all is to be won! Will you in doubleness of mind despair? Have you considered what it is to despair? Alas, it is to deny that God is love! Think that over properly, one who despairs abandons himself (yes, so you think); nay, he abandons God! Oh, weary not your soul with that which is passing and with momentary relief. Grieve not your spirit with forms of comfort which this world affords. Do not in suicidal fashion murder the wish; but rather win the highest by hope, by faith, by love — as the mightiest of all are able to do: commit yourself to the Good!
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (1847), Steere p. 149-151

• Every human being can come to know everything about love, just as every human being can come to know that he, like every human being, is loved by God. Some find this thought adequate for the longest life others find this thought so insignificant …
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), Hong 1995 Princeton University Press p. 364

• The intoxication of self-feeling is the most intense, and the height of this intoxication is most admired. Love and friendship are the very height of self-feeling, the I intoxicated in the other-I. The more securely the two I’s come together to become one I, the more this united I selfishly cuts itself off from all others.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)

• Perfection in the object is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object; friendship is determined by the object; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any of the more definite qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)

• Someone absolutely in love does not know whether he is more in love or less in love than others, because anyone who knows that is definitely not absolutely in love. Neither does he know that he is the only person who has truly been in love, because if he knew that, he would not be absolutely in love-and yet he knows that a third party cannot understand him, because a third party will understand him generally in relation to an object of passion but not in relation to the absoluteness of passion.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments P. 509

• It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Journal entry (1 August 1835)

• For, once he thrilled with high romance
  And tuned to love his eager voice.
  Like any cavalier of France
  He wooed the maiden of his choice.
  And now deep in his weary heart
  Are sacred flames that whitely burn.
  He has of Heaven’s grace a part
  Who loves, who is beloved in turn.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen

• The song within your heart could never rise
  Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory

• Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
  Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
  It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
  It is a linnet’s fluting after rain.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory

• Tonight You’re mine completely,
  You give your love so sweetly
  Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
  But will you love me tomorrow?
  • Carole King, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1961)

• I’d like to know that your love
  Is love I can be sure of,
  So tell me now and I won’t ask again,
  Will you still love me tomorrow?
  • Carole King, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1961)

• You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
  And show the world all the love in your heart
  The people gonna treat you better,
  You’re gonna find, yes you will,
  That you’re beautiful as you feel.
  • Carole King, Tapestry (1971), Beautiful

• If there’s any answer, maybe love can end the madness
  Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.
  • Carole King, Tapestry (1971), Beautiful

• We must meet hate with love. We must meet physical force with soul force. There is still a voice crying out through the vista of time, saying: «Love your enemies , bless them that curse you , pray for them that despitefully use you.» Then, and only then, can you matriculate into the university of eternal life. That same voice cries out in terms lifted to cosmic proportions: «He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.» And history is replete with the bleached bones of nations that failed to follow this command. We must follow nonviolence and love.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., “Give Us the Ballot” Address (1957) Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (Call to Conscience) Washington, D.C.

• Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in «Loving Your Enemies» Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)

• But there is another way. And that is to organize mass non-violent resistance based on the principle of love. It seems to me that this is the only way as our eyes look to the future. As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Loving Your Enemies (November 1957), Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on 17 November 1957.

• Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in «Loving Your Enemies» Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)

• Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, «Love your enemy.» This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in «Loving Your Enemies» Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)

• There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)

• Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963), Last paragraph of section III of Antidotes for fear, page 122 (see link at top of the section)

• We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Nobel Lecture, delivered in the Auditorium of the University of Oslo at (11 December 1964)

• Love is basic for the very survival of mankind. I’m convinced that love is the only absolute ultimately; love is the highest good. He who loves has somehow discovered the meaning of ultimate reality. He who hates does not know God; he who hates has no knowledge of God. Love is the supreme unifying principle of life.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Keep Moving From This Mountain, Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood (25 February 1965)

• When love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.
  • Stephen King, The Dark Tower Vol I: The Gunslinger

• But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart.
  • Stephen King, 11/22/63 Chapter Final Notes, page 1030

• It’s love that holds it all together…it’s love thats holding back the weather and the same will let it go.
  • King’s X, «It’s Love»

• It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.
  • Rudyard Kipling, Lispeth in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)

• The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
  Light of my tents, be fleet—
  Morning awaits at the end of the world,
  And the world is all at our feet.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

• The white moth to the closing vine,
  The bee to the open clover,
  And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
  Ever the wide world over.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

• The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky
  The deer to the wholesome wold;
  And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
  As it was in the days of old.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

• Feelings of love and gratitude arise directly and spontaneously in the baby in response to the love and care of his mother.
  • Melanie Klein (1937, p. 311) as cited in: David Mann (2013) Love and Hate: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. p. 79

• “I’m in love.”
  “You’re not in love,” Dad replied curtly. “You’ve been smoking too much dope.”…
  “Yes, I am,” said the psychologist.
  “No,” said Dad, ever rational. “You’ve just taken all your needs and desires and projected them onto this woman.”
  The shrink stared toward the lights of the South American city they were approaching. “Isn’t that what love is?” he replied.
  • Dan Koeppel, To See Every Bird on Earth (2005), p. 143; ellipsis represents elision of a parenthetical remark

• Agape’s object is always the concrete individual, not some abstraction called humanity. Love of humanity is easy because humanity does not surprise you with inconvenient demands. You never find humanity on your doorstep, stinking and begging.
  • Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics (1988), II.A.30: «Love» [2]

• Love unifies by individuating and individuates by unifying. At what moment do lovers come into the most perfect possession of themselves as individuals if not when they are most lost in each other? Self is given up, but «he who loses his self will find it» [Matthew 16:25].
  • Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 74

• Yet why did I allow that man
  To touch my soul and teach me love?
  He treated me like any other
  He gave me his trust
  He called me brother.
  • Herbert Kretzmer, Muscial Les Misérables (1985), What Have I Done (Valjean’s Soliloquy), performed by the character Jean Valjean.

• To love another person
  Is to see the face of God!
  • Herbert Kretzmer, Muscial Les Misérables (1985), Valjean’s Death, performed by the characters Jean Valjean, Fantine, & Éponine

• If we look for a moment at the great mystics of the past… It is a desire to speak the truth, a desire to speak to mankind with unbounded love, compassion, mercy, and charity… found in all of them.
  • Gopi Krishna, Kundalini Catechism (1995)

• True religion is a firm belief in an Almighty Creator, in immortality, in self-perfection, in service, truth, love and compassion for all fellow beings, as the only way for the sanctification of human life to manifest the glory of the soul.
  • Gopi Krishna, The Way to Self Knowledge, (1984)

• What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of «what is». Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, «Ninth Talk in Bombay, (14 March 1948), J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. BO48Q1, published in The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 200

• Learning in the true sense of the word is possible only in that state of attention, in which there is no outer or inner compulsion. Right thinking can come about only when the mind is not enslaved by tradition and memory. It is attention that allows silence to come upon the mind, which is the opening of the door to creation. That is why attention is of the highest importance. Knowledge is necessary at the functional level as a means of cultivating the mind, and not as an end in itself. We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human being. How is the state of attention to be brought about? It cannot be cultivated through persuasion, comparison, reward or punishment, all of which are forms of coercion. The elimination of fear is the beginning of attention. Fear must exist as long as there is an urge to be or to become, which is the pursuit of success, with all its frustrations and tortuous contradictions. You can teach concentration, but attention cannot be taught just as you cannot possibly teach freedom from fear; but we can begin to discover the causes that produce fear, and in understanding these causes there is the elimination of fear. So attention arises spontaneously when around the student there is an atmosphere of well-being, when he has the feeling of being secure, of being at ease, and is aware of the disinterested action that comes with love. Love does not compare, and so the envy and torture of «becoming» cease.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, «Life Ahead : On Learning and the Search for Meaning» (1963), Introduction, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 261, p. 13, 2005 edition ISBN 978-1577315179

• You know, actually we have no love — that is a terrible thing to realize. Actually we have no love; we have sentiment; we have emotionality, sensuality, sexuality; we have remembrances of something which we have thought as love. But actually, brutally, we have no love. Because to have love means no violence, no fear, no competition, no ambition. If you had love you will never say, «This is my family.» You may have a family and give them the best you can; but it will not be «your family» which is opposed to the world. If you love, if there is love, there is peace. If you loved, you would educate your child not to be a nationalist, not to have only a technical job and look after his own petty little affairs; you would have no nationality. There would be no divisions of religion, if you loved. But as these things actually exist — not theoretically, but brutally — in this ugly world, it shows that you have no love. Even the love of a mother for her child is not love. If the mother really loved her child, do you think the world would be like this? She would see that he had the right food, the right education, that he was sensitive, that he appreciated beauty, that he was not ambitious, greedy, envious. So the mother, however much she may think she loves her child, does not love the child. So we have not that love.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Varanasi 5th Public Talk (28 November 1964), The Collected Works, Vol. XV

• Only the free mind knows what Love is.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Speech at the University of California, Berkley, as broadcast by Pacifica Radio (4 January 1969)

• Can’t you fall in love and not have a possessive relationship? I love someone and she loves me and we get married — that is all perfectly straightforward and simple, in that there is no conflict at all. (When I say we get married I might just as well say we decide to live together — don’t let’s get caught up in words.) Can’t one have that without the other, without the tail as it were, necessarily following? Can’t two people be in love and both be so intelligent and so sensitive that there is freedom and absence of a centre that makes for conflict? Conflict is not in the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. The loss of energy is in the tail, in everything that follows — jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, doubt, the fear of losing that love, the constant demand for reassurance and security. Surely it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows. Of course it is.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 3 (1969), and Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Bulletin 4, (1969)

• The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, in being reborn in another life. When you enquire what it is that is going to be born in the next life, you come up against difficulties. What is it? Yourself? What are you? a lot of words, a lot of opinions, attachments to your possessions, to your furniture, to your conditioning. Is all that, which you call the soul, going to be reborn in the next life? Reincarnation implies that what you are today determines what you will be again in the next life. Therefore behave! — not tomorrow, but today, because what you do today you are going to pay for in the next life. People who believe in reincarnation do not bother about behavior;t all; it is just a matter of belief, which has no value. Incarnate today, afresh not in the next life! Change it now completely, change with great passion, let the mind strip itself of everything, of every conditioning, every knowledge, of everything it thinks is «right» — empty it. Then you will know what dying means; and then you will know what love is. For love is not something of the past, of thought, of culture; it is not pleasure. A mind that has understood the whole movement of thought becomes extraordinarily quiet, absolutely silent. That silence is the beginning of the new.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, 6th Public Talk, Saanen (28 July 1970) ‘The Mechanical Activity of Thought» in The Impossible Question (1972) Part I, Ch. 6

• It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and, therefore, to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees, everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now, and we will have no wars.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Talks in Saanen (1974), p. 71

• The only thing that really matters is that there be an action of goodness, love and intelligence in living. Is goodness individual or collective, is love personal or impersonal, is intelligence yours, mine or somebody else? If it is yours or mine then it is not intelligence, or love, or goodness. If goodness is an affair of the individual or of the collective, according to one’s particular preference or decision, then it is no longer goodness.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Urgency of Change (1970), Conversation 5

• The very nature of intelligence is sensitivity, and this sensitivity is love. Without this intelligence there can be no compassion. Compassion is not the doing of charitable acts or social reform; it is free from sentiment, romanticism and emotional enthusiasm. It is as strong as death. It is like a great rock, immovable in the midst of confusion, misery and anxiety. Without this compassion no new culture or society can come into being. Compassion and intelligence walk together; they are not separate. Compassion acts through intelligence. It can never act through the intellect. Compassion is the essence of the wholeness of life.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, Letters to the Schools (1981, 1985), Vol. I, p. 113

• Questioner: Can one love truth without loving man? Can one love man without loving truth? What comes first?
  Krishnamurti: Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself, and you cannot search for the unknowable away from relationship. You cannot search for reality, or for what you will, in isolation. It comes into being only in relationship, only when there is right relationship between man and man. So the love of man is the search for reality.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 172

• Please let us be clear on this point — that you cannot by any process, through any discipline, through any form of meditation, go to truth, God, or whatever name you like to give it. It is much too vast, it cannot possibly be conceived of; no description will cover it, no book can hold it, nor any word contain it. So you cannot by any devious method, by any sacrifice, by any discipline or through any guru, go to it. You must await it, it will come to you, you cannot go to it. That is the fundamental thing one has to understand, that not through any trick of the mind, not through any control, through any virtue, any compulsion, any form of suppression, can the mind possibly go to truth. All that the mind can do is be quiet but not with the intention of receiving it. And that is one of the most difficult things of all because we think truth can be experienced right away through doing certain things. Truth is not to be bought any more than love can be bought.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Collected Works, Second Talk in Poona (10 September 1958), J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 580910, Vol. XI, p. 20

• We know only fragmentarily this extraordinary thing called life; we have never looked at sorrow, except through the screen of escapes; we have never seen the beauty, the immensity of death, and we know it only through fear and sadness. There can be understanding of life, and of the significance and beauty of death, only when the mind on the instant perceives “what is”.You know, sirs, although we differentiate them, love, death, and sorrow are all the same; because, surely, love, death, and sorrow are the unknowable. The moment you know love, you have ceased to love. Love is beyond time; it has no beginning and no end, whereas knowledge has; and when you say, “I know what love is”, you don’t. You know only a sensation, a stimulus. You know the reaction to love, but that reaction is not love. In the same way, you don’t know what death is. You know only the reactions to death, and you will discover the full depth and significance of death only when the reactions have ceased.
  • Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Collected Works, Vol. XI, p. 288

• Someone told me love would all save us, but how can that be? Look what «love» gave us: A world full of killing and blood-spilling. That world never came.
  • Chad Kroeger and Josey Scott, «Hero», Music From and Inspired by Spider-Man (2002), New York City: Columbia Records

• Genuine love is never love of one’s self but love of another «person.» The greatest love is the love of God, and the lasting «marital» love between the sexes overbridging the immense psychological abyss between man and woman is not unrelated to the love of God; it is basically the love for one of His children. The very delight in the otherness of the beloved person is a tacit, loving recognition of God’s all-embracing greatness. True love between man and woman accepts the mysterious variety of God’s creation whose harmony even original sin did not entirely destroy.
  • Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of the Herd (1943), p. 20

L[edit]

• If you want something very, very badly, let it go free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.
  • Jess Lair, an educator, published this saying In 1969, which he obtained from a junior or senior college student according to the Quote Investigator

• You may find many a brighter one
  Than your own rose, but there are none
  So true to thee, Love.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (5th January 1822) ‘Song — Are other eyes beguiling, Love ?’

• Do any thing but love ; or if thou lovest
  And art a Woman, hide thy love from him
  Who thou dost worship ; never let him know
  How dear he is ; flit like a bird before him, —
  Lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower ;
  But be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird,
  When caught and caged, be left to pine neglected,
  And perish in forgetfulness.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (26th April 1823) ‘Fragment’

• Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
  Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
  Intense delicious throbs!
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (12th October 1822), ‘The Basque Girl and Henri Quatre’

• I loved him too as woman loves —
  Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), Title poem

• Love is like the glass,
  That throws its own rich colour over all,
  And makes all beautiful.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), ‘Roland’s Tower’

• And Love is like the lightning in its might,
  Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
  Melting the blade, despite the scabbard’s guard.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Golden Violet — The Child of the Sea (1827)

• And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
  Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
  Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
  She’ll only know the name?
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), ‘Love’

• What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
  How wild I may not say,
  One long and breathless clasp, and then
  As life were past away.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (29th March 1823), ‘Song — What was our parting ?—one wild kiss’

• Love is a pearl of purest hue,
  But stormy waves are round it;
  And dearly may a woman rue,
  The hour that she found it.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823), ‘Inez’

• Ah! never is that cherished face
  Banished from its accustomed place—
  It shines upon my weariest night
  It leads me on in thickest fight:
  All that seems most opposed to be
  Is yet associate with thee—
  Together life and thee depart,
  Dream—idol—treasure of my heart.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834 (1833), ‘The Zenana’

• There are words to paint the misery of love, but none to paint its happiness ; that childish, glad, and confiding time, to which youth gave its buoyancy and hope its colours. Its language repeated, ever seems exaggerated or foolish ; albeit there are none who have not thought such sounds «honey-sweet» in their time. The truth is, we never make for others the allowance we make for ourselves ; and we should deny even our own words, could we hear them spoken by another.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Francesca Carrara (1834), Vol. I, Chapter 1

• Pattern love-letter — » I — I — I — you — you — you ; you — you — you — I — I — I,» garnished with loves and doves ad libitum.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The New Monthly Magazine (1834), ‘A Calendar of the London Seasons’ commencing page 425

• There was an evil in Pandora’s box
  Beyond all other ones, yet it came forth
  In guise so lovely, that men crowded round
  And sought it as the dearest of all treasure. … The evil’s name was Love.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon Ethel Churchill (1837), Vol. I, Chapter 2

• These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,
  With dear companions now passed out of sight,
  Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live,
  Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride
  Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts
  Will meet the offering, of so little worth,
  Wanting the benison death has made divine.
  • Lucy Larcom, Poems (1869), Introductory poem

• Give in to love, or live in fear.
  • Jonathan Larson, «Another Day», Rent (1996)

• Well, love is a gift, a lot of people don’t remember that. So, you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin’ at you from a neverending parade of stupid.
  • «Motormouth Maybelle» Queen Latifah’s character in «Hairspray» (2007)

• Now the Spirit of Love has this Original. God, as considered in himself in his Holy Being, before any thing is brought forth by him or out of him, is only an eternal Will to all Goodness. This is the one eternal immutable God, that from Eternity to Eternity changeth not, that can be neither more nor less nor any thing else but an eternal Will to all the Goodness that is in himself, and can come from him. The Creation of ever so many Worlds or Systems of Creatures adds nothing to, nor takes any thing from this immutable God. He always was and always will be the same immutable Will to all Goodness. So that as certainly as he is the Creator, so certainly is he the Blesser of every created Thing, and can give nothing but Blessing, Goodness, and Happiness from himself because he has in himself nothing else to give. It is much more possible for the Sun to give forth Darkness, than for God to do, or be, or give forth anything but Blessing and Goodness. Now this is the Ground and Original of the Spirit of Love in the Creature; it is and must be a Will to all Goodness, and you have not the Spirit of Love till you have this Will to all Goodness at all Times and on all Occasions. You may indeed do many Works of Love and delight in them, especially at such Times as they are not inconvenient to you, or contradictory to your State or Temper or Occurrences in Life. But the Spirit of Love is not in you till it is the Spirit of your Life, till you live freely, willingly, and universally according to it. For every Spirit acts with Freedom and Universality according to what it is. It needs no command to live its own Life, or be what it is, no more than you need bid Wrath be wrathful. And therefore when Love is the Spirit of your Life, it will have the Freedom and Universality of a Spirit; it will always live and work in Love, not because of This or That, Here or There, but because the Spirit of Love can only love, wherever it is or goes or whatever is done to it. As the Sparks know no Motion but that of flying upwards, whether it be in the Darkness of the Night or in the Light of the Day, so the Spirit of Love is always in the same Course; it knows no Difference of Time, Place, or Persons, but whether it gives or forgives, bears or forbears, it is equally doing its own delightful Work, equally blessed from itself. For the Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own Blessing and Happiness because it is the Truth and Reality of God in the Soul, and therefore is in the same Joy of Life and is the same Good to itself, everywhere and on every Occasion.
  • William Law, The Spirit of Love (1752)

• The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one’s wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great-quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.
  • D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Letter, 2 June 1912 (published in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, ed. by James T. Boulton, 1979). Lawrence wrote the letter after eloping to Germany with Frieda von Richthofen, wife of his old university professor, whom he later married.

• Those that go searching for love
  only make manifest their own lovelessness,
  and the loveless never find love,
  only the loving find love,
  and they never have to seek for it.
  • D. H. Lawrence, Search for Love

• Somewhere in the desert at the back of Alexandria there was once a monastery whose abbot possessed the power of clairvoyance. Among his monks there were two young men who had an especial reputation for purity and holiness… One day when they were singing in the choir it occurred to the abbot to turn his clairvoyant faculty upon these two young men, in the endeavour to discover how they contrived to preserve this especial purity amidst the temptations of daily life. So he looked at the first young man and saw that he had surrounded himself with a shell as of glittering crystal, and that when the tempting demons (impure thought-forms we should call them) came rushing at him, they struck against this shell, and fell back without injuring him, so that he remained inside his shell, calm and cold and pure. Then the abbot looked at the second young monk, and he saw that he had built no shell round himself, but that his heart was so full of the love of God that it was perpetually radiating- from him in all directions in the shape of torrents of love for his fellowmen, so that when the attempting- demons sprang at him with foul intent they were all washed away in that mighty outpouring stream, and so he also remained pure and undefiled… the abbot said that the second monk was nearer to the kingdom of heaven than the first. p. 477
  • C.W. Leadbeater The Hidden Side of things, (1913)

• If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.
  • Bruce Lee, The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 64

• ‘Cause all of me
  Loves all of you
  Love your curves and all your edges
  All your perfect imperfections
  Give your all to me
  I’ll give my all to you
  You’re my end and my beginning
  • John Legend, All of Me (12 August 2013) from the August 2013 album Love in the Future

• Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; re-made all the time, made new.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Ch. 10

• What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you are to be relied on. But seventeen years give little armor against despair…Consider, Arren. To refuse death is to refuse life.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (1971), Chapter 8, «The Children of the Open Sea» (Ged)

• All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that’s the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it’s life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 1 “Mending the Green Pitcher” (pp. 47-48)

• The bond between true lovers is as close as we come to what endures forever.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 4 “Dolphin” (p. 231)

• A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 18 “On the Ice” (p. 249)

• TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
  • Gottfried Leibniz, A Dialogue (c. 1696)

• There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
  Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
  Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
  It’s easy.

