quotations about love
If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation"
Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Love is an amazing magnet.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
What could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.
SARAH DESSEN
This Lullaby
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. We can't tell if it will survive us. But we can be sure that it's the last thing to go.
MARTIN AMIS
The Second Plane
Love renders the proud humble, and tames the fierce; it is at once the most and the least selfish of all passions; for, whilst it would engross the being on whom it is lavished, it will make any sacrifice, or undergo any privation, to insure the comfort of her it would possess.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
Love is ... seeing your bodies become desiccated trees as if battered by many winds.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
What is the science at work behind falling out of love? How does the skin of a person you made love to once start feeling strange even to touch? How do feelings that you once invested your every living breath in while expressing just get reduced to mere memories of words? How does the joy of a heart overflowing with love suddenly transforms into an empty cauldron with echoes of pain? Is love a mirage?
AMIT MEHRA
"As I Watch a Love End I Realize, Love is Always a Stowaway", The Good Men Project, March 14, 2016
Love won't be tampered with, love won't go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other. Throw it in the garbage and it springs up clean. Try to root it out and it only flourishes. Love is a weed, a dandelion that you poison from your heart. The taproots wait. The seeds blow off, ticklish, into a part of the yard you didn't spray. And one day, though you worked, though you prodded out each spiky leaf, you lift your eyes and dozens of fat golden faces bob in the grass.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Bingo Palace
'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, how it goes:
But the name of the secret is Love!
LEWIS CARROLL
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
In love, the quickest is always the best cure.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
As a drop of honey is dissipated and lost in a pail of water, so the sweet affection of love would totally vanish through too extensive a diffusion.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Love prepares us for martyrdom.
PHILIP KOSLOSKI
"Love is What Prepares Us For Every Form of Martyrdom", National Catholic Register, March 22, 2016
What is love? The need of coming out of one's self.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
When you love someone, they become a part of who you are. They're in everything you do. They're in the air you breathe and the water you drink and the blood in your veins. Their touch stays on your skin and their voice stays in your ears and their thoughts stay in your mind. You know their dreams because their nightmares pierce your heart and their good dreams are your dreams too. And you don't think they're perfect, but you know their flaws, the deep-down truth of them, and the shadows of all their secrets, and they don't frighten you away; in fact you love them more for it, because you don't want perfect. You want them.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Lady Midnight
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"O Do Not Love Too Long", In the Seven Woods
Love is a process -- not a static condition. It's a commitment to do the work and come back into relationship with each other. To move through whatever gets in the way of your love for one another.
SHANA PARKER
"3 Myths About Unconditional Love That Can Ruin Your Marriage", Good Men Project, December 25, 2015
A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes, and hearts, and ears; bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude; and this is love.
JOHN LYLY
Gallathea and Midas