  All you need is love.

  • John Lennon, in «All You Need Is Love» from Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

• We all been playing those mind games forever
  Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
  Doing the mind guerrilla,
  Some call it magic — the search for the grail.

  Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
  Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.

  • John Lennon, in «Mind Games» on Mind Games (1973)

• I want you to make love, not war, I know you’ve heard it before.
  • John Lennon, in his final fading statement in «Mind Games» on Mind Games (1973)

• How can I give love when I don’t know what it is I’m giving?
  • John Lennon, in «How?» from «Imagine» (1971)

• “Are people so unhappy when they love?”
  “Yes, Christine, when they love and are not sure of being loved.”
  • Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera (1910), Chapter 13

• It seems to me like this. It’s not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it’s not damaging, it’s not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It’s not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I’m capable of doing something bigger. Or I’m a person who needs love, and I’m doing without it. What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.
  • Anna Wulf, in «Free Women: 2» by Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook (1962)

• Say you’ll love, love me forever
  Never stop, not for whatever
  Near and far and always and
  Everywhere and everything.
  I love you, always forever
  Near and far, close and together
  Everywhere, I will be with you
  Everything, I will do for you
  I love you, always forever
  Near and far, close and together
  Everywhere, I will be with you
  Everything, I will do for you.
  • Donna Lewis, I Love You Always Forever (1996) from the 1996 album Now in a Minute

• Without love I mean nothing to you
  Without love broken in two
  Without love give me some value some worth
  Without love no life left on earth.
  • Donna Lewis, Without Love (1996) from the 1996 album Now in a Minute

• The power of love is a curious thing
  Make a one man weep, make another man sing
  Change a hawk to a little white dove
  More than a feeling that’s the power of love
  Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
  Stronger and harder than a bad girl’s dream
  Make a bad one good make a wrong one right
  Power of love that keeps you home at night
  • Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)

• You don’t need money, don’t take fame
  Don’t need no credit card to ride this train
  It’s strong and it’s sudden and it’s cruel sometimes
  But it might just save your life
  That’s the power of love
  • Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)

• Love is so simple and spiritual. It is not related to social status, age, or even sexual identity.
  • Li Yinhe [3]

• He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.
  • H 10
  • Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage — he won’t encounter many rivals.
  • Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook H (1784-1788). This quote comes from Wikiquote’s Lichtenberg Aphorisms section which was begun primarily with translations by R. J. Hollingdale, augmented by other sources, including Selected Writings of Georg C. Lichtenberg (1893) edited by Adolf Wilbrandt

• Love is the closest thing to laughter and the closest thing to tears. Love is the motive power of everything in the universe that has beauty in it. Love is the reason for everything and the reward for everything.
  It’s always seemed strange to me that we have to use the word love for so many things. And yet when you come to think of it, that’s all right, too, because love is in everything in some form or another. Without it, I imagine the flowers would stop blooming and the sun would stop shining and people would stop laughing, and even the rain wouldn’t fall.
  So love is always growth.
  I think if I could have just one word for love—it would be understanding.
  Love must always be unselfish, and strangely enough, love is the only thing in the world that ever is unselfish. And if it isn’t unselfish, it’s only a counterfeit of love.
  • Harold Lloyd, «What is Love? Twelve Men of the Screen Give Their Ideas». Photoplay, February 1925, p. 36. (Photoplay Publishing Company).[4]

• I suppose the most radical part of my teaching at present is that love is not a feeling. Everybody suffers from love, or the fear of it, or the lack of it. Why? Why is love so universally and inevitably heart-breaking, whether it be through the end of a love affair, the death of a loved one or being locked in with the habitual casualness or grim indifference of a partner? The answer is because we’ve been taught and conditioned by the world to believe that love is a feeling.
  • Barry Long, Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.

• Feelings are constantly changing. None is dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today, and tomorrow or next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly.
  • Barry Long, Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.

• Love is the state of enlightenment and enlightenment is the state of love. You can’t make any separation between them. Enlightenment is the state of no feelings and pure knowledge and so is love.
  • Barry Long, Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview An interview of Barry Long by Hal Blacker, editor of What is Enlightenment magazine, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.

• Love is the state of enlightenment and enlightenment is the state of love. You can’t make any separation between them. Enlightenment is the state of no feelings and pure knowledge and so is love.
  • Barry Long, Love is not a feeling ~ The Interview An interview of Barry Long by Hal Blacker, editor of What is Enlightenment magazine, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.

• Love is not a feeling; it’s a sensation. Drinking water when you’re thirsty is a sensation, not a feeling. Being in nature or swimming in the sea is a sensation, not a feeling. Lying down when you’re tired is sensational, not a feeling, although you may say it feels good. Feeling is an emotional interpretation of experience and these sensations don’t need interpretation; they are just good or right. Making physical love rightly is a sensation, not a feeling. So is the love of God. The same goes for joy and beauty; both are sensational.’
  • Barry Long, Love is not a feeling ~ The Article by Barry Long, published in What is Enlightenment magazine, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1995.

• Love is beyond description; but not beyond demonstrating. Love is beyond the mind because it is always new. Any product of the mind is a reaction of the past, a synthesis of what is old. So the mind is a modifier, a reactor; a renovator, but it cannot create the new.
  • Barry Long, Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (Barry Long Books, 1996)

• Love is a power, a mighty principle that exists in its own right independent of any individual. Man changes, but the principle of love does not and cannot. Love does not leave men and women. Men and women leave love.
  • Barry Long, Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (Barry Long Books, 1996)

• Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.
  • Barry Long, Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (Barry Long Books, 1996)

• All love — love of children, love of parents, love of God or life — comes out of making physical love. Without the making of love there is no body to love anything.
  • Barry Long, The Way In (2000)

• Human love is not love. Love is natural to every body but it becomes human love as the person learns from society to confuse love with sex.
  • Barry Long, The Way In (2000)

• O, there is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love,—the first fluttering of its silken wings.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839), Book III, Chapter VI

• Ah, how skillful grows the hand
  That obeyeth Love’s command!
  It is the heart, and not the brain,
  That to the highest doth attain,
  And he who followeth Love’s behest
  Far excelleth all the rest!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, «The Building of the Ship» in Voices of the Night: The Seaside and the Fireside; and Other Poems (1846), p. 34

• That was the first sound in the song of love!
  Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.
  Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
  Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
  And play the prelude of our fate. We hear
  The voice prophetic, and are not alone.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 109

• I love thee, as the good love heaven.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 146

• Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
  It serves for food and raiment.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 5, line 52

• How can I tell the signals and the signs
  By which one heart another heart divines?
  How can I tell the many thousand ways
  By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Part III. Student’s Tale. Emma and Eginhard, line 75

• Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Table-Talk (1857), First published in the Blue and Gold edition of Drift-Wood (1857)

• Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
  • James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays, vol. II (1870-1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

• «Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do.»
  • Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door, (1973)

• The words «God is love» have this deep meaning: that everything that is against love is ultimately doomed and damned.
  • Halford E. Luccock, Keeping Life Out of Confusion Sermon (11 September 1938), as quoted in «Disguised Fascism Seen As A Menace» in The New York Times (12 September 1938), p. 15; also in «Fascism comes wrapped in the flag» (with online facsimile of article)

• Underneath a starry sky
  Time was still but hours must really have rushed by
  I didn’t realize
  But love was in your eyes
  I really should have gone
  But love went on and on
  • Jeff Lynne, Last Train to London, Discovery (1979)

M[edit]

• But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in.» «I cannot quite tell,» she said; «but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…
  • George MacDonald, Phantastes (1858), On the Alder Tree

• I knew now, that it is by loving, and not by being loved, that one can come nearest the soul of another; yea, that, where two love, it is the loving of each other, and not the being loved by each other, that originates and perfects and assures their blessedness. I knew that love gives to him that loveth, power over any soul beloved, even if that soul know him not, bringing him inwardly close to that spirit; a power that cannot be but for good; for in proportion as selfishness intrudes, the love ceases, and the power which springs therefrom dies. Yet all love will, one day, meet with its return. All true love will, one day, behold its own image in the eyes of the beloved, and be humbly glad. This is possible in the realms of lofty Death.
  • George MacDonald, Phantastes (1858)

• For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds.
  • George MacDonald, At the Back of the North Wind (1871), chapter 18

• To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
  • George MacDonald, The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

• Love all love. Hate all hate.
  • John D. MacDonald, A Tan and Sandy Silence (1972)

• Now there’s no point in placing the blame
  And you should know I’d suffer the same
  If I lose you my heart will be broken

  Love is a bird… she needs to fly

  
  Let all the hurt inside of you die
  You’re frozen when your heart’s not open

  If I could melt your heart
  We’d never be apart
  Give yourself to me
  You hold the key

  • Madonna, Frozen (February 23, 1998) from the album Ray of Light (March 3, 1998)

• One plus one equals both.
  • Gregory Maguire, Wicked

• No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
  • Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

• I will make love my greatest weapon and none on whom I call can defend against its force.
  My reasoning they may counter; my speech they may distrust; my apparel they may disapprove; my face they may reject; and even my bargains may cause them suspicion; yet my love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest clay.
  I will greet this day with love in my heart.
  • Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58

• Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
  I will greet this day with love in my heart.
  • Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 58

• Socrates … said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved.
  • Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, H. Lowe-Porter, trans. (1930), pp. 45-46

• Contrary to Pascal’s saying, we don’t love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
  • Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America‎ (1958), p. 20

• To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
  • Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera‎ (1985; translated by Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 100

• I am human and I need to be loved
  Just like everybody else does
  • Johnny Marr and Morrissey, How Soon Is Now?, Hatful of Hollow (1985)

• Love is the last of the virtues to be born in the heart, but it is the first in value.
  • Saint Mark the Ascetic, On Those who Think that They are Made Righteous by Works, in Philokalia

• He drew a circle that shut me out —
  Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
  But Love and I had the wit to win:
  We drew a circle that took him in.
  • Edwin Markham, «Outwitted», from The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913)

• If you conclude, as I do, that the only hope of a permanent peace and happiness for humanity on this planet is an increased expression of love, and that women are the primary carriers of this great force, one of the problems we face is to provide women with more opportunity for using their love powers. The last six thousand years have demonstrated quite conclusively, I believe, that woman under the domination of man can increase but meagerly the world’s total love supply. Our obvious goal, than must be to devise social mechanisms whereby man is brought under the love domination of woman.
  • William Moulton Marston, Women: Servants for Civilization (1941), p. 44; as quoted in the essay «William Marston’s Feminist Agenda» by Michelle R. Finn; in The Ages of Wonder Woman: Essays on the Amazon Princess in Changing Times, edited by Joseph J. Darowski, p. 9.

• Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat… between the law of love and the law of hate.
  • José Martí, Letter (1881), as quoted in The Conscience of Worms and the Cowardice of Lions : Cuban Politics and Culture in an American Context (1993) by Irving Louis Horowit, p. 11

• Love is… born with the pleasure of looking at each other, it is fed with the necessity of seeing each other, it is concluded with the impossibility of separation!
  • José Martí, Amor (1881)

• Mankind is composed of two sorts of men — those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.
  • José Martí, «Letter to a Cuban Farmer» (1893)

• Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything.
  • José Martí, My Race (1893), «Mi Raza», first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

• Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
  • José Martí, My Race (1893), «Mi Raza», first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

• There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so. To fulfill one’s duty elevates the soul to a state of constant sweetness. Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.
  • José Martí, My Race (1893), «Mi Raza», first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

• I found the greatest love of all inside of me. The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.
  • Michael Masser and Linda Creed, songwriters of «The Greatest Love of All»

• The tragedy of love is indifference.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, The Trembling of a Leaf, ch. 4

• But when all was said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]] Ch. 70

• There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]], Ch. 71

• Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, [w:Of Human Bondage|Of Human Bondage]], Ch. 21, p. 83 (estimated)

• We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 306

• The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook (1946), p. 13

• He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, Collected short stories 1, «The pool», p. 123

• When I fall in love, I feel more valuable and I treat myself with more care. We have all observed the hesitant adolescent, uncertain of himself, who, when he or she falls in love, suddenly walks with a certain inner assuredness and confidence, a mien which seems to say, «You are looking at somebody now.» … this inner sense of worth that comes with being in love does not seem to depend essentially on whether the love is returned or not.
  • Rollo May, Love and Will (1969), p. 84

• When we «fall» in love, as the expressive verb puts it, the world shakes and changes around us, not only in the way it looks but in our whole experience of what we are doing in the world. Generally, the shaking is consciously felt in its positive aspects … Love is the answer, we sing. … our Western culture seems to be engaged in a romantic — albeit desperate — conspiracy to enforce the illusion that that is all there is to eros.
  • Rollo May, Love and Will (1969), p. 100

• To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive — to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.
  • Rollo May, Love and Will (1969), p. 100

• And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
  • Paul McCartney, in «The End» from Abbey Road (1969)

• No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. […] But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
  • Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, page 176 (ISBN 9781603580557).

• Love is the root of all joy and sorrow.
  • Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, translated into English by Claud Field (1909), Sermon III: The Angel’s Greeting

• All true morality, inward and outward, is comprehended in love, for love is the foundation of all the commandments.
  All outward morality must be built upon this basis, not on self-interest. As long as man loves something else than God, or outside God, he is not free, because he has not love. Therefore there is no inner freedom which does not manifest itself in works of love. True freedom is the government of nature in and outside man through God; freedom is essential existence unaffected by creatures. But love often begins with fear; fear is the approach to love: fear is like the awl which draws the shoemaker’s thread through the leather.
  • Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, translated into English by Claud Field (1909), Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality

• Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
  • H. L. Mencken in A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

• To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love.
  Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
  • Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (1949)

• Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
  • Thomas Merton, in a letter to Dorothy Day (20 December 1961)

• Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.
  • Thomas Merton, in a letter to Dorothy Day, in Disputed Questions p. 125

• Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
  Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
  Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
  And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
  Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
  Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
  Yet many a man is making friends with death
  Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay, in «Sonnet XXX» from Fatal Interview (1931)

• I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.
  • Arthur Miller, Quentin in After the Fall (1964), Act II

• I saw clearly only when I saw with love. Or can one ever remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume. And that’s the truth of roses, isn’t it? — The perfume?
  • Arthur Miller, Quentin in After the Fall (1964), Act II

• Love means to look at yourself
  The way one looks at distant things
  For you are only one thing among many.
  And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
  Without knowing it, from various ills —
  A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
  • Czesław Miłosz , Rescue (1945), «The World»: Love (1943), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz

• Imparadis’d in one another’s arms.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 50

• Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
  Of human offspring.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 750-751

• Freely we serve,
  Because we freely love, as in our will
  To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, lines 538-540

• So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
  I could endure, without him live no life.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 832

• It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
  Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
  That woman’s love can win, or long inherit;
  But what it is, hard is to say,
  Harder to hit.
  • John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), line 1,010

• Love would master self; and having made the mastery stretch onward and upward toward infinitude.
  • Donald G. Mitchell, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394

• Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek? Subtract Love, add Anger.
  • Steven Moffat, in lines written for Oswin Oswald, in Asylum of the Daleks (1 September 2012)

• Love, it’s not an emotion — Love is a promise!
  • Steven Moffat, in lines for the Twelfth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who : Death in Heaven (8 November 2014)

• Give love and forget that you gave it.
  • Sun Myung Moon The Way of God’s Will Chapter 2-3 Character Translated 1980

• Love on through all ills, and love on till they die!
  • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Light of the Harem, line 653

• Love doesn’t make sense! I mean, you can’t logic your way into or out of it. Love is totally nonsensical! But we have to keep doing it, or else…we’re lost, an-and-and love is dead and humanity should just pack it in. Because love is the best thing we do.
  • Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother, S9E22: «The End of the Aisle»

• Kids, I won’t lie…that was a long weekend. More ups and downs than I can count. It was a twisting, turning road that led to the end of the aisle and not everything along the way was perfect. To be honest, not everything to follow would be perfect either…but what is? Here’s the secret, kids…none of us can vow to be perfect. In the end, all we can do is promise to love each other with all that we’ve got…because love is the best thing we do. And on that lovely spring evening, that’s exactly what Barney and Robin vowed to each other…and it was legendary.
  • Future Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother, S9E22: «The End of the Aisle»

• Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
  • Moses, Leviticus 19:18 KJV

• The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
  • Moses, Leviticus 19:34 KJV

• The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
  • Mother Teresa, Interview by Edward W. Desmond in TIME magazine (4 December 1989)

• Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life.
  • Mother Teresa in: Teresa, Mother; Dorothy S. Hunt (1987). Love, a fruit always in season: Daily meditations from the words of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press. ISBN 9780898701678.

• Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
  • Mother Teresa, as quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life : 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles‎ (1998) by John Templeton, p. 448

• Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love….The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.
  • Mother Teresa, as quoted in Mother Teresa : Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk

• When feudal lords love one another there will be no more war; when heads of houses love one another there will be no more mutual usurpation; when individuals love one another there will be no more mutual injury. When ruler and ruled love each other they will be gracious and loyal; when father and son love each other they will be affectionate and filial; when older and younger brothers love each other they will be harmonious. When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not overpower the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor, the honoured will not disdain the humble, and the cunning will not deceive the simple. And it is all due to mutual love that calamities, strife, complaints, and hatred are prevented from arising. Therefore the benevolent exalt it.
  • Mozi Book 4; Universal Love II

• Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards — it will be unpreventable in the world.
  • Mozi Book 4; Universal Love III

• Universal love is really the way of the sage-kings. It is what gives peace to the rulers and sustenance to the people. The gentleman would do well to understand and practise universal love; then he would be gracious as a ruler, loyal as a minister, affectionate as a father, filial as a son, courteous as an elder brother, and respectful as a younger brother. So, if the gentleman desires to be a gracious ruler, a loyal minister, an affectionate father, a filial son, a courteous elder brother, and a respectful younger brother, universal love must be practised. It is the way of the sage-kings and the great blessing of the people.
  • Mozi Book 4; Universal Love III

• My love for you is past the mind, beyond my heart, and into my soul.
  • Boris Kodjoe, Madea’s Family Reunion

• Bessie: I’ve been lucky to have so much love in my life.
  Lee: Yes, Marvin and Ruth love you so much.
  Bessie: No, I’ve been lucky to be able to love them so much.
  • Marvin’s Room

• If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day’s newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds.
  • Lewis Mumford, Values for Survival (1946)

N[edit]

• I’ve made the most important discovery of my life. It’s only in the mysterious equation of love that any logical reasons can be found.
  • John Forbes Nash (portrayed by Russell Crowe, A Beautiful Mind (2001)

• Abel was righteous & Noah was a preacher of righteousness & by his righteousness he was saved from the flood. Christ is called the righteous & by his righteousness we are saved & except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdome of heaven. Righteousness is the religion of the kingdom of heaven & even the property of God himself towards man. Righteousness & Love are inseparable for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
  • Sir Isaac Newton, A short Schem of the true Religion, Undated manuscript: Keynes Ms. 7: ‘»A short Schem of the true Religion'»

• Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
  • Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1952)

• Why is love intensified by absence?
  • Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife

• If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves.
  • Anaïs Nin, House of Incest (1936)

• Love reduces the complexity of living.
  • Anaïs Nin, in June 1932 entry in her journal; published in Henry and June : from a journal of love : the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1990), p. 178

• You cannot save people, you can only love them.
  • Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

• Someday I’ll be locked up for love insanity. «She loved too much.»
  • Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

• Oh, God, I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love. I swim in the sky; I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.
  • Anaïs Nin (30 May 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

• No one but a woman in love ever sees the maximum of men’s greatness .
  • Anaïs Nin (18 June 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

• Love is the axis and breath of my life. The art I produce is a byproduct, an excrescence of love, the song I sing, the joy which must explode, the overabundance — that is all!
  • Anaïs Nin (21 October 1934), in The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)

• You are like a person who consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are born of this.
  • Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love (1954)

• The enemy of a love is never outside, it’s not a man or woman, it’s what we lack in ourselves.
  • Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love (1954)

• I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. Aesthetics was an expression of man’s need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world.
  • Anaïs Nin, The Novel of the Future (1969)

• Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
  • Anaïs Nin, as quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126

• A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.
  • Alfred Nobel [5]

• Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
  • Novalis, Blüthenstaub-Fragmente (1798), Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses.
  • Variant translations:

Every beloved object is the centre of a Paradise.

• As quoted by Thomas Carlyle in «Novalis» (1829)

Every beloved object is the midpoint to paradise.

• Love works magic.
  It is the final purpose
  Of the world story,
  The Amen of the universe.
  • Novalis, Blüthenstaub-Fragmente (1798)

• We have come by curious ways
  To the Light that holds the days;
  We have sought in haunts of fear
  For that all-enfolding sphere:
  And lo! it was not far, but near.

  We have found, O foolish-fond,
  The shore that has no shore beyond.

  Deep in every heart it lies
  With its untranscended skies;
  For what heaven should bend above
  Hearts that own the heaven of love?

  • Alfred Noyes, The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan, Epilogue

• Your dreamers may dream it
  The shadow of a dream,
  Your sages may deem it
  A bubble on the stream;
  Yet our kingdom draweth nigher
  With each dawn and every day,
  Through the earthquake and the fire
  «Love will find out the way.»
  • Alfred Noyes, Drake, an English Epic (1908), Song, Book VIII, p. 146

• Heart of my heart, the world is young;
  Love lies hidden in every rose!
  Every song that the skylark sung
  Once, we thought, must come to a close:
  Now we know the spirit of song,
  Song that is merged in the chant of the whole,
  Hand in hand as we wander along,
  What should we doubt of the years that roll?
  • Alfred Noyes, Unity, § I, Unity, § I

• Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
  One with the clouds that are whirled o’er the lea,
  One in many, O broken and blind,
  One as the waves are at one with the sea!
  Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
  Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
  One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
  One, still one, while the world grows old.
  • Alfred Noyes, Unity, § I, Unity, § III

• Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
  Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
  And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
  That Spring is risen, is risen again,
  That Life is risen, is risen again,
  That Love is risen, is risen again, and
  Love is Lord of all.
  • Alfred Noyes, The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915), The Lord of Misrule

• God does not love that which is already in itself worthy of love, but on the contrary, that which in itself has no worth acquires worth just by becoming the object of God’s love. Agape has nothing to do with the kind of love that depends on the recognition of a valuable quality in its object. Agape does not recognize value, but creates it. Agape loves, and imparts value by loving. The man who is loved by God has no value in himself; what gives him value is precisely the fact that God loves him. Agape is a value-creating principle.
  • Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (1930), as translated from the Swedish by P. S. Watson (1932), p. 78

• There is no occasion to look behind our neighbor’s actual condition for any hidden valuable quality that will explain and justify our love for him. God’s love is explanation and sanction enough.
  • Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros (1930), as translated from the Swedish by P. S. Watson (1932), p. 99

O[edit]

• True love is radical because it requires us to see ourselves in all people. Otherwise, it isn’t love. Love is revolutionary because it has us treat ALL people as we would ourselves — not because we are charitable, but because we are one. That is love’s radical conclusion.
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a Twitter post, (25 December 2018)

• Nobody can teach you love. Love you have to find yourself, within your being, by raising your consciousness to higher levels. And when love comes, there is no question of responsibility. You do things because you enjoy doing them for the person you love. You are not obliging the person, you are not even wanting anything in return, not even gratitude. On the contrary, you are grateful that the person has allowed you to do something for him. It was your joy, sheer joy. Love knows nothing of responsibility. It does many things, it is very creative; it shares all that it has, but it is not a responsibility, remember. Responsibility is an ugly word in comparison to love. Love is natural. Responsibility is created by the cunning priests, politicians who want to dominate you in the name of God, in the name of the nation, in the name of family, in the name of religion — any fiction will do. But they don’t talk about love. On the contrary, they are all against love, because love is unable to be controlled by them. A man of love acts out of his own heart, not according to any moral code. A man of love will not join the army because it is his responsibility to fight for his nation. A man of love will say there are no nations, and there is no question of any fight.
  • Osho Sat Chit Anand

• Res est solliciti plena timoris amor.

  Love is a thing full of anxious fears.

  • Ovid, Heroides (The Heroines), I, 12

• Siquis amat quod amare iuvat, feliciter ardens
  Gaudeat, et vento naviget ille suo.
  At siquis male fert indignae regna puellae,
  Ne pereat, nostrae sentiat artis opem.
• Let him who loves, where love success may find,
  Spread all his sails before the prosp’rous wind;
  But let poor youths who female scorn endure,
  And hopeless burn, repair to me for cure.
  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love), Lines 13-16

• Qui finem quaeris amoris,
  Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

  Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.

  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love), Lines 143–144

• Militat omnis amans.

  Every lover is a soldier. (Love is a warfare).

  • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), I. 9. 1

• Qui non vult fieri desidiosus, amet.

  Let the man who does not wish to be idle, fall in love.

  • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), I. 9. 46

• Sic ego nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum
  Et videor voti nescius esse mei.

  Thus I am not able to exist either with you or without you; and I seem not to know my own wishes.

  • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), Book III. 10. 39

• Qui finem quaeris amoris/Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

  Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you’ll be safe then.

  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris, 143

• Intret amicitiae nomine tectus amor.

  Let love steal in disguised as friendship.

  • Variant: Love will enter cloaked in friendship’s name.
  • Context: Cool off; don’t let her think you too importunate. Do not betray the hope of too swift a victory; let Love steal in disguised as Friendship. I’ve often seen a woman thus disarmed, and friendship ripen into love.
  • Ovid, The Art of Love, Book 1, line 720, translated by J. Lewis May in The Love Books of Ovid, 1930

• Ut ameris, amabilis esto.
  • If you want to be loved, be lovable.

    Variant: To be loved, be lovable.

  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), II, 107

• Militiae species amor est.

  Love is a kind of warfare.

  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), Book II, line 233

• Dum novus errat amor, vires sibi colligat usu:
  Si bene nutrieris, tempore firmus erit.
  Quem taurum metuis, vitulum mulcere solebas:
  Sub qua nunc recubas arbore, virga fuit:
  Nascitur exiguus, sed opes adquirit eundo,
  Quaque venit, multas accipit amnis aquas.

  Young love is errant, but it needs to get around;
  The time and practice make it strong and sound.
  That bull you fear, you petted when it wasn’t big;
  What now you sleep beneath was once a twig.
  That little stream, in gaining waters as it goes,
  Grows stronger, till at last a river flows.

  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), Book II, lines 339–344 (tr. Len Krisak)

• Ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis
  nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes!

  Alas for me, love is incurable
  With any herb; the arts which cure the others
  Do me, their lord, no good!

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (Transformations), Book I, lines 523–524 (trans. R. Humphries)

• Non bene conveniunt nec in una sede morantur
  maiestas et amor.

  Ah, majesty and love go ill together,
  Nor long share one abode!

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses (Transformations), Book II, lines 846–847 (trans. A. D. Melville)

P[edit]

• Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know. I’m here today because I am gay. And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selfishly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission. I suffered for years because I was scared to be out. My spirit suffered, my mental health suffered and my relationships suffered. And I’m standing here today, with all of you, on the other side of all that pain.
  • Elliot Page, Coming Out speech as a lesbian at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference to promote the welfare of LGBT youth held at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada (14 February 2014)

• I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being. And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.
  • Elliot Page, Coming Out speech as a lesbian at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference to promote the welfare of LGBT youth held at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada (14 February 2014)

• When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely.
  • Francis Turner Palgrave, Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics (1861) Summary of Book Fourth

• When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. …such community of intellect that we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love.
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section I Thoughts on Mind and Style (1-59), 14

• Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c’est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur.
  • The heart has its reasons, which Reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which feels God, and not Reason. This, then, is perfect faith: God felt in the heart.
  • Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section IV On the Means of the Belief (242-290), 277; The first sentence is widely quoted in English as «The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.» Also as «‘The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.«
  • Variant translations:
  • The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. We find this in a thousand instances. It is the heart which feels God, and not the reasoning powers. And this is faith made perfect : — God realized by feeling in the heart.

• Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.
  Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
  Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
  When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
  And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
  • Paul of Tarsus, I Corinthians Ch. 13 (NKJV)
  • Variant translation: Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self seeking. It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perservers. Love never fails.
    • 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

• The three most important things to have are faith, hope and love. But the greatest of them is love.
  • Paul of Tarsus, in 1 Corinthians 13:13 (New International Readers Version)

• Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
  • Paul of Tarsus, Romans 13:8-10 (NIV)

• Love is the cheapest of religions.
  • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1939-12-21

• Over the mountains,
  And over the waves,
  Over the fountains,
  And under the graves;
  Over the floods that are deepest,
  Which do Neptune obey;
  Over the rocks that are steepest,
  Love will find out the way.
  • Thomas Percy, «Love Will Find Out the Way» as published in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); in its publshed form this is suspected to have been extensively written by Percy himself; it was later used by Pierre de Beaumarchais in Act III of The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

• David Xanatos: So, now you know my weakness.

Goliath: Only you would regard love as a weakness.

• Gargoyles (TV series) Eye of the Beholder, written by Steve Perry

• O amor é que é essencial.
  O sexo é só um acidente.
  • It’s love that is inescapable.
    Sex is the merest accident.
  • Fernando Pessoa, Poem (5 April 1935), reported in Poesias inéditas (1930-1935), p. 192
  • Variant translation:

    Love is essential. Sex, a mere accident.

• Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
  • Petrarch, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392

• To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.
  • Petrarch, To Laura in Life (c. 1327-1350), Canzone 37

• Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.
  • Plato, Phaedrus in Symposium, 178c, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 533

• Years of love have been forgot
  In the hatred of a minute.
  • Edgar Allan Poe, To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

• Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
  From its present pathway part not!
  Being everything which now thou art,
  Be nothing which thou art not.
  So with the world thy gentle ways,
  Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
  Shall be an endless theme of praise,
  And love — a simple duty.
  • Edgar Allan Poe, «To Frances S. Osgood» (1845)

• The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.
  • Edgar Allan Poe, «The Philosophy of Composition» (published 1846)

• Through years of my prime
  I walked with a heart
  crazy about love.
  • Suman Pokhrel, The Tajmahal and my Love

• May the river of love always flow from its own lap.
  • Suman Pokhrel, Song of Soul

• May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs.
  • Suman Pokhrel, Song of Soul

• I wanted my heart to bloom
  and shelter a shadow of love.
  • Suman Pokhrel, The Tajmahal and my Love

• I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity.
  • Suman Pokhrel, I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity, (An interview with Romain Molina)

• Love is a feeling, and its expression is an art.
  • Suman Pokhrel, I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity, (An interview with Romain Molina)

• I found the Taj Mahal as the most appropriate example of artistically expressed love.
  • Suman Pokhrel, I dread to think of a society devoid of love, compassion and humanity, (An interview with Romain Molina)

• Tonight, may I get so drunk in love that
  I do not see any dreams!
  • Suman Pokhrel, May I Not See Dreams

• How vast a memory has Love!
  • Alexander Pope, «Sappho to Phaon», line 52 (1712)

• Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
  And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
  • Alexander Pope, «The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer» (c.1704, published 1713), line 369

• Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 74

• Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 77

• Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
  And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 177

• Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
  ‘Tis true the hardest science to forget.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 189

• One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight;
  Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 273

• When the heart stops for one beat it is desire, when it stops for one life time it is love
  • Lucy Powell, The Heart Yearns But Once (2004)

• In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!… I’m a Jew, so I musn’t love a Christian woman… He’s a merchant, so he’s got no right to a countess… And you who’ve got no money, you’ve no rights to any woman at all…
  • Bolesław Prus, The Doll (1889)

• Kissing Agathon, I held my life on my lips.
  It wanted to pass over, poor thing, into him.
  • Plato, Anthologia Palatina V, p. 78

• The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings.
  • Plato, Phaedrus

• «And what would humans be without love?»
  Rare, said Death.
  • Sir Terence David John «Terry» Pratchett, Sourcery (1988)

• Neque assueto mutet amore torum.
  • Never change when love has found its home.
    • Propertius Elegies I, i, 36.

• Nudus Amor formam non amat artificem.
  • Love is naked, and loves not beauty gained by artifice.
    • Propertius Elegies I, ii, 8; translation by G.P. Goold

• Nemo in amore videt.
  • No one in love can see.
    • Propertius Elegies II, xiv, 18

• Errat, qui finem vesani quaerit amoris:
  verus amor nullum novit habere modum
  • He errs that seeks to set a term to the frenzy of love; true love hath no bound.
    • Propertius Elegies II, xv, 29; translation by H.E. Butler

• As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
  • Pythagoras. Attribution by Ovid, as quoted in The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of Humane Thought by Jon Wynne-Tyson (1985), p. 260; also in Vegetarian Times, No. 168 (August 1991), p. 4.

Q[edit]

• Fair-seeming to men is made the love of desires, of women and sons and hoarded treasures of gold and silver and well-bred horses and cattle and tilth (fields). This is the provision of the life of this world. And Allah — with Him is the good goal (of life). Say: Shall I tell you of what is better than these? For those who guard against evil are Gardens with their Lord, in which rivers flow, to abide in them, and pure companions and Allah’s goodly pleasure. And Allah is Seer of the servants.
  • Quran 3:13-14

R[edit]

• Love is our response to our highest values.
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)

• Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)

• Some day, the world will discover that, without thought, there can be no love.
  • Ayn Rand, Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

• [The hippies] were told that love — indiscriminate love for one’s fellow man — is the highest virtue, and they obeyed. They were told that the merging of one’s self with a herd, tribe, or community is the noblest way for a man to live, and they obeyed. There isn’t a philosophical idea of today’s establishment which they have not accepted, which they do not share. When they discovered this philosophy did not work, because in fact it cannot work, the hippies had neither the wit nor the courage to challenge it. They found, instead, an outlet for their impotent frustration by accusing their elders of hypocrisy, as if hypocrisy were the only obstacle to the realization of their dreams. And, left blindly, helplessly lobotomized in the face of an inexplicable reality that is not amenable to their feelings, they have no recourse but the shouting of obscenities at anything that frustrates their whims; at man, or at the rainy sky, indiscriminately, with no concept of the difference. It is typical of today’s culture that the proponents of seething, raging hostility are taken as advocates of love.
  • Ayn Rand, Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

• «Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself… The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.»
  • Francisco d’Anconia in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957), Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter Four: The Sanction of the Victim

• «Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws—and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying.»
  • Francisco d’Anconia in Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957), Part Two: Either-Or, Chapter Four: The Sanction of the Victim

• One can’t love man without hating most of the creatures who pretend to bear his name.
  • Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)

• To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I.
  • Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)

• We never need to say anything to each other when we’re together. This is- for the time when we won’t be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breath air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I’ve given you not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way you can wish to be loved. This is the only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence. But I would not want you then. You would not want yourself-and so you would not love me long. To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it, I’d destroy you. That’s why I won’t stop you. I’ll let you go to your husband. I don’t know how I’ll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you’ll remain in the battle you’ve chosen. A battle is never selfless. […] You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now. Never to be hurt by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it. I can’t help you. You must find your own way. When you have, you’ll come back to me. They won’t destroy me, Dominique. And they won’t destroy you. You’ll win, because you’ve chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I’ll wait for you. I love you. I’m saying this now for all the years we’ll have to wait. I love you, Dominique
  • Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), Part II

• …love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it—the total passion for the total height—you’re incapable of anything less.
  • Gail Wynand, speaking to Dominique Keating in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), Part III

• …love is exception-making.
  • Gail Wynand, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), Part IV

• To get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.
  • Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), Part IV, p. 578

• What you feel in the presence of a thing you admire is just one word—‘Yes.’ The affirmation, the acceptance, the sign of admittance. And that ‘Yes’ is more than an answer to one thing, it’s a kind of ‘Amen’ to life, to the earth that holds this thing, to the thought that created it, to yourself for being able to see it. But the ability to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ is the essence of all ownership. It’s your ownership of your own ego. Your soul, if you wish. Your soul has a single basic function—the act of valuing. ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ ‘I wish’ or ‘I do not wish.’ You can’t say ‘Yes’ without saying ‘I.» There’s no affirmation without the one who affirms. In this sense, everything to which you grant your love is yours.
  […]
  Howard, that ‘Yes’—once granted, can it be withdrawn?
  «Never.»
  • Howard Roark and Gail Wynand in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943), Part IV

• I felt light and secure and connected… Like the whole landscape was part of me… Love… I guess I felt a love for everything… You do not make yourself love… You allow love to enter you… When you appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of things… you receive energy. When you get to a level where you feel love, then you can send the energy back just by willing it so… The role of love has been misunderstood for a long time. Love is not something we should do to be good or to make the world a better place out of some abstract moral responsibility… Connecting with energy feels like excitement, then euphoria, and then love. Finding enough energy to maintain that state of love certainly helps the world, but it most directly helps us. p.73-75
  • James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy (1993)

• After I breath in the energy… I check to see if I have the right emotion… I consider this the true measure of whether I am really connected… love… love is not an intellectual concept or a moral imperative or anything else. It is a background emotion that exists when one is connected to the energy available in the universe, which, of course, is the energy of God. p 98
  • James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy (1993)

• It’s hard for me to get the love flowing in a situation like this… But not to do so is to harm yourself… Your body is vibrating at a certain level. If you let your energy get too low your body suffers. That is the relationship between stress and disease. Love is the way we keep our vibration up. It keeps us healthy. It is that important. p. 111
  • James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy (1993)

• Remember to stop as often as necessary to re-connect your energy. Stay full, stay in a state of love. Remember that once you achieve this state of love, nothing nor anyone can pull more energy from you than you can replace. In fact, the energy flowing out of you creates a current that pulls energy into you at the same rate. You can never run out. But you must stay conscious of this process in order for it to work. This is especially important when you interact with people.
  • James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy (1993)

• It’s hard for me to get the love flowing in a situation like this… But not to do so is to harm yourself… Your body is vibrating at a certain level. If you let your energy get too low your body suffers. That is the relationship between stress and disease. Love is the way we keep our vibration up. It keeps us healthy. It is that important. p. 111
  • James Redfield, in The Celestine Prophecy (1993)

• Liebe, Arbeit und Wissen sind die Quellen unseres Lebens. Sie sollen es auch regieren.
  • Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.
    • Wilhelm Reich’s personal motto, the English translation used at least as early as The Function of the Orgasm (1948), a translation of Die Funktion des Orgasmus (1927)

• Psychic health depends on orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act. It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual’s capacity for love. Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love.
  • Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (1927), General Survey

• Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.
  • Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique

• You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
  • Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man! (1948)

• Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one’s life well and happily…
  • Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man! (1948)

• In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
  • Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo (1966)

• Love is the garment of knowledge.’
  • Kenneth Rexroth, Eckhart, Brethren of the Free Spiritfrom Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century (1974), ch. 4

• The holiness of the real
  Is always there, accessible
  In total immanence. The nodes
  Of transcendence coagulate
  In you, the experiencer,
  And in the other, the lover.
  • Kenneth Rexroth, In Defense of the Earth (1956)

• Now I know surely and forever,
  However much I have blotted our
  Waking love, its memory is still
  there. And I know the web, the net,
  The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
  One brief instant it was not blind, nor
  Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
  Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
  I who am lost and damned with words,
  Whose words are a business and an art,
  I have no words. These words, this poem, this
  Is all confusion and ignorance.
  But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
  My heart beat one free beat and sent
  Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
  • Kenneth Rexroth, She Is Away

• Each of us is a specific individual, that one and no other, out of billions. I think each of us knows his own mystery with a knowing that precedes the origins of all knowledge. None of us ever gives it away. No one can. We envelop it with talk and hide it with deeds.
  Yet we always hope that somehow the others will know it is there, that a mystery in the other we cannot know will respond to a mystery in the self we cannot understand. The only full satisfaction life offers us is this sense of communion. We seek it constantly. Sometimes we find it. As we grow older we learn that it is never complete and sometimes it is entirely illusory.
  • Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel (1991), Introduction. Originally published in 1966, with an additional chapter included in 1978 and further recollections published as Excerpts from a Life in 1981. A posthumous edition, incorporating all of this material, was then printed by New Directions in 1991

• The free, creative, loving people who shine so brightly in my memory of studios and coffee shops have become models for a huge section of the population. If they in turn can just stay alive in the face of power and terror, they may become the decisive section.
  • «Introduction»
  • Kenneth Rexroth, An Autobiographical Novel (1991), Introduction. Originally published in 1966, with an additional chapter included in 1978 and further recollections published as Excerpts from a Life in 1981. A posthumous edition, incorporating all of this material, was then printed by New Directions in 1991.

• Let the young lovers know that the ideal is the only safe bond. In the difficult night the youth knows his beloved by the light she carries and she him.
  • Grace Rhys, The Quest of the Ideal (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1913), p. 56.

• I don’t know how to love him.
  • Judas, and Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar, lyrics by Tim Rice

• I can’t compete with a memory
  How can I fight with someone that I can’t see?
  There’s two of us but it feels like three
  I wish her ghost would just let us be
  Boy you’re everything I ever wanted
  But I got to let you go ’cause this love is
  Haunted.
  • Rihanna Haunted, Good Girl Gone Bad

• L’amour est à réinventer, on le sait.
  • Love must be reinvented, that much is clear.
    • Arthur Rimbaud. A Season in Hell.

• If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that’s perfectly valid — but don’t go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.
  • Tim Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)

• I’m not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I’ve learned something that many women these days never learn: Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn’t that be the way to make love stay?
  • Tim Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, in Phase III, Ch. 46

• 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. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.
  • Tim Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980), Bernard to Leigh-Cheri, in Phase III, Ch. 46

• No matter how much others might love you, you can’t love yourself unless you’re in charge of your own actions, and you’ll never take charge as long as you can get away with blaming your shortcomings and misfortunes on your family or society or your race or gender or Satan or whatever…
  • Tim Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)

• You cannot love someone you do not know — not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.
  • Jane Roberts, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, p. 105

• Make haste to learn how to love and appreciate each other. But nothing requires such delicate and attentive care as love!
  • Helena Roerich, Letters I, (7 January 1931)

• A heart warmed by love will emanate the most beautiful power of attraction… A selfish person condemns himself to dreadful loneliness and complete oblivion. Happiness is in giving love; and happier is the one who loves rather than the one who is loved. When this truth is realized, all happiness will materialize. Therefore, learn how to love, become accustomed to love everything beautiful, and develop active compassion toward everything that is not yet perfect. Be kind and polite to your subordinates, as such is the privilege and beauty of a lord of spirit!
  • Helena Roerich, Letters I, (21 October 1931)

• People have forgotten, or rather do not want to admit, the great cosmic significance of love. The materialism of our age puts love on the level of a purely physiological function. At best, love today is treated as a psychological process. But if the cosmic significance of love could be realized once more, people would see in love its highest function, i.e., the awakening of all the highest emotions and creative abilities. Precisely, this awakening is the chief purpose and the true keynote of love. Love is a unifying creative power.
  • Helena Roerich, Letters I, (9 January 1935)

• I am sending all my love and support in this difficult time of the struggles of the spirit. You are surrounded by constant care. Do not doubt it. Every pupil is dear to the Teacher. Every movement of your heart echoes to the Great Heart. Not always can the projected rays reach our physical consciousness; but every minute they dispel and annihilate so many hostile sparks around you.
  • Helena Roerich, Letters I, (11 February 1929)

• In wise India, the exclusive love for one’s own child is considered as one of the types of animal egotism. When there are so many unfortunate orphans around us, can we be so indifferent as not to find great motherly feeling toward them? With «her deep love for children» could not this woman then adopt one of these unfortunate homeless orphans and thus satisfy her love for children? There would be so much nobility in such an act, and (who knows?) perhaps she would bring up her true son or daughter.
  • Helena Roerich, in Letters I, (17 April 1934)

• Someone declares that «in the New Era a mother must love another’s child as much as her own.» This statement is much too strong, and therefore not convincing. It is impossible to demand superhuman feelings from an earthly mother. Let us leave her with her natural right to love her own child more. But we may add that a true mother will find room in her heart also for another’s child. All children should be dear to her all-embracing heart. The excluding love is terrible, but the containing love will have its gradations.
  • Helena Roerich, in Letters I, (30 June 1934)

• The Ruling Principle of the Universe is one of Harmony and Love—God is Love. Therefore, if we wish to embody the most ancient axiom, «as above, so below,» we should become unified precisely upon this principle of love and should be subordinate to it, regarding it as our only boundless Ruler.
  • Helena Roerich Letters II, (15 April 1936)

• One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.
  • Romain Rolland, as quoted in On Relationships: A Book for Teenagers (1999) by Kimberly Kirberger

• A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.’
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living (1960), p. 63

• It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)
  • Eleanor Roosevelt, My Day (1935 — 1962), Her daily newspaper column (1 April 1939)

• We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
  • Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear (2011)

• Love makes you do the wacky.
  • «Willow Rosenberg» (played by Alyson Hannigan), from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 2, «Some Assembly Required»

• Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
  Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
  Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
  Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.
  • Rumi, The Masnavi, Book IV, Story II, as translated in Masnavi I Ma’navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-‘d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) by Edward Henry Whinfield
  • Variant: Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
    Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
    • As quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley

• Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
  • Rumi as quoted in Path for Greatness : Spiritualty at Work (2000) by Linda J. Ferguson, p. 51

• What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
  of your love, that somehow contains
  the entire universe.
  • Rumi, «Where are we?» in Ch. 2 : Bewilderment

• Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
  Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
  Let the lover be.
  • Rumi, The Essential Rumi (1995), Ch. 4 : Spring Giddiness, p. 46

• Gamble everything for love,
  if you are a true human being.
  • Rumi, The Essential Rumi (1995), «On Gambling» Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 193

• Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
  What do you know of Love except the name?
  Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
  and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
  Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
  it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
  The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
  that root must be cherished with all one’s might.
  • Rumi, Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski

• Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune:
  every success depends upon focusing the heart.
  • Rumi, Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, III, 2302-5

• Love rests on no foundation.
  It is an endless ocean,
  with no beginning or end.
  • Rumi, Hush Don’t Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva

• This is a gathering of Lovers.
  In this gathering
  there is no high, no low,
  no smart, no ignorant,
  no special assembly,
  no grand discourse,
  no proper schooling required.
  There is no master,
  no disciple.
  This gathering is more like a drunken party,
  full of tricksters, fools,
  mad men and mad women.
  This is a gathering of Lovers.
  • Rumi, Hush Don’t Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva

• Love said to me,
  there is nothing that is not me.
  Be silent.
  • Rumi, Hush Don’t Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva

• Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.
  • Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals (1917), Chapter V: National Independence and Internationalism

• Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.
  • Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 3: The Dominion of the Father

• I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.
  • Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 3: The Dominion of the Father

• Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
  • Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 9: The Place of Love in Human Life

• Passionate mutual love while it lasts… breaks down the hard walls of the ego, producing a new being composed of two in one. Nature did not construct human beings to stand alone, since they cannot fulfil her biological purpose except with the help of another; and civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love… Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give; unconsciously, if not consciously, they feel this, and the resulting disappointment inclines them towards envy, oppression and cruelty. To give due place to passionate love should be therefore a matter which concerns the sociologist, since, if they miss this experience, men and women cannot attain their full stature, and cannot feel towards the rest of the world that kind of generous warmth without which their social activities are pretty sure to be harmful.
  • Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), Ch. 9: The Place of Love in Human Life

• To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
  • Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929),Ch. 19: Sex and Individual Well-Being

• [T]he only sex relations that have real value are those in which there is no reticence and in which the whole personality of both becomes merged in a new collective personality. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
  • Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Ch. 12: Affection

• I should like to say two things. One intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: «When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.» That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple; I should say: «Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.» In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact, that some people say things we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital, to the continuation of human life on this planet.
  • Bertrand Russell, Response to the question «Suppose Lord Russell, this film were to be looked at by our descendants, like a dead sea scroll in a thousand years time. What would you think it’s worth telling that generation about the life you’ve lived and the lessons you’ve learned from it?» in a BBC interview on «Face to Face» (1959)

• The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
  • Bertrand Russell, What I Believe (1925)

• At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination… Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other’s liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. They should be taught that to bring another human being into the world is a very serious matter, only to be undertaken when the child will have a reasonable prospect of health, good surroundings, and parental care. But they should also be taught methods of birth control, so as to insure that children shall only come when they are wanted. Finally, they should be taught the dangers of venereal disease, and the methods of prevention and cure. The increase of human happiness to be expected from sex education on these lines is immeasurable.
  • Bertrand Russell, What I Believe (1925)

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See also: William Shakespeare quotes about love

• For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
  • Carl Sagan, Contact : a novel. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1985. LCC PS3569.A287 C6 1985. ISBN 0671434004., Chapter 24 (p. 430)
• Love your neighbor as yourself but don’t take down your fence.
  • Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes (1936), p. 107

• You know, it’s quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don’t do it.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (1938)

• It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Act 1

• We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention…. We can only love on this earth and against God.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Acts 8 & 9

• If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Act 10, sc. 2

• I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devil and the Good Lord (1951), Act 11, sc. 2

• Love is SHWILL, Shannon and Will.
  • Fritz Crotty-Thwaites, Wedding Day, October 2nd (2021)

• Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos (1787), Act II, sc. viii

• The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein (1798), Part I — Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini), Act III, sc. viii

• O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
  The golden time of first love!
  The eye sees the open heaven,
  The heart is intoxicated with bliss;
  O that the beautiful time of young love
  Could remain green forever.
  • Friedrich Schiller, The Song of the Bell (1799)

• Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
  Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Tabulae Votivae (Votive Tablets) (1796), «The Key»; tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring, The Poems of Schiller, Complete (1851)
  • Variant translation:
    If you want to know yourself,
    Just look how others do it;
    If you want to understand others,
    Look into your own heart

• What is life without the radiance of love?
  • Friedrich Schiller, Wallenstein (1798), Act IV, sc. xii, translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• There are three lessons I would write, —
  Three words — as with a burning pen,
  In tracings of eternal light
  Upon the hearts of men.

  Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
  And gladness hides her face in scorn,
  Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
  No night but hath its morn.

  Have Faith. Where’er thy bark is driven, —
  The calm’s disport, the tempest’s mirth, —
  Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,
  The habitants of earth.

  Have Love. Not love alone for one,
  But men, as man, thy brothers call;
  And scatter, like the circling sun,
  Thy charities on all.

  Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —
  Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find
  Strength when life’s surges rudest roll,
  Light when thou else wert blind.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Hope, Faith, and Love (c. 1786); also known as «The Words of Strength», as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann, p. 386

• Sarah: [voiceover] If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.
  • The Crow (1994 film) written by David J. Schow and John Shirley, based on The Crow by James O’Barr

• The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s Presence, Which is your natural inheritance.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, p. 1 (1976)

• The opposite of love is fear, but what is all encompassing can have no opposite.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, p. 1 (1976)

• Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, (1976), Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 162

• Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, (1976)

• Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, (1976)

• To be wholehearted you must be happy. If fear and love cannot coexist, and if it is impossible to be wholly fearful and remain alive, the only possible whole state is that of love. There is no difference between love and joy. Therefore, the only possible whole state is the wholly joyous.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, (1976)

• Love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. No one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. Certain it is he knows not what love means. He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he thinks that love is fearful; hate is love.
  • Helen Schucman in A Course in Miracles, (1976)

• How could I think the brief years were enough
  To prove the reality of endless love?
  • Delmore Schwartz, in «I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read» in Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

• The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.
  • Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography (1933) translated by C. T. Campion, Epilogue, p. 235

• Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.
  • Albert Schweitzer, Reverence for Life (1969)

• How long will I love you?
  As long as stars are above you
  And longer if I can
  • Mike Scott, How Long Will I Love You? from Room to Roam album (1990)

• How long will I want you?
  As long as you want me to
  And longer by far
  • Mike Scott, How Long Will I Love You? from Room to Roam album (1990)

• The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.
  • Morrie Schwartz, Tuesdays with Morrie

• Love means never having to say you’re sorry.
  • Erich Segal, screenwriter, Love Story, (1970); dialogue of Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal)

• Si vis amari, ama.
  • If you want to be loved, love.
  • Seneca the Elder, Epistularum Moralium Ad Lucilium, Book 1, IX

• On a day — alack the day! —
  Love, whose month is ever May,
  Spied a blossom passing fair
  Playing in the wanton air
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, II. Not to be confused with The Sonnets; this poem is not a sonnet

• The course of true love never did run smooth.
  • William Shakespeare, Lysander, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), Act I, scene i

• Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
  And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
  • William Shakespeare, Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), Act I, scene i

• My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
  My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
  The more I have.
  • Shakespeare, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 1

• Love denied blights the soul we owe to God.
  • The character William Shakespeare (played by Joseph Fiennes) in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love

• Love is the only inspiration.
  • Tagline in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love

• Love is seeing God in the person next to us, and meditation is seeing God within us.
  • Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Wisdom for the New Millennium (2005), p. 9

• * Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #179

• THE SERPENT: The voice in the garden is your own voice.
  ADAM: It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me: I am only a part of it.
  EVE: The Voice does not tell me not to kill you. Yet I do not want you to die before me. No voice is needed to make me feel that.
  ADAM [throwing his arm round her shoulder with an expression of anguish]: Oh no: that is plain without any voice. There is something that holds us together, something that has no word —
  THE SERPENT: Love. Love. Love.
  ADAM: That is too short a word for so long a thing.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (1921), The Serpent, Adam, and Eve, in Pt. I, Act I

• Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah (1921), Acis, in Pt. V

• First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
  • George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island, act IV, Selected Plays with Prefaces (1949), vol. 2, p. 596. These words are spoken by Broadbent

• It is something that grows over time… a true friendship. A feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger through time…The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you’ll know which way to go…
  • «Sheik», The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Time passes, people move…Like a river’s flow, it never ends. A childish mind will turn to noble ambition…Young love will become deep affection… The clear water’s surface reflects growth…
  • «Sheik», The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Yet all love is sweet
  Given or returned. Common as light is love,
  And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
  * * * * *
  They who inspire it most are fortunate,
  As I am now: but those who feel it most
  Are happier still after long sufferings
  As I shall soon become.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Asia, Act II, sc. v, l. 39

• Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, The Earth, Act IV, l. 403

• Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, The Moon, Act IV, l. 451

• This is the day, which down the void abysm
  At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism
  And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
  Love, from its awful throne of patient power
  In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
  Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
  And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
  And folds over the world its healing wings.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 554–561

• True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
  That to divide is not to take away.
  Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
  Gazing on many truths; ’tis like thy light,
  Imagination! which from earth and sky,
  And from the depths of human phantasy,
  As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
  The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
  Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
  Of its reverberated lightning.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821)

• Love’s very pain is sweet,
  But its reward is in the world divine
  Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821), l. 595

• And bid them love each other and be blest:
  And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
  And come and be my guest, — for I am Love’s.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821), l. 602

• I love Love — though he has wings,
  And like light can flee,
  But above all other things,
  Spirit, I love thee —
  Thou art love and life! Oh come,
  Make once more my heart thy home.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821), stanza 8

• In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Essay on Christianity (1859), Unfinished essay (c. 1815), first published in Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources (1859) edited by Lady Jane Gibson Shelley; also in The Works of Shelley in Verse and Prose (1880) , edited by H. Buxton Forman. Full essay online

• You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more. Once make the feelings of confidence and of affection universal, and the distinctions of property and power will vanish; nor are they to be abolished without substituting something equivalent in mischief to them, until all mankind shall acknowledge an entire community of rights.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Essay on Christianity (1859), Unfinished essay (c. 1815), first published in Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources (1859) edited by Lady Jane Gibson Shelley; also in The Works of Shelley in Verse and Prose (1880) , edited by H. Buxton Forman. Full essay online

• But as a philosopher said, one day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, after all the scientific and technological achievements, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
  • Sargent Shriver, Jr., speech before the Democratic National Committee, accepting nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, Washington, D.C. (August 8, 1972). Transcript, The New York Times (August 9, 1972), p. 18. He was slightly paraphrasing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, «The Evolution of Chastity», Toward the Future, trans. René Hague (1975), p. 86–87: «The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire». This was written in Peking in 1934

• The problem is all inside your head, she said to me
  The answer is easy if you take it logically
  I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
  There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.
  • Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

• * She said, why don’t we both just sleep on it tonight
  And I believe, in the morning you’ll begin to see the light
  And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
  There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover
  • Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

• First thing I remember when you came into my life
  I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
  Well I guess I’ve been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
  But I’ve never loved no-one the way that I love you.
  • Paul Simon, One-Trick Pony (1980), Late in the Evening

• And she said ‘Losing love is like a window in your heart,
  Everybody sees you’re blown apart,
  Everybody feels the wind blow.’
  • Paul Simon, Graceland (1986), Graceland

• Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates.
  The earth is blue.
  And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), Everything About It Is a Love Song

• Maybe the heart is part of the mist.
  And that’s all that there is or could ever exist.
  Maybe and maybe and maybe some more.
  Maybe’s the exit that I’m looking for.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), I Don’t Believe

• Take me. I’m an ordinary player in the key of C.
  And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
  Who’s gonna love you when you’re looks are gone?
  God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), Outrageous

• For true evangelical faith…cannot lay dormant; but manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it…clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it.
  • Menno Simons Why I Do Not Cease Teaching and Writing, 1539

• All’s fair in love and war.
  • Francis Edward Smedley, Frank Fairlegh : Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil (1850)

• To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
  • Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), «Of Friendship»

• The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.
  • Kit Snicket
    • Lemony Snicket, The End

• Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— for your love is more delightful than wine.
  • Song of Solomon, New International Version, Song of Solomon 1:2

• How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice!
  • Song of Solomon, New International Version, Song of Solomon 4:10

• Eat, friends, and drink; drink your fill of love.
  • Song of Solomon, New International Version, Song of Solomon 5:1

• Come, my beloved, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom— there I will give you my love. The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my beloved.
  • Song of Solomon, New International Version, Song of Solomon 7:11-13

• Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
  • ** Song of Solomon, New International Version, Song of Solomon 8:6-7

• The feeling of love — is a fervent desire of goodness to a man.
  • Simon Soloveychik, Parenting for Everyone (1989)

• When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you.
  When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you.
  When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you.
  Now that I love you, I’m afraid of losing you.
  • Silard Somorjay, in «The Voice Of Love» on The Streets of Beijing movie soundtrack, Video Art Beijing

• The greater the love, the greater the tragedy when it’s over.
  • Nicholas Sparks in «Nights in Rodanthe»

• From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 13: Note, Full text online

• Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 15: Corollary, Full text online

• If we conceive that anyone loves, desires, or hates anything which we ourselves love, desire, or hate, we shall thereupon regard the thing in question with more steadfast love, etc. On the contrary, if we think that anyone shrinks from something that we love, we shall undergo vacillation of the soul.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III : On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31, Full text online

• …it follows that everyone endeavors, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates…
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31: Corollary, Full text online

• This endeavor to bring it about, that our own likes and dislikes should meet with universal approval, is really ambition; wherefore we see that everyone by nature desires (appetere), that the rest of mankind should live according to his own individual disposition: when such a desire is equally present in all, everyone stands in everyone else’s way, and in wishing to be loved or praised by all, all become mutually hateful.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 31: Note, Full text online

• When we love a thing similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring about that it should love us in return.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 33, Full text online

• The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 34, Full text online

• If anyone conceives, that an object of his love joins itself to another with closer bonds of friendship than he himself has attained to, he will be affected with hatred towards the loved object and with envy towards his rival.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 35, Full text online

• If a man had begun to hate an object of his love, so that love is thoroughly destroyed, he will, causes being equal, regard it with more hatred than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be in proportion to the strength of his former love.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 38, Full text online

• He who hates anyone will endeavor to do him an injury, unless he fears that a greater injury will thereby accrue to himself; on the other hand, he who loves anyone will, by the same law, seek to benefit him.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 39 Full text online

• If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 41, Full text online

• Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 43, Full text online

• Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 44, Full text online

• Love or hatred towards a thing, which we conceive to be free, must, other things being similar, be greater than if it were felt towards a thing acting by necessity.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 49, Full text online

• This pain, accompanied by the idea of our own weakness, is called humility; the pleasure, which springs from the contemplation of ourselves, is called self-love or self-complacency. And inasmuch as this feeling is renewed as often as a man contemplates his own virtues, or his own power of activity, it follows that everyone is fond of narrating his own exploits, and displaying the force both of his body and his mind, and also that, for this reason, men are troublesome to one another. Again, it follows that men are naturally envious, rejoicing in the shortcomings of their equals, and feeling pain at their virtues. For whenever a man conceives his own actions, he is affected with pleasure, in proportion as his actions display more perfection, and he conceives them more distinctly—that is, in proportion as he can distinguish them from others, and regard them as something special. Therefore, a man will take pleasure in contemplating himself, when he contemplates some quality which he denies to others. But if that which he affirms of himself be attributable to the idea of man or animals in general, he will not be so greatly pleased: he will, on the contrary, feel pain, if he conceives that his own actions fall short when compared with those of others. This pain he will endeavor to remove, by putting a wrong construction on the actions of his equals, or by, as far as he can, embellishing his own. It is thus apparent that men are naturally prone to hatred and envy, which latter is fostered by their education. For parents are accustomed to incite their children to virtue solely by the spur of honor and envy, but perhaps, some will scruple to assent to what I have said, because we not seldom admire men’s virtues, and venerate their possessors. In order to remove such doubts I append the following corollary.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Prop. 55: Note, Full text online

• I have explained the causes of human infirmity and inconstancy, and shown why men do not abide by the precepts of reason. It now remains for me to show what course is marked out for us by reason, which of the emotions are in harmony with the rules of human reason, and which of them are contrary thereto. But, before I begin to prove my Propositions… it is advisable to sketch them briefly in advance… As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands, that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him… everything which really brings man to greater perfection… first, that the foundation of virtue is the endeavor to preserve one’s own being, and… happiness consists in man’s power of preserving his own being; secondly, that virtue is to be desired for its own sake, and that there is nothing more excellent or more useful to us… thirdly and lastly, that suicides are weak-minded, and are overcome by external causes repugnant to their nature. Further… we can never arrive at doing without all external things for the preservation of our being or living, so as to have no relations with things which are outside ourselves. …our intellect would be more imperfect, if mind were alone, and could understand nothing besides itself. There are, then, many things outside ourselves, which are useful to us… none can be discerned more excellent, than those which are in entire agreement with our nature. …if, for example, two individuals of entirely the same nature are united, they form a combination twice as powerful as either of them singly. Therefore, to man there is nothing more useful than man—nothing, I repeat, more excellent for preserving their being can be wished for by men, than that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body, and that all should, with one consent, as far as they are able, endeavor to preserve their being, and all with one consent seek what is useful to them all. Hence, men who are governed by reason—that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason, desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct. …I have taken this course, in order, if possible, to gain the attention of those who believe, that the principle that every man is bound to seek what is useful for himself is the foundation of impiety, rather than of piety and virtue.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Prop. 18: Note, Full text online

• He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives as much as possible to repay the hatred, anger, or contempt of others towards himself with love or generosity. …hatred is increased by reciprocal hatred, and, on the other hand, can be extinguished by love, so that hatred passes into love.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Prop. 66, Full text online

• In so far as men are influenced by envy or any kind of hatred, one towards another, they are at variance, and are therefore to be feared in proportion, as they are more powerful than their fellows.
  Yet minds are not conquered by force, but by love and high-mindedness.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part IV: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions, Appendix, 10 — 11, Full text online

• But love, I’ve come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
  • Nicholas Sparks in The Wedding

• In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
  • John Steinbeck in East of Eden

• In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. there is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
  • John Steinbeck in East of Eden, Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii

• Everything which the ego is able to unfold within itself must give birth to love. The all-embracing archetype of love is set forth in the revelation of… the Christ Mystery. Through Him the germ of love is planted in the innermost core of the human being; and from this starting-point it must flow through the whole of evolution. Just as the wisdom previously formed manifests in the forces of the earthly sense-world, in the “elementary forces” of to-day, so love itself will manifest in the future, in all phenomena, as the new “elementary force.”
  • Rudolf Steiner, in An Outline of Occult Science, p. 401, (1922)

• The secret of all future development is a recognition that everything achieved by man from a right comprehension of evolution is a sowing of seed which must ripen into love. And the greater the amount of love-force, so much the greater will be the creative force available for the future. In that which will grow from love, will lie the mighty forces leading to that culminating point of spiritualization described above… Spiritual knowledge is transmuted through its own nature into love… The wisdom of the outer world becomes inner wisdom in man from the Earth period onward and when it is concentrated in him, it becomes the germ of love. Wisdom is the necessary preliminary condition for love; love is the fruit of wisdom, reborn in the ego.
  • Rudolf Steiner, in An Outline of Occult Science, p. 402, (1922)

• Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
  • Stendhal in The Pink and the Green (Le Rose et le Vert, 1837), Ch. 9, translated by Richard Howard. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988, p. 89

• In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
  • Stendhal,De L’Amour (On Love) (1822), Ch. 1

• Les plaisirs et les soins de l’ambition la plus heureuse, même du pouvoir sans bornes, ne sont rien auprès du bonheur intime que donnent les relations de tendresse et d’amour. Je suis homme avant d’être prince, et, quand j’ai le bonheur d’aimer, ma maîtresse s’adresse à l’homme et non au prince.
  • The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am a man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
  • Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839), Ch. 7

• So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, «Lay Morals» Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911)

• Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other’s eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God’s creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 3

• The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, Truth of Intercourse

• All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, Aes Triplex (1878), The Oxford Book of Essays ed. by John Gross (New York: Oxford, 1998) [Title is Latin for «triple brass,» used by Horace], p. 316

• At the heart of its strength is a weakness: a lone candle can hold it back. Love is more than a candle, love can ignite the stars.
  • Matthew Stover in the Revenge of the Sith novelization

• There are a great deal of a great many kinds of love.
  • Lytton Strachey to Dora Carrington, 23.3.1917

• I remember wondering smokily whether anyone ever loves a person. People seem to love dreams instead, and for the lucky ones, the person is close to the dream. But it’s a dream all the same, a sticky dream. You unload the person, and the dream stays with you.
  • Theodore Sturgeon, The Martian and the Moron (Originally published in the March 1949 issue of Weird Tales).

• Love’s a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.
  • Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (1953)

• Let your love flow out on all living things. These words at some level have the quality of a strapping homily. Nonetheless, they are remarkably beautiful, strung together in their honest lump-like English syllables… Let your love flow out on all living things.
  But there are a couple of problems with this precept of mine. The first is, of course, that it is not mine. It springs from the universe and is the property of God, and the words have been intercepted — on the wing, so to speak — by such mediators as Lao-tzu, Jesus, Gautama Buddha and thousands upon thousands of lesser prophets, including your narrator, who heard the terrible truth of their drumming somewhere between Baltimore and Wilmington and set them down with the fury of a madman sculpting in stone.
  • William Styron, Sophie’s Choice (1979), Ch. 16
    • The italicized words being quotes of the song «Let Your Love Flow » by Larry E. Williams, as sung by The Bellamy Brothers

• Love can make you hostage, want to do it again?
  • Sugar Ray, «Fly» (1997)

• If love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf,
  Our lives would grow together
  In sad or singing weather,
  Blown fields or flowerful closes,
  Green pasture or gray grief;
  If love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (1866-89), «A Match»

• Before the beginning of years
  There came to the making of man
  Time with a gift of tears,
  Grief with a glass that ran,
  Pleasure with pain for leaven,
  Summer with flowers that fell,
  Remembrance fallen from heaven,
  And Madness risen from hell,
  Strength without hands to smite,
  Love that endures for a breath;
  Night, the shadow of light,
  And Life, the shadow of death.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon (1865), Second chorus, lines 1-12

• Time found our tired love sleeping,
  And kissed away his breath;
  But what should we do weeping,
  Though light love sleep to death?
  We have drained his lips at leisure,
  Till there’s not left to drain
  A single sob of pleasure,
  A single pulse of pain.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (1866-89), «Rococo», lines 17-24

• Before our lives divide for ever,
  While time is with us and hands are free,
  (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
  Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
  I will say no word that a man might say
  Whose whole life’s love goes down in a day;
  For this could never have been; and never,
  Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

  Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
  To think of things that are well outworn?
  Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
  The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
  Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
  Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
  Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
  But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• In the change of years, in the coil of things,
  In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
  We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
  Covered with love as a covering tree,
  We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
  Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
  Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
  O love, my love, had you loved but me!
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• The loves and hours of the life of a man,
  They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
  Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
  Born with a man’s breath, mortal as he;
  Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
  Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
  I lose what I long for, save what I can,
  My love, my love, and no love for me!
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
  You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
  But none shall triumph a whole life through:
  For death is one, and the fates are three.
  At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
  There are worse things waiting for men than death;
  Death could not sever my soul and you,
  As these have severed your soul from me.

  You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
  Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
  But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
  Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
  Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
  Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
  And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
  The gate is strait; I shall not be there.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
  The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
  The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
  The music burning at heart like wine,
  An armed archangel whose hands raise up
  All senses mixed in the spirit’s cup
  Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
  These things are over, and no more mine.

  These were a part of the playing I heard
  Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
  Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
  Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
  Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
  Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
  Now time has done with his one sweet word,
  The wine and leaven of lovely life.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• Our way is where God knows
  And Love knows where:
  We are in Love’s hand to-day.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Love at Sea

T[edit]

• The enthusiasm was based on pure love and love of what we were doing.
  • Donald Trump, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015) Preface, p. xiv

• Let this be my last word, that I trust in thy love.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916), 326

• Want of love is a degree of callousness; for love is the perfection of consciousness. We do not love because we do not comprehend, or rather we do not comprehend because we do not love. For love is the ultimate meaning of everything around us. It is not a mere sentiment; it is truth; it is the joy that is at the root of all creation. It is the white light of pure consciousness that emanates from Brahma. So, to be one with this sarvānubhūh, this all-feeling being who is in the external sky, as well as in our inner soul, we must attain to that summit of consciousness, which is love: Who could have breathed or moved if the sky were not filled with joy, with love?
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, on account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of him much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our own humanity…
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity. The first question and the last which it has to answer is, Whether and how far it recognises man more as a spirit than a machine? Whenever some ancient civilisation fell into decay and died, it was owing to causes which produced callousness of heart and led to the cheapening of man’s worth; when either the state or some powerful group of men began to look upon the people as a mere instrument of their power; when, by compelling weaker races to slavery and trying to keep them down by every means, man struck at the foundation of his greatness, his own love of freedom and fair-play. Civilisation can never sustain itself upon cannibalism of any form. For that by which alone man is true can only be nourished by love and justice.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time.
  Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love.
  In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what brings together and inseparably connects both the act of abandoning and that of receiving.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• In love, at one of its poles you find the personal, and at the other the impersonal. At one you have the positive assertion — Here I am; at the other the equally strong denial — I am not. Without this ego what is love? And again, with only this ego how can love be possible?
  Bondage and liberation are not antagonistic in love. For love is most free and at the same time most bound. If God were absolutely free there would be no creation. The infinite being has assumed unto himself the mystery of finitude. And in him who is love the finite and the infinite are made one.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• Compulsion is not indeed the final appeal to man, but joy is. And joy is everywhere; it is in the earth’s green covering of grass; in the blue serenity of the sky; in the reckless exuberance of spring; in the severe abstinence of grey winter; in the living flesh that animates our bodily frame; in the perfect poise of the human figure, noble and upright; in living; in the exercise of all our powers; in the acquisition of knowledge; in fighting evils; in dying for gains we never can share. Joy is there everywhere; it is superfluous, unnecessary; nay, it very often contradicts the most peremptory behests of necessity. It exists to show that the bonds of law can only be explained by love; they are like body and soul. Joy is the realisation of the truth of oneness, the oneness of our soul with the world and of the world-soul with the supreme lover.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life (1916)

• God seeks comrades and claims love,
  The devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
  • Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928)

• God recommends his own love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
  • Paul of Tarsus, Romans 5:8, NWT

• But if anyone loves God, this one is known by him.
  • Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 8:3

• Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.

• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man 1955, p. 264

• The truth is, indeed, that love is the threshold of another universe.
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, «The Evolution of Chastity» (1934), as translated by René Hague in Toward the Future (1975)

• What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, «The Evolution of Chastity» (February 1934), as translated in Toward the Future (1975) edited by René Hague, who also suggests «space» as an alternate translation of «the ether.»
  • Variants:
  • «One day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity» — after all the scientific and technological achievements — «we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.»
    • As quoted by R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. in his speech accepting the nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, in Washington, D. C. (8 August 1972); this has sometimes been published as if Shriver’s interjection «after all the scientific and technological achievements» were part of the original statement, as in The New York Times (9 August 1972), p. 18
  • What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.
    • As translated in The Ignatian Tradition (2009) edited by Kevin F. Burke, Eileen Burke-Sullivan and Phyllis Zagano, p. 86
  • Love is the only force which can make things one without destroying them. … Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
    • As quoted in Seed Sown : Theme and Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary Reading (1996) by Jay Cormier, p. 33
  • The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.
    • As quoted in Fire of Love : Encountering the Holy Spirit (2006) by Donald Goergen, p. 92
  • The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
    • As quoted in Read for the Cure (2007) by Eileen Fanning, p. v

• Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.

• A universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love.
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1955)

• If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level — indeed in the molecule itself — it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form. . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
  • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (1955)

• 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 Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40

• Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.
  • U Thant, «Buddhism and the Charter» in Religion and International Affairs (1968) edited by Jeffrey Rose and Michael Ignatieff, p. 114

• How come we don’t always know when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
  • Harris K. Telemacher (Steve Martin) in L. A. Story

• God gives us love. Something to love
  He lends us; but when love is grown
  To ripeness, that on which it throve
  Falls off, and love is left alone.
  • Alfred Tennyson, To J. S., stanza 4, from Poems (1832)

• ‘Tis better to have loved and lost,
  Than never to have loved at all.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part XXVII, Stanza 4

• For love reflects the thing beloved.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LII

• Love’s too precious to be lost,
  A little grain shall not be spilt.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LXV

• Lake Como […] is not like Lake Geneva surrounded by large fields well delimited and cultivated with the best systems, which suggest money and speculation. Here, wherever I turn, I see hills of unequal altitudes clothed with trees planted at will that the hand of man has not yet damaged and forced to bear fruit. Among these hills with admirable lines that plummet towards the lake for so singular steep slopes […]. Everything here nobly, exquisitely speaks of love, there is nothing that reminds you of the ugliness of civilization. Halfway up the hill, hidden by large trees, the hamlets nestle and beyond the tree tops the architectural vagueness of their bell towers rises. If some small field intrudes here and there in the groups of chestnut and cherry trees, the plants seem happily to grow more vigorous than elsewhere and the gaze rests happy. And beyond the hills, whose summits offer hermitages that everyone would gladly inhabit, the astonished eye catches sight of the perpetual snow white of the peaks of the Alps which in their solemn austerity remind him just as much of the adversities of life, as much as it is enough to value the present well-being. The sound of the bell of a distant village lost in the woods stimulates the imagination: the notes flow on the water, fading in a tone of resigned melancholy and seem to say to man: life is fleeing, do not resist the happiness that comes towards you […] hurry to enjoy it.
  • Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme, 1839

• There has fallen a splendid tear
  From the passion-flower at the gate.
  She is coming, my dove, my dear;
  She is coming, my life, my fate;
  The red rose cries, «She is near, she is near;»
  And the white rose weeps, «She is late;»
  The larkspur listens, «I hear; I hear;»
  And the lily whispers, «I wait.»
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 10

• She is coming, my own, my sweet;
  Were it ever so airy a tread,
  My heart would hear her and beat,
  Were it earth in an earthly bed;
  My dust would hear her and beat,
  Had I lain for a century dead;
  Would start and tremble under her feet,
  And blossom in purple and red.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 11

• Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
  Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien

• You, methinks you think you love me well;
  For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
  Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
  Not ever be too curious for a boon,
  Too prurient for a proof against the grain
  Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
  Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
  Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
  But work as vassal to the larger love,
  That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien

• Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
  And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
  I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

  Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
  Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
  O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
  …
  I fain would follow love, if that could be;
  I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
  Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1000

• «Free love, so bound, were freëst,» said the King.
  «Let love be free; free love is for the best:
  And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
  What should be best, if not so pure a love
  Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
  She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
  Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.»
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1370

• Lady, for indeed
  I loved you and I deemed you beautiful,
  I cannot brook to see your beauty marred
  Through evil spite: and if ye love me not,
  I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn:
  I had liefer ye were worthy of my love,
  Than to be loved again of you — farewell;
  And though ye kill my hope, not yet my love,
  Vex not yourself: ye will not see me more.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Pelleas and Ettarre

• We love but while we may;
  And therefore is my love so large for thee,
  Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament

• I will love thee to the death,
  And out beyond into the dream to come.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament

• My doom is, I love thee still.
  Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Guinevere

• Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover’s Tale (1879), line 466

• Where love could walk with banish’d Hope no more.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover’s Tale (1879), line 813

• Love’s arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
  And Hope kiss’d Love, and Love drew in her breath
  In that close kiss and drank her whisper’d tales.
  They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
  And Love mourn’d long, and sorrow’d after Hope;
  At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
  The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
  And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover’s Tale (1879), line 815

• Love will conquer at the last.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 280

• Who are wise in love
  Love most, say least
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
  Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• In a wink the false love turns to hate.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
  And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
  I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

  Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
  Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
  O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
  …
  I fain would follow love, if that could be;
  I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
  Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1000

• «Free love, so bound, were freëst,» said the King.
  «Let love be free; free love is for the best:
  And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
  What should be best, if not so pure a love
  Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
  She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
  Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know.»
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1370

• We love but while we may;
  And therefore is my love so large for thee,
  Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), The Last Tournament

• I will love thee to the death,
  And out beyond into the dream to come.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), The Last Tournament

• My doom is, I love thee still.
  Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Guinevere

• Here her hand
  Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw
  The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her,
  «Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?»
  Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
  All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed
  Within her, and she wept with these and said,

  «Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke
  The vast design and purpose of the King.
  O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls,
  Meek maidens, from the voices crying ‘shame.’

  I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.
  Let no one dream but that he loves me still.«

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Guinevere

• Love is and was my Lord and King,
  And in his presence I attend
  To hear the tidings of my friend,
  Which every hour his couriers bring.
  • CXXVI
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Parts I-CXXXI, CXXVI

• It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can’t: and are proud of our impotence, too.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 6

• 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 Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 40

• You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes…
  • ~Greta Thunberg In an address to world leaders at the United Nations about their failure to address climate change, (13 December 2018)

• Love without the will to love, relying solely on the force of emotion, can never penetrate to the other person.
  • Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, volume 3, p. 136

• You’re dressed in that dress, I like. Love is swinging in the air, tonight.
  • Justin Timberlake, «Suit & Tie» (2013), The 20/20 Experience (2013)

• They say it is to know the union with love that the soul takes union with the body.
  • Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural: 73

• The throb of life is love. Without it, humans are bodies of bones clad with skin.
  • Tiruvalluvar, Tirukkural: 80

• Feeling the oneness of yourself with all things is true love.
  • Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, (2003)

• To Love  is to recognize yourself in another.
  • Eckhart Tolle quoted in The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations, by Oprah Winfrey,  (17 October 2017)

• Some people have been trying for centuries to love their neighbor as themselves. But they have been finding it difficult because loving your neighbor as yourself really means, first of all, you need to be in touch with yourself, the self that you are beyond the form. And then you can love your neighbor as yourself because you recognize your oneness with your neighbor.
  • Eckhart Tolle quoted in  The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations, by Oprah Winfrey,  (17 October 2017)

• I call love the recognizing of yourself in the other, and yourself your essential self.
  • Eckhart Tolle quoted in The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations, by Oprah Winfrey,  (17 October 2017)

• Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.
  • Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

• The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.  
  • Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

• The moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace. First you stop judging yourself; then you stop judging your partner. The greatest catalyst for change in a relationship is complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without needing to judge or change them in any way. That immediately takes you beyond ego. All mind games and all addictive clinging are then over. There are no victims and no perpetrators anymore, no accuser and accused. This is also the end of all codependency, of being drawn into somebody else’s unconscious pattern and thereby enabling it to continue. You will then either separate — in love — or move ever more deeply into the Now together — into Being.
  • Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

• Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered «speechless,» sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.
  • Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

• Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form. In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.
  What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself and within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God. Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the «love» of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her.
  • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, p. 98, (2005)

• If in your relationships you experience both «love» and the opposite of love — attack, emotional violence, and so on — then it is likely that you are confusing ego attachment and addictive clinging with love. You cannot love your partner one moment and attack him or her the next. True love has no opposite. If your «love» has an opposite, then it is not love but a strong ego-need for a more complete and deeper sense of self, a need that the other person temporarily meets. It is the ego’s substitute for salvation, and for a short time it almost does feel like salvation.
  But there comes a point when your partner behaves in ways that fail to meet your needs, or rather those of your ego. The feelings of fear, pain, and lack that are an intrinsic part of egoic consciousness but had been covered up by the «love relationship» now resurface. Just as with every other addiction, you are on a high when the drug is available, but invariably there comes a time when the drug no longer works for you.
  • Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Chapter 8, Enlightened Relationships, (2005)

• Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
  • Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)

• When we do not love, we sleep, we are children of the dust — but love, and you are a god, you are pure, as on the first day of creation.
  • Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)

• Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
  • Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)

• To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one’s sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
  • Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace (1865-1869)

• I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
  • Leo Tolstoy in «What Men Live By» (1881)

• What are wanted …are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes… but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth …that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind.
  • Leo Tolstoy, in A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

• As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
  • Leo Tolstoy in «A Letter to a Hindu» (1908)

• The more God’s manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
  God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists…
  • Leo Tolstoy in his Diary (1 November 1910)

• I feel it in my fingers
  I feel it in my toes
  Love is all around me
  And so the feeling grows

  It is written on the wind
  Thats everywhere I go
  So if you really love me
  Come on and let it show

  • The Troggs, Love Is All Around (1967)

• There’s no beginning
  There be no end
  Cause on my love
  You can depend
  • The Troggs, Love Is All Around (1967)

• When people keep repeating
  That you’ll never fall in love
  When everybody keeps retreating
  But you can’t seem to get enough
  Let my love open the door
  Let my love open the door
  Let my love open the door
  To your heart.
  • Pete Townshend, in «Let My Love Open the Door» on Empty Glass (1980)

• For Truth makes holy Love’s illusive dreams,
  And their best promise constantly redeems.
  • Henry Theodore Tuckerman, «Sonnet XXII», in Poems (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), p. 168

• God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth,
  Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume:
  The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it:
  The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever.
  • Martin Farquhar Tupper, in «Of Immortality» in Proverbial Philosophy (1849)

• I don’t wanna lose you
  I don’t even wanna say goodbye
  I just wanna hold on
  To this true love, true love
  I don’t wanna lose you
  And I always wanna feel this way
  Cause everytime I’m with you I feel true love, true love
  • Tina Turner, I Don’t Wanna Lose You, (November 18, 1989) from the album Foreign Affair (September 13, 1989)

• Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it
  What’s love but a second hand emotion
  What’s love got to do, got to do with it
  Who needs a heart
  When a heart can be broken
  • Tina Turner, What’s Love Got to Do with It, (June 4, 1984[) from the album Private Dancer (May 29, 1984)

• I just sware
  That I’ll always be there
  I’d give anything and everything
  And I will always care
  Through weekness and strength
  Happiness and sorrow
  For better or for worse
  I will love you
  With every beat of my heart.
  • Shania Twain, From This Moment On, (1998) from the 1997 album Come On Over

• When I first saw you, I saw love
  And the first time you touched me, I felt love
  And after all this time,
  You’re still the one I love.
  […]
  (You’re still the one)
  You’re still the one I run to
  The one that I belong to
  You’re still the one I want for life
  (You’re still the one)
  You’re still the one that I love
  The only one I dream of
  You’re still the one I kiss good night.
  • Shania Twain, You’re Still the One, (1998) from the 1997 album Come On Over

• In your eyes
  (I can still see the look of the one)
  I can still see the look
  Of the one who really loves me
  (II can still feel the way that you want)

  The one who wouldn’t put anything
  Else in the world above me
  (I can still see your love for me)
  I can still see your love for me in your eyes
  (I still see the love)

  • Shania Twain, Forever and for Always, (2003) from the 2003 album Up!

U[edit]

• You say love is a temple, love a higher law
  Love is a temple, love the higher law
  You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl
  And I can’t be holdin’ on to what you got
  When all you got is hurt
  • U2, One (6 March 1992) from the 1990 album Achtung Baby

• It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.
  • Miguel de Unamuno, To a Young Writer

• Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total All, that the Universe, is also a person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God.
  • Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Del Sentimiento Trágico de la Vida as translated by J. E. Crawford Flitch (1921), VII: Love, Suffering, Pity

• Love lifts us up where we belong
  Where the eagles cry
  On a mountain high

  Love lifts us up where we belong
  Far from the world we know
  Up where the clear winds blow

  • «Up Where We Belong», song performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

V[edit]

• The soul of love is the invincible difference of lovers, while its subtle matter is the identity of their desires.
  • Paul Valéry, «Dance and the Soul» (1921), in Dialogues (Bollingen Series XLV 4/ Princeton University Press, 1989), translated by William McCausland Stewart, p. 47

• There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light,
  And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.
  There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest,
  But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.
  • Henry van Dyke, Love and Light

• If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
  • Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886 (1927) Constable & Co
  • Variant: Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
    • As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 483

• I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
  But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.
  • Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh (July 1880) as translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger

• Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.
  • Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh from Nuenen, (c. 9 March 1884)

• The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
  • Vincent van Gogh, As quoted in Van Gogh : The Self-portraits (1969) by Fritz Erpel, p. 17
  • Variant translations: The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
    • As quoted in Mary Engelbreit’s Words To Live By (1999) by Mary Engelbreit
  • I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

• What are we to do about those countless men and women and children, in distress and perhaps in despair, who are our brothers and sisters? There are practical things—small things perhaps, but practical, and important—that we can do, and must try to do; but first let us be clear about one thing, the thing on which all the practical help must be built if it is to be of real value to the world in the long run: the fact that love is something in the will, the will to share other people’s burdens, and that this will can come only from a humble heart.
  • Gerald Vann, The Two Trees (1948). London: Collins, p. 35

• Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori.
  • Love conquers all and we must yield to Love.
  • Virgil, Eclogues (37 BC), Book X, line 69.
  • Variant translation: «Love conquers all; let us, too, yield to love.»

• Quis fallere possit amantem?
  • Who can deceive a lover?
  • Virgil, Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 296. Variant: «Who could deceive a lover?»

• Improbe Amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
  • All-powerful Love! what changes canst thou cause
    In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!
  • Virgil, Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 412 (as translated by John Dryden); referring to the unwise actions undertaken by Dido, actuated by amorous passion.
  • Variant translation: Oh wretched love! to what do you not impel the human breast?

• Amor omnibus idem.
  • Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.
    • Virgil, Georgics (29 BC), III, 244

• I know you love your wife Joe. Do you know how love is defined? Josef Pieper described it in this way: Love is a fundamental YES to the existence of the beloved. Well, you know what contraception is? First of all it is a NO to your wife’s fertility which is not something she has, but something she is [therefore contraception is a fundamental NO to your wife because of the intimate union between her body and her soul]. Secondly, contraception is a fundamental NO to the potential existence of the child. Therefore, this fundamental NO, inserted in the most intimate expression of conjugal love, contradicts the very nature of love [the YES to the existence of the other] and as such will inexorably erode the love between any husband and wife who practice contraception.
  • Fr. Emmanuel Vita; in Fr. Augustine Mary “Contraception, What’s Allowed?“, EWTN, (1996)

• L’amour est de toutes les passions la plus forte, parce qu’elle attaque à la fois la tête, le cœur et le corps.
  • Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.
    • Le Dernier Volume Des Œuvres De Voltaire: Contes — Comédie — Pensées — Poésies — Lettres (1862)

• Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;
  Il l’est—le fut—ou le doit être.

  Whoe’er thou art, thy master see;
  He was—or is—or is to be.

  • Voltaire, Works, II, p. 765 (Ed. 1837). Used as an inscription for a statue of Cupid

• Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l’infâme, et aimez qui vous aime.
  • Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.
    • Voltaire, Letter to Jean le Rond d’Alembert (28 November 1762); This was written in reference to crushing superstition, and the words «écrasez l’infâme» («Crush the Infamy») became a motto strongly identified with Voltaire

• A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in The Sirens of Titan (1959)

• Make love when you can. It’s good for you.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in Mother Night (1961)

• If somebody says, «I love you», to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol-holder requires? «I love you, too».
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, «Address at Dedication of Wheaton College Library, 1973» (1974)

• Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. from the prologue of Slapstick (1976)

• I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, «Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency.»
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. from the prologue of Slapstick (1976)

• There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat’s Cradle (1963), Chapter 7

• Love does not care for time or order.
  • Mallanaga Vātsyāyana, Kama Sutra, Part II, Chapter III

W[edit]

• Love,—the shining goal
  Of every human soul.
  • Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff, Eris: A Dramatic Allegory (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1914), p. 19

• Life is a game and true love is a trophy.
  • Rufus Wainwright, «Poses»

• The world moves for love; it kneels before it in awe.
  • Edward Walker (William Hurt), in The Village

• Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
  We should agree as angels do above.
  • Edmund Waller, in «Of Divine Love» (c. 1686)

• Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
  That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
  For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
  Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
  So all we know of what they do above,
  Is that they happy are, and that they love.
  Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
  Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
  Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
  But with our nobler part invades the sky.
  • Edmund Waller, Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

• The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.
  • Hugh Walpole As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 597

• I would dare to say that love is God living in our midst.
  • Reginald somerset Ward. As quoted in Reginald Somerset Ward 1881-1882, His life and Letters, ed.E.R.Morgan. Mowbray, 1962. P.68

• It’s the Roman god, Janus. My mother gave it to me when I was little. She wanted to teach me that people have two sides. A good side, a bad side, a past, a future. And that we must embrace both in someone we love.
  • Elise Clifton-Ward (played by Angelina Jolie) in The Tourist

• Love is to die, love is to not die,
  Love is to dance, love is to dance.
  Love is to die,
  Why don’t you not die?
  Why don’t you dance?
  Why don’t you dance and dance?
  • Warpaint, Love Is To Die, Warpaint (2014)

• There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.
  • Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)

• Love is not consolation, it is light.
  • Simone Weil, as quoted in Simone Weil (1954) by Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin, p. 47

• The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
  Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.
  This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world’s reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.
  • Simone Weil, Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)

• One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.
  • Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks (1970), Last Notebook (1942) p. 84

• If you say to someone who has ears to hear: «What you are doing to me is not just,» you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, «I have the right…» or «you have no right to…» They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.
  • Simone Weil, Human Personality (1943), Written c. 1933; published in Selected Essays 1934-1943, p. 63

• He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate. Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.
  • Simone Weil, The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 192

• Belief in the existence of other human beings as such is love.
  • Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1972), p. 56

• Love is a minefield. You take a step and get blown to pieces, put yourself back together again and stupidly take another step. I guess that’s human nature. It hurts so much to be alone that we’d all rather blow up than be single.
  • Kate Welles (Famke Janssen) in Love & Sex (2000)

• I observed, «Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment.» It is not only «the first and great» command, but all the commandments in one. «Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,» they are all comprised in this one word, love.
  • John Wesley quoting his own earlier sermon on «The Circumsicion of the Heart» (1 January 1733) in the work A Plain Account Of Christian Perfection (Edition of 1777)

• An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
  • John Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley (1830), p. 393

• Justice is what love looks like in public.
  • Cornel West, Brother West (2009), p. 232

• Life is ever lord of Death
  And Love can never lose its own.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow Bound, reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

• Be not dishearten’d, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
  Those who love each other shall become invincible…
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, DRUM-TAPS, Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice (1860; 1867)

• * Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
  Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,
  Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
  The heart of man and woman all for love,
  No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, The Mystic Trumpeter

• Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, that mocks time and space,
  Love, that is day and night — love, that is sun and moon and stars,
  Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
  No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, The Mystic Trumpeter

• Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over…
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, SONGS OF PARTING, Ashes of Soldiers

• There is no language that love does not speak.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox from Love’s Language Poems of Progress 1913 edition

• I find a rapture linked with each despair,
  Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
  More good than evil in humanity.
  Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
  And men grow better as the world grows old.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Pleasure (1900), Optimism

• Between the finite and the infinite
  The missing link of Love has left a void.
  Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join
  In one continued chain of endless life.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)

• Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
  Is Love’s location. No dogmatic creed,
  No austere faith based on ignoble fear
  Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
  Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
  Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
  Think not to find a Paradise beyond.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)

• There is no sudden entrance into Heaven.
  Slow is the ascent by the path of Love.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)

• Look to the Great Eternal Cause
  And not to any man, for light.
  Look in; and learn the wrong, and right,
  From your own soul’s unwritten laws.
  And when you question, or demur,
  Let Love be your Interpreter.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Assistance

• Breathe «God,» in any tongue — it means the same;
  LOVE ABSOLUTE: Think, feel, absorb the thought;
  Shut out all else; until a subtle flame
  (A spark from God’s creative centre caught)
  Shall permeate your being, and shall glow,
  Increasing in its splendour, till, YOU KNOW.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Knowledge

• Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth
  Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning.
  And wheresoe’er thy pathway leads on earth,
  There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Give

• Divine the Powers that on this trio wait.
  Supreme their conquest, over Time and Fate.
  Love, Work, and Faith — these three alone are great.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Three Things

• All love that has not friendship for its base,
  Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Love

• le mystère de l’amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort.

• The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
  • Oscar Wilde, Salomé (1893)

• Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
  • Oscar Wilde as quoted by Alvin Redman in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde (1952)

• Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart’s-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
  • Oscar Wilde, «The Nightingale and the Rose» from The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

• To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
  • Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young (1894), first published in the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon (December 1894) Full text online

• Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1

• When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 4

• To be in love is to surpass one’s self.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 5

• Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 17

• Some kill their love when they are young,
  And some when they are old;
  Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
  Some with the hands of Gold.
  • Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Goal (1898)

• Even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other.
  • Thornton Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)

• There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
  • Thornton Wilder in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), final sentence

• «Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing.»
  «But it’s true-«
  «Still doesn’t mean anything. What you feel only matters to you. It is what you do to the people you love; that’s what matters. That’s the only thing that counts.»
  • Stephen (Tom Wilkinson), in The Last Kiss (2006)

• Taylor: Imagine me needing someone. Back on Earth I never did. Oh, there were women. Lots of women. Lots of love-making but no love. You see, that was the kind of world we’d made. So I left, because there was no one to hold me there.
  • Planet of the Apes (1968 film), screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling

• Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
  And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
  And let your love show and you’ll know what I mean
  It’s the season
  Let your love fly like a bird on a wing
  And let your love bind you to all livin’ things
  And let your love shine and you’ll know what I mean
  That’s the reason.
  • Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow (1976)

• Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
  And let your love grow.
  • Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow (1976)
• There is no more powerful motivation than to feel we’re being used in the creation of a world where love has healed all wounds. We are no longer ambitious for ourselves, but are rather inspired by the vision of a healed world.

• If we wait for the world’s permission to shine, we will never receive it. The ego doesn’t give that permission. Only God does, and He has already done so. He has sent you here as His personal representative and is asking you to channel His love into the world. Are you waiting for a more important job? There isn’t one.
  • Marianne Williamson in A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of «A Course in Miracles» (1992) Ch. 7

• A politics of conscience is still yet possible. And yes… love will prevail.
  • Marianne Williamson,Twitter (10 Jan 20)

• A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.
  • Gene Wolfe, «Bed and Breakfast», in Dante’s Disciples (1995), ed. Edward E. Kramer. Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Strange Travelers (2000)

• Living might mean taking chances, but they’re worth taking.
  Loving might be a mistake, but it’s worth making.
  • Lee Ann Womack, I Hope You Dance (2000)

• A bride burns her bridges, having fallen in love, and drowns in marriage.
  • David Woodard, Breed the Unmentioned (1985)

• Love is the true antithesis of fear. It expands where fear constricts. It embraces where fear repels.
  • Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, p. 45 (1997)

• A long time ago, Anne used to talk about energy—how that was all that love was—ions connecting across synapses of time and air. Don’t rationalize, she’d say. None of it will ever make sense. I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, not wanting to cry. Anne was right. None of it made any sense.
  • Jacqueline Woodson, If You Come Softly (1998) p. 58
  • Fiction; inner thoughts of Elisha

• True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
  Whose veil is unremoved
  Till heart with heart in concord beats,
  And the lover is beloved.
  • William Wordsworth, To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824)

• If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
  Of young imagination have kept pure
  Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
  Howe’er disguised in its own majesty,
  Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
  For any living thing, hath faculties
  Which he has never used; that thought with him
  Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
  Is ever on himself doth look on one,
  The least of Nature’s works, one who might move
  The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
  Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou !
  Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
  True dignity abides with him alone
  Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
  Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
  In lowliness of heart.
  • William Wordsworth, Lines (1795)

X[edit]

• Ignorance of each other is what has made unity impossible in the past. Therefore we need enlightenment. We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity. Once we have more knowledge (light) about each other, we will stop condemning each other and a United front will be brought about.
  • Malcolm X, Malcolm X: The Man and his Times, edited by John Henrik Clarke and published by Africa World Press in 1990, p. 304

• How can anyone be against love?
  • Malcolm X, By any means necessary: speeches, interviews, and a letter (1970)

• Many who are careful with their money no sooner fall in love than they begin to waste it: and when they have spent it all, they no longer shrink from making more by methods which they formerly avoided because they thought them disgraceful.
  • Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.22

Y[edit]

• The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
  • William Butler Yeats, Letter to Frederick J. Gregg (undated, Sligo, late summer, 1886)

• A pity beyond all telling
  Is hid in the heart of love.
  • William Butler Yeats, The Pity Of Love in The Rose (1893); in recent years a statement which might have originated as a misquotation of the first lines of this has been attributed to Oscar Wilde: «To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.» — no occurrence prior to 1999 has yet been located.

• 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 In The Seven Woods (1904)

• But is there any comfort to be found?
  Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
  What more is there to say?
  • William Butler Yeats, Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen I, st. 5-6

• Speech after long silence; it is right,
  All other lovers being estranged or dead,
  Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
  The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
  That we descant and yet again descant
  Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
  Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
  We loved each other and were ignorant.
  • William Butler Yeats, After Long Silence in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

• Love is in the air
  Everywhere I look around
  Love is in the air
  Every sight and every sound
  And I don’t know if I’m being foolish
  Don’t know if I’m being wise
  But it’s something that I must believe in
  And it’s there when I look in your eyes.
  • John Paul Young, in Love Is in the Air (1977) (Performance in 1978)

• Love is in the air
  In the whisper of the trees
  Love is in the air
  In the thunder of the sea
  And I don’t know if I’m just dreaming
  Don’t know if I feel sane
  But it’s something that I must believe in
  And it’s there when you call out my name.
  • John Paul Young, in «Love Is in the Air» (1977)

• You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn’t true. I know a lot about love. I’ve seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate… Made me want to turn away and never look down again. But to see the way that mankind loves… I mean, you could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and… What I’m trying to say, Tristan, is… I think I love you. My heart… It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn’t belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange — no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me, too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.
  • «Yvaine» in Stardust (2007 film), based on Stardust (1998), by Neil Gaiman

• Only love can break your heart.
  • Neil Young, Only love can break your heart

Z[edit]

• Truth, like a woman, must be wooed and won — and this is only through the purity of mind and the heart’s deep love.
  • David Zindell, The Wild (1995), p. 388

• Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner.
  • Slavoj Žižek, Interview in HARDtalk, BBC World Service (12 January 2010)

Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations[edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 464-84.

• Che amar chi t’odia, ell’è impossibil cosa.

  For ’tis impossible
  Hate to return with love.

  • Vittorio Alfieri, Polinice, II. 4

• Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
  For one lone soul another lonely soul,
  Each choosing each through all the weary hours,
  And meeting strangely at one sudden goal,
  Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers,
  Into one beautiful and perfect whole;
  And life’s long night is ended, and the way
  Lies open onward to eternal day.
  • Edwin Arnold, Somewhere There Waiteth

• Ma vie a son secret, mon âme a son mystére:
  Un amour éternel en un moment concu.
  La mal est sans remède, aussi j’ai dû le taire,
  Et elle qui l’a fait n’en a jamais rien su.

  One sweet, sad secret holds my heart in thrall;
  A mighty love within my breast has grown,
  Unseen, unspoken, and of no one known;
  And of my sweet, who gave it, least of all.

  • Félix Arvers, Sonnet. Translation by Joseph Knight. In The Athenæum, Jan. 13, 1906. Arvers in Mes Heures Perdues, says that the sonnet was «mite de l’italien»

• How many times do I love, again?
  Tell me how many beads there are
  In a silver chain
  Of evening rain
  Unravelled from the trembling main
  And threading the eye of a yellow star:—
  So many times do I love again.
  • Thomas Lovell Beddoes, How Many Times

• Mein Herz ich will dich fragen,
  Was ist denn Liebe, sag?
  «Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
  Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag.»
  • My heart I fain would ask thee
    What then is Love? say on.
    «Two souls and one thought only
    Two hearts that throb as one.»
  • Von Münch Bellinghausen (Friedrich Halm)—Der Sohn der Wildniss, Act II. Translation by W. H. Charlton. (Commended by author). Popular translation. of the play is by Marie Lovell—Ingomar the Barbarian. Two souls with but a single thought, / Two hearts that beat as one

• To Chloe’s breast young Cupid slily stole,
  But he crept in at Myra’s pocket-hole.
  • William Blake, Couplets and Fragments, IV

• Love in a shower safe shelter took,
  In a rosy bower beside a brook,
  And winked and nodded with conscious pride
  To his votaries drenched on the other side.
  Come hither, sweet maids, there’s a bridge below,
  The toll-keeper, Hymen, will let you through.
  Come over the stream to me.
  • Bloomfield, Glee, Stanza 1

• Love is like fire.
  Wounds of fire are hard to bear; harder still are those of love.
  • w:Hjalmar Hjorth BoyesenHjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, Gunnar, Chapter IV

• Le premier soupir de l’amour
  Est le dernier de la sagesse.

  The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.

  • Antoine Bret, Ecole amoureuse, scene 7

• Much ado there was, God wot;
  He woold love, and she woold not,
  She sayd, «Never man was trewe;»
  He sayes, «None was false to you.»
  • Nicholas Breton, Phillida and Corydon

• In your arms was still delight,
  Quiet as a street at night;
  And thoughts of you, I do remember,
  Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
  Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
  • Rupert Brooke, Retrospect

• For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
  I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Insufficiency

• Behold me! I am worthy
  Of thy loving, for I love thee!
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lady Geraldine’s Courtship, Stanza 79

• Who can fear
  Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll—
  Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
  Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
  The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
  To love me also in silence, with thy soul.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet XXI

• Unless you can feel when the song is done
  No other is sweet in its rhythm;
  Unless you can feel when left by one
  That all men else go with him.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Unless

• I think, am sure, a brother’s love exceeds
  All the world’s loves in its unworldliness.
  • Robert Browning, Blot on the ‘Scutcheon, Act II, scene 1

• Never the time and the place
  And the loved one all together.
  • Robert Browning, Never the Time and the Place

• God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
  One to show a woman when he loves her.
  • Robert Browning, One Word More, Stanza XVII

• Love has no thought of self!
  Love buys not with the ruthless usurer’s gold
  The loathsome prostitution of a hand
  Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things
  To bless the thing it loves!
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Lady of Lyons, Act V, scene 2, line 23

• Love thou, and if thy love be deep as mine,
  Thou wilt not laugh at poets.
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839), Act I, scene 1, line 177

• No matter what you do, if your heart is ever true,
  And his heart was true to Poll.
  • F. C. Burnand, His Heart was true to Poll

• To see her is to love her,
  And love but her forever;
  For nature made her what she is,
  And never made anither!
  • Robert Burns, Bonny Lesley

• The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw,
  He dearly loved the lasses, O.
  • Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes

• The golden hours on angel wings
  Flew o’er me and my dearie,
  For dear to me as light and life
  Was my sweet Highland Mary.
  • Robert Burns, Highland Mary

• Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose,
  That’s newly sprung in June;
  Oh my luve’s like the melodie
  That’s sweetly played in tune.
  • Robert Burns, Red, Red Rose

• What is life, when wanting love?
  Night without a morning;
  Love’s the cloudless summer sun,
  Nature gay adorning.
  • Robert Burns, Thine am I, my Faithful Fair

• When things were as fine as could possibly be
  I thought ’twas the spring; but alas it was she.
  • John Byrom, A Pastoral

• I’ll bid the hyacinth to blow,
  I’ll teach my grotto green to be;
  And sing my true love, all below
  The holly bower and myrtle tree.
  • Thomas Campbell, Caroline, Part I

• My love lies bleeding.
  • Thomas Campbell, O’Connor’s Child, Stanza 5

• He that loves a rosy cheek,
  Or a coral lip admires,
  Or from star-like eyes doth seek
  Fuel to maintain his fires,
  As Old Time makes these decay,
  So his flames must waste away.
  • Thomas Carew, Disdain Returned

• Then fly betimes, for only they
  Conquer love, that run away.
  • Thomas Carew, Song, Conquest by Flight

• Of all the girls that are so smart
  There’s none like pretty Sally;
  She is the darling of my heart,
  And lives in our alley.
  • Henry Carey, Sally in our Alley

• Let Time and Chance combine, combine!
  Let Time and Chance combine!
  The fairest love from heaven above,
  That love of yours was mine,
  My Dear!
  That love of yours was mine.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Adieu

• Vivamus, mea Lesbia atque amemus.

  My Lesbia, let us live and love.

  • Catullus, Carmina, V. 1

• Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
  In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

  What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXX. 3

• Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.

  It is difficult at once to relinquish a long-cherished love.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXXVI. 13

• Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
  Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.

  I hate and I love. Why do I do so you perhaps ask.
  I cannot say; but I feel it to be so, and I am tormented accordingly.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXXXV

• It’s love, it’s love that makes the world go round.
  • Popular French song in Chansons Nationales et Populaires de France, Volume II, p. 180 (c. 1821)

• I tell thee Love is Nature’s second sun,
  Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
  • George Chapman, All Fools, Act I, scene 1, line 98

• None ever loved, but at first sight they loved.
  • George Chapman, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria

• Banish that fear; my flame can never waste,
  For love sincere refines upon the taste.
  • Colley Cibber, The Double Gallant, Act V, scene 1

• Vivunt in venerem frondes omnisque vicissim
  Felix arbor amat; mutant ad mutua palmæ
  Fœdera.

  The leaves live but to love, and in all the lofty grove the happy trees love each his neighbor.

  • Claudianus, De Nuptiis Honorii et Mariæ, LXV

• Her very frowns are fairer far
  Than smiles of other maidens are.
  • Hartley Coleridge, Song, She is not Fair

• Alas! they had been friends in youth;
  But whispering tongues can poison truth,
  And constancy lives in realms above;
  And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
  And to be wroth with one we love
  Doth work like madness in the brain.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (c. 1797-1801, published 1816), Part II

• All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of Love,
  And feed his sacred flame.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love, Stanza 1

• I have heard of reasons manifold
  Why love must needs be blind,
  But this is the best of all I hold—
  His eyes are in his mind.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, To a Lady, Stanza 2

• He that can’t live upon love deserves to die in a ditch.
  • William Congreve

• Say what you will, ’tis better to be left
  Than never to have loved.
  • William Congreve, Way of the World, Act II, scene 1

• If there’s delight in love, ’tis when I see
  The heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.
  • William Congreve, Way of the World, Act III, scene 3

• I know not when the day shall be,
  I know not when our eyes may meet;
  What welcome you may give to me,
  Or will your words be sad or sweet,
  It may not be ’till years have passed,
  ‘Till eyes are dim and tresses gray;
  The world is wide, but, love, at last,
  Our hands, our hearts, must meet some day.
  • Hugh Conway, Some Day

• How wise are they that are but fools in love!
  • How a man may choose a Good Wife, Act I. 1. Attributed to Joshua Cooke in Dictioanry of National Biography

• A mighty pain to love it is,
  And ’tis a pain that pain to miss;
  But, of all pains, the greatest pain
  Is to love, but love in vain.
  • Abraham Cowley, Translation of Anacreontic Odes, VII. Gold. (Anacreon’s authorship doubted)

• Better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.
  • George Crabbe, The Struggles of Conscience, Tale 14

• Heaven’s great artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Flaming Heart, line 56

• Love’s great artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Prayer, line 18

• Mighty Love’s artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Wounds of the Lord Jesus, line 2

• And I, what is my crime I cannot tell,
  Vnless it be a crime to haue lou’d too well.
  • Richard Crashaw, Alexias

• Poor love is lost in men’s capacious minds,
  In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.
  • John Crowne, Thyestes

• He who, being bold
  For life to come, is false to the past sweet
  Of mortal life, hath killed the world above.
  For why to live again if not to meet?
  And why to meet if not to meet in love?
  And why in love if not in that dear love of old?
  • Sydney Dobell, Sonnet, To a Friend in Bereavement

• Give, you gods,
  Give to your boy, your Cæsar,
  The rattle of a globe to play withal,
  This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off;
  I’ll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.
  • John Dryden, All for Love, Act II, scene 1

• How happy the lover,
  How easy his chain,
  How pleasing his pain,
  How sweet to discover
  He sighs not in vain.
  • John Dryden, King Arthur, IV. 1. Song

• Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
  And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury.
  • John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book II, line 75. Amphitron, Act I, scene 2

• Pains of love be sweeter far
  Than all other pleasures are.
  • John Dryden, Tyrannic Love, Act IV, scene 1

• Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart.
  • Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, First Week, Part I. Sixth day, line 1,057

• I’m sitting on the stile. Mary,
  Where we sat side by side.
  • Lady Dufferin, Lament of the Irish Emigrant

• Oh, tell me whence Love cometh!
  Love comes uncall’d, unsent.
  Oh, tell me where Love goeth!
  That was not Love that went.
  • Burden of a Woman. Found in J. W. Ebsworth’s Roxburghe Ballads

• The solid, solid universe
  Is pervious to Love;
  With bandaged eyes he never errs,
  Around, below, above.
  His blinding light
  He flingeth white
  On God’s and Satan’s brood,
  And reconciles
  By mystic wiles
  The evil and the good.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cupido

• A ruddy drop of manly blood
  The surging sea outweighs;
  The world uncertain comes and goes,
  The lover rooted stays.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series. Epigraph to Friendship

• Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Friendship

• All mankind love a lover.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Love

• Venus, when her son was lost,
  Cried him up and down the coast,
  In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
  And told the truant by his marks,—
  Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Initial, Demoniac, and Celestial Love, Stanza 1

• Mais on revient toujours
  A ses premières amours.

  But one always returns to one’s first loves.

  • Quoted by Étienne in Joconde, Act III. 1. Same idea in Pliny the Elder, Natural History, X, 63

• Venus, thy eternal sway
  All the race of men obey.
  • Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

• He is not a lover who does not love for ever.
  • Euripides, Troades, 1,051

• Wedded love is founded on esteem.
  • Elijah Fenton, Mariamne

• Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
  Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
  It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
  • John Ford, The Lover’s Melancholy (licensed 24 November 1628; printed 1629), Act III, scene 3, line 105

• Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
  ‘Tis friendship, and ’tis something more.
  Each other every wish they give;
  Not to know love is not to live.
  • John Gay, Plutus, Cupid and Time, line 135

• I saw and loved.
  • Edward Gibbon, Autobiographic Memoirs, p. 48

• I love her doubling and anguish;
  I love the love she withholds,
  I love my love that loveth her,
  And anew her being moulds.
  • R. W. Gilder, The New Day, Part III. Song XV

• Love, Love, my Love.
  The best things are the truest!
  When the earth lies shadowy dark below
  Oh, then the heavens are bluest!
  • R. W. Gilder, The New Day, Part IV. Song I

• Not from the whole wide world I chose thee,
  Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
  The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
  For thou art the whole wide world to me.
  • R. W. Gilder, Song

• I seek for one as fair and gay,
  But find none to remind me,
  How blest the hours pass’d away
  With the girl I left behind me.
  • The Girl I Left Behind Me (1759)

• Es ist eine der grössten Himmelsgaben,
  So ein lieb’ Ding im Arm zu haben.

  It is one of Heaven’s best gifts to hold such a dear creature in one’s arms.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

• Und Lust und Liebe sind die Fittige zu grossen Thaten.

  Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenia auf Tauris, II. 1. 107

• In einem Augenblick gewährt die Liebe
  Was Mühe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.

  Love grants in a moment
  What toil can hardly achieve in an age.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, II. 3. 76

• Man liebt an dem Mädchen was es ist,
  Und an dem Jüngling was er ankündigt.

  Girls we love for what they are;
  Young men for what they promise to be.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahrheit und Dichtung, III. 14

• Wenn ich dich lieb habe, was geht’s dich an?

  If I love you, what business is that of yours?

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, IV. 9

• Thus let me hold thee to my heart,
  And every care resign:
  And we shall never, never part,
  My life—my all that’s mine!
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Hermit, Stanza 39

• As for murmurs, mother, we grumble a little now and then, to be sure; but there’s no love lost between us.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act IV, line 255

• Whoe’er thou art, thy Lord and master see,
  Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shalt be.
  • George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne, Inscription for a Figure representing the God of Love. See Genuine Works. (1732) I. 129. Version of a Greek couplet from the Greek Anthology

• Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
  Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
  • Thomas Gray, The Bard, I. 3, line 12

• O’er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
  The bloom of young Desire and purple light of love.
  • Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy. I. 3, line 16

• Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
  Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love.
  • Robert Greene, Alcida. Verses Written under a Carving of Cupid Blowing Bladders in the Air

• Greensleeves was all my joy,
  Greensleeves was my delight,
  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
  And who but Lady Greensleeves?
  • A new Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Greensleeves, to the new tune of «Greensleeves», from «A Handful of Pleasant Deities» (1584)

• The chemist of love
  Will this perishing mould,
  Were it made out of mire,
  Transmute into gold.
  • Hafiz, Divan

• Love understands love; it needs no talk.
  • Francis Ridley Havergal, Royal Commandments, Loving Allegiance

• What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (1860), Volume II, Chapter XV

• Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.
  • Hebrews, XII. 6

• Du bist wie eine Blume, so hold, so schön und rein;
  Ich shau’ dich an und Wehmut schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.

  Oh fair, oh sweet and holy as dew at morning tide,
  I gaze on thee, and yearnings, sad in my bosom hide.

  • Heinrich Heine, Du bist wie eine Blume

• Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
  Doch bleibt sie immer neu.

  It is an ancient story
  Yet is it ever new.

  • Heinrich Heine, Lyrisches Intermezzo, 39

• And once again we plighted our troth,
  And titter’d, caress’d, kiss’d so dearly.
  • Heinrich Heine, Youthful Sorrows. No. 57, Stanza 2

• Alas! for love, if thou art all,
  And nought beyond, O earth.
  • Felicia Hemans, The Graves of a Household

• Open your heart and take us in,
  Love—love and me.
  • William Ernest Henley, Rhymes and Rhythms, V

• No, not Jove
  Himselfe, at one time, can be wise and love.
  • Robert Herrick, Hesperides, To Silvia

• You say to me-wards your affection’s strong;
  Pray love me little, so you love me long.
  • Robert Herrick, Love me Little, Love me Long

• There is a lady sweet and kind,
  Was never face so pleased my mind;
  I did but see her passing by,
  And yet I love her till I die.
  • Ascribed to Robert Herrick in the Scottish Student’s Song-Book. Found on back of leaf 53 of Popish Kingdome or reigne of Antichrist, in Latin verse by Thomas Naogeorgus, and Englished by Barnabe Googe. Printed 1570. See Notes and Queries. S. IX. X. 427. Lines from Elizabethan Song-books. Bullen, p. 31. Reprinted from Thomas Ford’s Music of Sundry Kinds. (1607)

• Bid me to live, and I will live
  Thy Protestant to be:
  Or bid me love, and I will give
  A loving heart to thee,
  A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
  A heart as sound and free
  As in the whole world thou canst find,
  That heart I’ll give to thee.
  • Robert Herrick, To Anthea, who may command him anything, No. 268

• Let never man be bold enough to say,
  Thus, and no farther shall my passion stray:
  The first crime, past, compels us into more,
  And guilt grows fate, that was but choice, before.
  • Aaron Hill, Athelwold, Act V, scene The Garden

• To love is to know the sacrifices which eternity exacts from life.
  • John Oliver Hobbes, School for Saints, Chapter XXV

• O, love, love, love!
  Love is like a dizziness;
  It winna let a poor body
  Gang about his biziness!
  • Hogg, Love is like a Dizziness, line 9

• Cupid «the little greatest enemy.»
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Professor at the Breakfast Table

• Soft is the breath of a maiden’s Yes:
  Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
  But never a cable that holds so fast
  Through all the battles of wave and blast.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Songs of Many Seasons, Dorothy, II, Stanza 7

• Who love too much, hate in the like extreme.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XV, line 79. Pope’s translation

• For love deceives the best of woman kind.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XV, line 463. Pope’s translation

• Si sine amore, jocisque
  Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque.

  If nothing is delightful without love and jokes, then live in love and jokes.

  • Horace, Epistles, I. 6. 65

• What’s our baggage? Only vows,
  Happiness, and all our care,
  And the flower that sweetly shows
  Nestling lightly in your hair.
  • Victor Hugo, Eviradnus, XI

• If you become a Nun, dear,
  The bishop Love will be;
  The Cupids every one, dear!
  Will chant—’We trust in thee!’
  • Leigh Hunt, The Nun

• From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love
  To long for, pureness to desire, a mount
  Of consecration it were good to scale.
  • Jean Ingelow, A Parson’s Letter to a Young Poet, Part II, line 55

• But great loves, to the last, have pulses red;
  All great loves that have ever died dropped dead.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Dropped Dead

• Love has a tide!
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Tides

• When love is at its best, one loves
  So much that he cannot forget.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Two Truths

• Love’s like the flies, and, drawing-room or garret, goes all over a house.
  • Douglas Jerrold, Jerrold’s Wit, Love

• Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
  • John, XV. 13

• Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
  Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
  • John Keats, Lamia, Part II

• I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth.
  • John Keats, Letters, No, XXXVII

• When late I attempted your pity to move,
  Why seemed you so deaf to my prayers?
  Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love
  But—why did you kick me downstairs?
  • J. P. Kemble, Panel, Act I, scene 1. Quoted from Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, Volume I, p. 15. (1785) where it appeared anonymously. Kemble is credited with its authorship. The Panel is adapted from Bickerstaff’s ‘Tis Well ‘Tis No Worse, but these lines are not therein. It may also be found in Annual Register. Appendix. (1783) P. 201

• What’s this dull town to me?
  Robin’s not near—
  He whom I wished to see,
  Wished for to hear;
  Where’s all the joy and mirth
  Made life a heaven on earth?
  O! they’re all fled with thee,
  Robin Adair.
  • Caroline Keppel, Robin Adair

• The hawk unto the open sky,
  The red deer to the wold;
  The Romany lass for the Romany lad,
  As in the days of old.
  • Given in the N. Y. Times Review of Books as a previously written poem by F. C. Weatherby. Not found

• Sing, for faith and hope are high—
  None so true as you and I—
  Sing the Lovers’ Litany:
  «Love like ours can never die!»
  • Rudyard Kipling, Lovers Litany

• By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,
  There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
  For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
  «Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!»
  • Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay

• If Love were jester at the court of Death,
  And Death the king of all, still would I pray,
  «For me the motley and the bauble, yea,
  Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith,
  The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!»
  • Frederic L. Knowles, If Love were Jester at the Court of Death

• Love begins with love.
  • Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters and Manners of the Present Age, Chapter IV

• Le commencement et le déclin de l’amour se font sentir par l’embarras où l’on est de se trouver seuls.

  The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone.

  • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, IV

• Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens
  On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.

  O tyrant love, when held by you,
  We may to prudence bid adieu.

  • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, IV. 1

• The pleasure of love is in loving. We are happier in the passion we feel than in what we excite.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 78

• The more we love a mistress, the nearer we are to hating her.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 114

• Ce qui fait que amants et les maitresses ne s’ennuient point d’être ensemble; c’est qu’ils parlent toujours d’eux mêmes.

  The reason why lovers and their mistresses never tire of being together is that they are always talking of themselves.

  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes (1665–1678), 312

• Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
  Ever made by the Hand above—
  A woman’s heart, and a woman’s life,
  And a woman’s wonderful love?
  • Mary T. Lathrop, A Woman’s Answer to a Man’s Question. Erroneously credited to Mrs. Browning

• I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
  She’s as pure as the lily in the dell.
  She’s as sweet as the heather,
  The bonnie, bloomin’ heather,
  Mary, ma Scotch Blue-bell.
  • Harry Lauder and Gerald Grafton. I Love a Lassie

• Et c’est dans la première flamme
  Qu’est tout le nectar du baiser.

  And in that first flame
  Is all the nectar of the kiss.

  • Lebrun, Mes Souvenirs, ou les Deux Rives de la Seine

• Love leads to present rapture,—then to pain;
  But all through Love in time is healed again.
  • Charles Godfrey Leland, Sweet Marjoram

• A warrior so bold, and a virgin so bright,
  Conversed as they sat on the green.
  They gazed on each other with tender delight,
  Alonzo the Brave was the name of the knight—
  The maiden’s the Fair Imogene.
  • M. G. Lewis—Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene. First appeared in his novel Ambrosio the Monk. Found in his Tales of Wonder, Volume III, p. 63. Lewis’s copy of his poem is in the British Museum

• Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
  To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
  As in a foundering ship.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part III, line 7

• Like Dian’s kiss, unask’d, unsought,
  Love gives itself, but is not bought.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1818), Stanza 4

• Does not all the blood within me
  Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
  As the springs to meet the sunshine.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Wedding Feast, line 153

• It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale (1849), Chapter XXI

• I do not love thee less for what is done,
  And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
  Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
  My love will have a sense of pity in it,
  Making it less a worship than before.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Masque of Pandora, Part VIII. In the Garden, line 39

• So they grew, and they grew, to the church steeple tops
  And they couldn’t grow up any higher;
  So they twin’d themselves into a true lover’s knot,
  For all lovers true to admire.
  • Lord Lovel. Old Ballad. History found in Professor Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II. 204. Also in The New Comic Minstrel. Pub. by John Cameron, Glasgow. The original version seems to be as given there

• Under floods that are deepest,
  Which Neptune obey,
  Over rocks that are steepest,
  Love will find out the way.
  • Love will find out the way. Ballad in Percy’s Reliques

• Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
  That from the nunnery
  Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
  To war and arms I fly.
  . . . . . .
  Yet this inconstancy is such
  As you too shall adore:—
  I could not love thee, dear, so much,
  Loved I not honour more.
  • Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Given erroneously to Montrose by Scott

• True love is but a humble, low born thing,
  And hath its food served up in earthenware;
  It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
  Through the every-dayness of this workday world.
  • James Russell Lowell, Love, line 1

• Not as all other women are
  Is she that to my soul is dear;
  Her glorious fancies come from far,
  Beneath the silver evening star,
  And yet her heart is ever near.
  • James Russell Lowell, My Love, Stanza 1

• Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang,
  Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.
  • He who loves not wine, woman, and song,
    Remains a fool his whole life long.
  • Attributed to Luther by Uhland in Die Geisterkelter. Found in Luther’s Tischreden. Proverbs at end. Credited to J. H. Voss by Redlich, Die poetischen Beiträge zum Waudsbecker Bothen, Hamburg, 1871, p. 67

• As love knoweth no lawes, so it regardeth no conditions.
  • John Lyly, Euphues, p. 84

• Cupid and my Campaspe play’d
  At cards for kisses; Cupid paid;
  He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
  His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;
  Loses them too; then down he throws
  The coral of his lip,—the rose
  Growing on ‘s cheek (but none knows how)
  With these, the crystal on his brow,
  And then the dimple of his chin;
  All these did my Campaspe win.
  At last he set her both his eyes,
  She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
  O Love! hath she done this to thee?
  What shall, alas! become of me?
  • John Lyly, Alexander and Campaspe, Act III, scene VI. Song

• It is better to poyson hir with the sweet bait of love.
  • John Lyly, Euphues

• Nothing is more hateful than love.
  • John Lyly, Euphues

• The lover in the husband may be lost.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Advice to a Lady, Stanza 13

• None without hope e’er lov’d the brightest fair:
  But Love can hope where Reason would despair.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Epigram

• But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,
  Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?
  Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love,
  And I will tenfold all that love repay;
  Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,
  Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Lines Written July 30, 1847

• This lass so neat, with smile so sweet,
  Has won my right good will,
  I’d crowns resign to call her mine,
  Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.
  • Ascribed to Leonard McNally, who married Miss I’Anson, one of the claimants for the «Lass,» by Sir Joseph Barrington in Sketches of His Own Times, Volume II, p. 47. Also credited to William Upton. It appeared in Public Advertiser, Aug. 3, 1789. «Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill» erroneously said to have been a sweetheart of King George III

• When Madelon comes out to serve us drinks,
  We always know she’s coming by her song.
  And every man he tells his little tale,
  And Madelon, she listens all day long.
  Our Madelon is never too severe—
  A kiss or two is nothing much to her—
  She laughs us up to love and life and God—
  Madelon, Madelon, Madelon.
  • La Madelon, song of the French Soldiers in the Great War

• Who ever lov’d, that lov’d not at first sight?
  • Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander. First Sestiad, line 176. Quoted as a «dead shepherd’s saw.» Found in As You Like It

• Love me little, love me long.
  • Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta (c. 1592), Act IV, scene 6

• Come live with me, and be my love,
  And we will all the pleasures prove,
  That valleys, groves, or hills, or fields,
  Or woods and steepy mountains, yield.
  • Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, Stanza 1

• Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime, il faut aimer ce que l’on a.

  If one does not possess what one loves, one should love what one has.

  • Jean-François Marmontel, quoted by Moore in Irish Melodies, The Irish Peasant to His Mistress, Note

• Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare;
  Hoc tantum posse dicere: non amo te.

  I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; I can only say this, «I do not love thee.»

  • Martial, Epigrams (c. 80-104 AD), I. 33. 1. (Name sometimes given «Savidi.»)

• I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
  But why I cannot tell;
  But this I know full well,
  I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
  • Paraphrase of Martial by Tom Brown, as given in his Works, ed. by Drake. (1760). Answer to Dean John Fell, of Oxford, IV. 100

• Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas;
  Je n’en saurois dire la cause;
  Je sais seulement une chose.
  C’est que je ne vous aime pas.
  • Paraphrase of Martial by Robert Rabutin (De Bussy)—Epigram 32, Book I

• I love thee not, Nell
  But why I can’t tell.
  • Paraphrase of Martial in Thomas Forde’s Virtus Rediviva

• I love him not, but show no reason wherefore, but this, I do not love the man.
  • Paraphrase of Martial by Rowland Watkyns, Antipathy

• Love is a flame to burn out human wills,
  Love is a flame to set the will on fire,
  Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.
  • John Masefield, Widow in the Bye Street, Part II

• Great men,
  Till they have gained their ends, are giants in
  Their promises, but, those obtained, weak pigmies
  In their performance. And it is a maxim
  Allowed among them, so they may deceive,
  They may swear anything; for the queen of love,
  As they hold constantly, does never punish,
  But smile, at lovers’ perjuries.
  • Philip Massinger, Great Duke of Florence, Act II, scene 3

• ‘Tis well to be merry and wise,
  ‘Tis well to be honest and true;
  ‘Tis well to be off with the old love,
  Before you are on with the new.
  • As used by Charles Maturin, for the motto to «Bertram,» produced at Drury Lane, 1816

• It is good to be merry and wise,
  It is good to be honest and true,
  It is best to be off with the old love,
  Before you are on with the new.
  • Published in «Songs of England and Scotland.» London, 1835, Volume II, p. 73

• I loved you ere I knew you; know you now,
  And having known you, love you better still.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Vanini

• Love is all in fire, and yet is ever freezing;
  Love is much in winning, yet is more in leesing:
  Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;
  Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
  Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing;
  Love indeed is anything, yet indeed is nothing.
  • Thomas Middleton, Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act II, scene 2

• I never heard
  Of any true affection but ’twas nipped.
  • Thomas Middleton, Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act III, scene 2

• He who for love hath undergone
  The worst that can befall,
  Is happier thousandfold than one
  Who never loved at all.
  • Monckton Milnes, To Myrzha, On Returning

• Such sober certainty of waking bliss.
  • John Milton, Comus, 263

• La fleur nominée héliotrope tourne sans cesse vers cet astre du jour, aussi mon cœur dorénavant tournera-t-il toujours vers les astres resplendissants de vos yeux adorables, ainsi que son pôle unique.

  The flower called heliotrope turns without ceasing to that star of the day, so also my heart henceforth will turn itself always towards the resplendent stars of your adorable eyes, as towards its only pole.

  • Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire, Act II, scene 6

• L’amour est souvent un fruit de mariage.

  Love is often a fruit of marriage.

  • Molière, Sganarelle, I. 1

• If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer, Because it was he; because it was I. There is beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVII

• Celuy ayme peu qui ayme à la mesure.

  He loves little who loves by rule.

  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XXVIII

• Yes, loving is a painful thrill,
  And not to love more painful still;
  But oh, it is the worst of pain,
  To love and not be lov’d again.
  • Thomas Moore, Anacreontic, Ode 29

• No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
  But as truly loves on to the close,
  As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
  The same look which she turn’d when he rose.
  • Thomas Moore, Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, Stanza 2

• I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
  I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
  • Thomas Moore, Come, Rest in This Bosom, Stanza 2

• A boat at midnight sent alone
  To drift upon the moonless sea,
  A lute, whose leading chord is gone,
  A wounded bird, that hath but one
  Imperfect wing to soar upon,
  Are like what I am, without thee.
  • Thomas Moore, Loves of the Angels, Second Angel’s Story

• But there’s nothing half so sweet in life
  As love’s young dream.
  • Thomas Moore, Love’s Young Dream, Stanza 1

• «Tell me, what’s Love;» said Youth, one day,
  To drooping Age, who crost his way.—
  «It is a sunny hour of play;
  For which repentance dear doth pay;
  Repentance! Repentance!
  And this is Love, as wise men say.»
  • Thomas Moore, Youth and Age

• I’ve wandered east, I’ve wandered west,
  I’ve bourne a weary lot;
  But in my wanderings far or near
  Ye never were forgot.
  The fount that first burst frae this heart
  Still travels on its way
  And channels deeper as it rins
  The luve o’ life’s young day.
  • William Motherwell, Jeanie Morrison

• Duty’s a slave that keeps the keys,
  But Love, the master goes in and out
  Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
  Just as he please—just as he please.
  • Dinah Craik, Plighted

• Ah, dearer than my soul…
  Dearer than light, or life, or fame.
  • John Oldham, Lament for Saul and Jonathan

• Jupiter ex alto perjuria ridet amantum.

  Jupiter from on high laughs at the perjuries of lovers.

  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, Book I. 633

• Res est soliciti plena timoris amor.

  Love is a thing full of anxious fears.

  • Ovid, Heroides, I. 12

• Quicquid Amor jussit non est contemnere tutum.
  Regnat, et in dominos jus habet ille deos.

  It is not safe to despise what Love commands. He reigns supreme, and rules the mighty gods.

  • Ovid, Heroides, IV. 11

• Hei mihi! quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.

  Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 523

• Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur,
  Majestas et amor.

  Majesty and love do not well agree, nor do they live together.

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses, II. 846

• Credula res amor est.

  Love is a credulous thing.

  • Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII. 826. Heroides, VI. 21

• Otia si tollas, periere cupidinis arcus.

  If you give up your quiet life, the bow of Cupid will lose its power.

  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris, CXXXIX

• Qui finem quæris amoris,
  (Cedit amor rebus) res age; tutus eris.

  If thou wishest to put an end to love, attend to business (love yields to employment); then thou wilt be safe.

  • Ovid, Remedia Amoris, CXLIII

• Let those love now who never lov’d before,
  Let those who always loved now love the more.
  • Thomas Parnell—Translation of the Pervigilium Veneris. Ancient poem. Author unknown. Ascribed to Catullus. See also Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II. Memb. 5. 5

• The moods of love are like the wind,
  And none knows whence or why they rise.
  • Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House, Sarum Plain

• My merry, merry, merry roundelay
  Concludes with Cupid’s curse,
  They that do change old love for new,
  Pray gods, they change for worse!
  • George Peele, Cupid’s Curse; From the Arraignment of Paris

• What thing is love?—for (well I wot) love is a thing.
  It is a prick, it is a sting.
  It is a pretty, pretty thing;
  It is a fire, it is a coal,
  Whose flame creeps in at every hole!
  • George Peele, Miscellaneous Poems, The Hunting of Cupid

• Love will make men dare to die for their beloved—love alone; and women as well as men.
  • Plato, The Symposium

• Qui amat, tamen hercle si esurit, nullum esurit.

  He that is in love, faith, if he be hungry, is not hungry at all.

  • Plautus, Casina, IV. 2. 16

• Amor et melle et felle est fœcundissimus:
  Gustu dat dulce, amarum ad satietatem usque aggerit.

  Love has both its gall and honey in abundance: it has sweetness to the taste, but it presents bitterness also to satiety.

  • Plautus, Cistellaria, I. 1. 71

• Auro contra cedo modestum amatorem.

  Find me a reasonable lover against his weight in gold.

  • Plautus, Curculio, I. 3. 45

• Qui in amore præcipitavit pejus perit, quam si saxo saliat.

  He who falls in love meets a worse fate than he who leaps from a rock.

  • Plautus, Trinummus, II. 1. 30

• A lover’s soul lives in the body of his mistress.
  • Plutarch

• Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep,
  Who lost my heart while I preserv’d my sheep.
  • Alexander Pope, Autumn, line 79

• Is it, in Heav’n, a crime to love too well?
  To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
  To act a lover’s or a Roman’s part?
  Is there no bright reversion in the sky
  For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
  • Alexander Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady

• Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
  Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
  • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Eloisa, last line

• Ye gods, annihilate but space and time,
  And make two lovers happy.
  • Alexander Pope, Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chapter XI

• O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
  And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.
  • Alexander Pope, Spring, line 49

• Scilicent insano nemo in amore videt.

  Everybody in love is blind.

  • Sextus Propertius, Elegiæ, II. 14. 18

• Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
  And can be bought with nothing but with self.
  • Sir Walter Raleigh, Love the Only Price of Love

• If all the world and love were young,
  And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
  These pretty pleasures might me move
  To live with thee, and be thy love.
  • Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph’s Reply to the Passionate Shepherd

• Ach die Zeiten der Liebe rollen nicht zurück, sondern ewig weiter hinab.

  Ah! The seasons of love roll not backward but onward, downward forever.

  • Jean Paul Richter, Hesperus, IX

• Die Liebe vermindert die weibliche
  Feinheit und verstärkt die männliche.

  Love lessens woman’s delicacy and increases man’s.

  • Jean Paul Richter, Titan, Zykel 34

• Ein liebendes Mädchen wird unbewust kühner.

  A loving maiden grows unconsciously more bold.

  • Jean Paul Richter, Titan, Zykel 71

• As one who cons at evening o’er an album all alone,
  And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
  So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy design
  I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
  • James Whitcomb Riley, An Old Sweetheart of Mine

• The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
  Are as a string of pearls to me;
  I count them over, every one apart,
  My rosary, my rosary.
  • Robert Cameron Rogers, My Rosary

• Oh! she was good as she was fair.
  None—none on earth above her!
  As pure in thought as angels are,
  To know her was to love her.
  • Samuel Rogers, Jacqueline, Part I, line 68

• Love is the fulfilling of the law.
  • Romans, XIII. 10

• Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet?
  Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure?
  Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet—
  Fail, Sun and Breath!—yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.
  • John Ruskin, Trust Thou Thy Love

• Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.
  • Ruth. I. 16

• Et l’on revient toujours à ses premiers amours.

  One always returns to his first love.

  • St. Just

• L’amour est un égoïsme à deux.

  Love is an egotism of two.

  • Antoine de Salle

• Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
  • II Samuel. I. 26

• Raum ist in der kleinsten Hütte
  Für ein glücklich liebend Paar.

  In the smallest cot there is room enough for a loving pair.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Der Jüngling am Bache, Stanza 4

• Arm in Arm mit dir,
  So fordr’ ich mein Jahrhundert in die Schranken.

  Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, I. 9. 97

• Ah, to that far distant strand
  Bridge there was not to convey,
  Not a bark was near at hand,
  Yet true love soon found the way.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Hero and Leander. Bowring’s translation

• O dass sie ewig grünen bliebe,
  Die schöne Zeit der jungen Liebe.

  O that it might remain eternally green,
  The beautiful time of youthful love.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Lied von der Glocke

• Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
  Ich habe gelebt und geliebt.

  I have enjoyed earthly happiness,
  I have lived and loved.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Piccolomini, III. 7. 9

• Mortals, while through the world you go,
  Hope may succor and faith befriend,
  Yet happy your hearts if you can but know,
  Love awaits at the journey’s end!
  • Clinton Scollard, The Journey’s End—Envoy

• And love is loveliest when embalm’d in tears.
  • Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto IV, Stanza 1

• In peace, Love tunes the shepherd’s reed;
  In war, he mounts the warrior’s steed;
  In halls, in gay attire is seen;
  In hamlets, dances on the green.
  Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
  And men below, and saints above;
  For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
  • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 2

• Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
  For lovers love the western star.
  • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 24

• True love’s the gift which God has given
  To man alone beneath the heaven.
  It is the secret sympathy,
  The silver link, the silken tie,
  Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
  In body and in soul can bind.
  • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto V, Stanza 13

• Where shall the lover rest,
  Whom the fates sever
  From his true maiden’s breast,
  Parted for ever?
  Where, through groves deep and high,
  Sounds the far billow,
  Where early violets die,
  Under the willow.
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto III, Stanza 10

• Magis gauderes quod habueras, quam moereres quod amiseras.

  Better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all. (Free translation).

  • Seneca the Younger, Epistles, 99

• Odit verus amor nec patitur moras.

  True love hates and will not bear delay.

  • Seneca the Younger, Hercules Furens, 588

• Qui blandiendo dulce nutrivit malum,
  Sero recusat ferre, quod subiit, jugum.

  He who has fostered the sweet poison of love by fondling it, finds it too late to refuse the yoke which he has of his own accord assumed.

  • Seneca the Younger, Hippolytus, CXXXIV

• Si vis amari, ama.

  If you wish to be loved, love.

  • Seneca the Younger, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, IX. Ausonius—Epigrams. XCI. 6. Martial, Epigrams, VI. 11. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II. 107. Attributed to Plato by Burton

• Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
  Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
  But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me prov’d,
  I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI

• When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul. A moment only; but was it not enough? Were you not paid then for all the rest of your struggle on earth?… When I opened the gates of paradise, were you blind? Was it nothing to you? When all the stars sang in your ears and all the winds swept you the heart of heaven, were you deaf? were you dull? was I no more to you than a bone to a dog? Was it not enough? We spent eternity together; and you ask me for a little lifetime more. We possessed all the universe together; and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well. I have given you the greatest of all things; and you ask me to give you little things. I gave you your own soul: you ask me for my body as a plaything. Was it not enough? Was it not enough?
  • Bernard Shaw, Getting Married

• The fickleness of the woman I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
  • Bernard Shaw, The Philanderer, Act II

• Love’s Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas, line 321

• My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
  By just exchange, one for the other given;
  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
  There never was a better bargain driven.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, My True Love Hath my Heart

• They love indeed who quake to say they love.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, LIV

• Priests, altars, victims, swam before my sight.
  • Edmund Smith, Phædra and Hippolytus, Act I, scene 1

• Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
  I bow before thine altar, Love!
  • Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random, Chapter XL, Stanza 1

• Love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave.
  • Song of Solomon, VIII. 6

• Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
  • Song of Solomon, VIII. 7

• And when my own Mark Antony
  Against young Cæsar strove,
  And Rome’s whole world was set in arms,
  The cause was,—all for love.
  • Robert Southey, All for Love, Part II, Stanza 26

• Cupid «the little greatest god.»
  • Robert Southey, Commonplace Book. 4th Series, p. 462

• They sin who tell us Love can die:
  With life all other passions fly,
  All others are but vanity,
  In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
  Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.
  • Robert Southey, Curse of Kehama. Mount Meru, Stanza 10

• Together linkt with adamantine chains.
  • Edmund Spenser, Hymn in Honour of Love. Phrase used by Drummond, Flowers of Sion. Belvoir, in Harleian Miscellany, IV. 559. Phineas Fletcher—Purple Island, Chapter XII. 64. (1633). Manilius, Book I. 921. Marini—Sospetto d’Herode. Sts. 14 and 18, Crashaw’s translation. Shelley, Revolt of Islam, III. 19

• To be wise and eke to love,
  Is granted scarce to gods above.
  • Edmund Spenser, Shepheard’s Calendar, March

• Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book VIII, Chapter II

• Where we really love, we often dread more than we desire the solemn moment that exchanges hope for certainty.
  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807), Book VIII, Chapter IV

• L’amour est l’histoire de la vie des femmes; c’est un épisode dans celle des hommes.

  Love is the history of a woman’s life; it is an episode in man’s.

  • Anne Louise Germaine de Staël, De l’influence des passions, Works, III, p. 135. (Ed. 1820)

• Sweetheart, when you walk my way,
  Be it dark or be it day;
  Dreary winter, fairy May,
  I shall know and greet you.
  For each day of grief or grace
  Brings you nearer my embrace;
  Love hath fashioned your dear face,
  I shall know you when I meet you.
  • Frank L. Stanton, Greeting

• To love her was a liberal education.
  • Steele, of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, in The Tatler, No. 49. Augustine Birrell in Obiter Dicta calls this «the most magnificent compliment ever paid by man to a woman»

• I who all the Winter through,
  Cherished other loves than you
  And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
  Now I know the false and true,
  For the earnest sun looks through,
  And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, poem written 1876

• And my heart springs up anew,
  Bright and confident and true,
  And the old love comes to meet me, in the dawning and the dew.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, poem written 1876

• Just like Love is yonder rose,
  Heavenly fragrance round it throws,
  Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose,
  And in the midst of briars it blows
  Just like Love.
  • Viscount Strangford, Just like Love, Translation of Poems of Camoens

• Why so pale and wan, fond lover,
  Prithee, why so pale?
  Will, when looking well can’t move her,
  Looking ill prevail?
  Prithee, why so pale?
  • Sir John Suckling, Song, Stanza 1

• Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
  • Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, Par. 31

• In all I wish, how happy should I be,
  Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
  So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
  And yet so strong, thou triumph’st o’er the wise.
  • Jonathan Swift, To Love

• Love, as is told by the seers of old,
  Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
  Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
  Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Song

• If love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf,
  Our lives would grow together
  In sad or singing weather.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Match

• O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
  That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
  My heart is harmless as my life’s first day:
  Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
  Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Complaint of Lisa

• Love laid his sleepless head
  On a thorny rose bed:
  And his eyes with tears were red,
  And pale his lips as the dead.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Love Laid his Sleepless Head

• I that have love and no more
  Give you but love of you, sweet;
  He that hath more, let him give;
  He that hath wings, let him soar;
  Mine is the heart at your feet
  Here, that must love you to live.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Oblation

• Cogas amantem irasci, amare si velis.

  You must make a lover angry if you wish him to love.

  • Syrus, Maxims

• Tum, ut adsolet in amore et ira, jurgia, preces, exprobrutio, satisfactio.

  Then there is the usual scene when lovers are excited with each other, quarrels, entreaties, reproaches, and then fondling reconcilement.

  • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), XIII. 44

• When gloaming treads the heels of day
  And birds sit cowering on the spray,
  Along the flowery hedge I stray,
  To meet mine ain dear somebody.
  • Robert Tannahill, Love’s Fear

• I love thee, I love but thee,
  With a love that shall not die
  Till the sun grows cold,
  And the stars are old,
  And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
  • Bayard Taylor, Bedouin Song

• Love better is than Fame.
  • Bayard Taylor, Christmas Sonnets, Lyrics. To J. L. G

• Love’s history, as Life’s, is ended not
  By marriage.
  • Bayard Taylor, Lars, Book III

• For love’s humility is Love’s true pride.
  • Bayard Taylor, Poet’s Journal, Third Evening. The Mother

• And on her lover’s arm she leant,
  And round her waist she felt it fold,
  And far across the hills they went
  In that new world which is the old.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Day Dream, The Departure. I

• I loved you, and my love had no return,
  And therefore my true love has been my death.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, line 1,298

• Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder’d string?
  I am shamed through all my nature to have lov’d so slight a thing.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835, published 1842), Stanza 74

• Love is hurt with jar and fret;
  Love is made a vague regret.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Miller’s Daughter, Stanza 28

• It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis, Chapter VI

• Werther had a love for Charlotte,
  Such as words could never utter;
  Would you know how first he met her?
  She was cutting bread and butter.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The Sorrows of Werther

• Like to a wind-blown sapling grow I from
  The cliff, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul,—
  Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome
  By all its clouds incumbent; O be true
  To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
  For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole
  Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
  Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through,
  Dry down and perish to the foodless root.
  • Francis Thompson, Manus Animam Pinxit

• Why should we kill the best of passions, love?
  It aids the hero, bids ambition rise
  To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds,
  Even softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue.
  • James Thomson, Sophonisba, Act V, scene 2

• O, what are you waiting for here? young man!
  What are you looking for over the bridge?—
  A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons
  Is soon to come dancing over the bridge.
  • James Thomson, Waiting

• Nec jurare time; Veneris perjuria venti
  Irrita per terras et freta summa ferunt,
  Gratia magna Jovi; vetuit pater ipse valere,
  Jurasset cupide quicquid ineptus amor.

  Fear not to swear; the winds carry the perjuries of lovers without effect over land and sea, thanks to Jupiter. The father of the gods himself has denied effect to what foolish lovers in their eagerness have sworn.

  • Tibullus, Carmina, I, 4, 21

• Perjuria ridet amantium Jupiter et ventos irrita ferre jubet.

  At lovers’ perjuries Jove laughs and throws them idly to the winds.

  • Tibullus, Carmina, III, 6, 49

• Die Liebe wintert nicht;
  Nein, nein! Ist und bleibt Frühlings-Schein.

  Love knows no winter; no, no! It is, and remains the sign of spring.

  • Ludwig Tieck, Herbstlied

• At first, she loved nought else but flowers,
  And then—she only loved the rose;
  And then—herself alone; and then—
  She knew not what, but now—she knows.
  • Ridgely Torrence, House of a Hundred Lights

• The warrior for the True, the Right,
  Fights in Love’s name;
  The love that lures thee from that fight
  Lures thee to shame:
  That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves
  The spirit free,—
  That love, or none, is fit for one
  Man-shaped like thee.
  • Aubrey Thomas de Vere, Miscellaneous Poems, Song

• Quis fallere possit amantem?

  Who can deceive a lover?

  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), IV. 296

• For all true love is grounded on esteem.
  • Villiers (Duke of Buckingham)

• To love is to believe, to hope, to know;
  ‘Tis an essay, a taste of Heaven below!
  • Edmund Waller, Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 17

• Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
  We should agree as angels do above.
  • Edmund Waller, Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 25

• And the King with his golden sceptre,
  The Pope with Saint Peter’s key,
  Can never unlock the one little heart
  That is opened only to me.
  For I am the Lord of a Realm,
  And I am Pope of a See;
  Indeed I’m supreme in the kingdom
  That is sitting, just now, on my knee.
  • C. H. Webb, The King and the Pope

• What we can do for another is the test of powers; what we can suffer for is the test of love.
  • Attributed to Brooke Westcott, in Mixer and Server (1929) by the Hotel and Restaurant Employee’s International Alliance and Bartenders’ International League of America

• O, rank is good, and gold is fair,
  And high and low mate ill;
  But love has never known a law
  Beyond its own sweet will!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Amy Wentworth, Stanza 18

• «I’m sorry that I spell’d the word;
  I hate to go above you,
  Because»—the brown eyes lower fell,—
  «Because, you see, I love you!»
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, In School-Days, Stanza 4

• Your love in a cottage is hungry,
  Your vine is a nest for flies—
  Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
  And simplicity talks of pies!
  You lie down to your shady slumber
  And wake with a bug in your ear,
  And your damsel that walks in the morning
  Is shod like a mountaineer.
  • Nathaniel Parker Willis, Low in a Cottage, Stanza 3

• He loves not well whose love is bold!
  I would not have thee come too nigh.
  The sun’s gold would not seem pure gold
  Unless the sun were in the sky:
  To take him thence and chain him near
  Would make his beauty disappear.
  • William Winter, Love’s Queen

• The unconquerable pang of despised love.
  • William Wordsworth, Excursion, Book VI. Hamlet, Act III, scene 1

• For mightier far
  Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
  Of magic potent over sun and star,
  Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
  And though his favourite be feeble woman’s breast.
  • William Wordsworth, Laodamia, Stanza 15

• O dearer far than light and life are dear.
  • William Wordsworth, Poems Founded on the Affections, No. XIX. To. ——, VII. 114

• While all the future, for thy purer soul,
  With «sober certainties» of love is blest.
  • William Wordsworth, Poems Founded on the Affections, VII. 115. (Knight’s ed.)

• Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.
  • Sir Thomas Wyatt, Songs and Sonnets, A Renouncing of Love.
  • With every act of love we move a little closer to immortality, whereas every act of hate brings us nearer to death. Recueil de Caprices

• Love is the center of holiness. Loving God above all and loving others like ourselves summarize the Ten commandments.

Anonymous[edit]

This section is for widely quoted statements by authors unknown or Anonymous

• Love rules without rules.
  • Translation of Italian saying: Amor regge senza legge; as quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Terms Found in English and American Writings of Yesterday and Today, 2nd Edition (1934) edited by Christopher Orlando Sylvester Mawson
  • Variant translations:
  • Love reigns without rules.
  • Love holds no law.

• Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden
  zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.
  Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende,
  es drückten deine schönen Hände
  mir die getreuen Augen zu!
  • With you by my side I go with joy
    to death and to my rest.
    How delightful would be my end
    were your beautiful hands to shut
    my faithful eyes.
    • «Bist du bei Mir,» aria of unknown origin transcribed in a notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach (1725), BWV508

See also[edit]

Charity Compassion Emotions Empathy Humility Kindness Love poetry Mercy Passion

Peace Religious quotes on love Bible quotes on love Love of God Romance Understanding Virtues Wisdom

External links[edit]