quotations about love
Love, amid the other graces of this world, is like a cathedral tower, which begins at the earth and at the first is surrounded by the other parts of the structure. But at length, rising above buttresses, wall and arch, and parapet and pinnacle, it shoots, spire-like, many a foot right into the air, so high that the huge cross on its summit glows like a spark in the morning light, and shines like a star in the evening sky, when the rest of the pile is enveloped in darkness. So love here is surrounded by the other graces, and divides the honors with them; but they will have felt the wrap of night and of darkness, when it will shine, luminous, against the sky of eternity.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Love, like reputation, once fled, never returns more.
APHRA BEHN
The History of the Nun
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
Love--that divine fire which was made to light and warm the temple of home--sometimes burns at unholy altars.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Not all men are worthy of love.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
PIGLET: How do you spell 'love'?
POOH: You don't spell it, you feel it.
A. A. MILNE
Winnie the Pooh
The world has little to bestow
Where two fond hearts in equal love are joined.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Delia
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
BIBLE
Leviticus 19:18
True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love.
THICH NHAT HANH
Teachings on Love
We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH
Aphorisms
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (September 13, 1830 - March 12, 1916) was an Austrian writer noted for her excellent psychological novels. She portrayed life among both the poor and the aristocratic.
We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant.... You've got to keep watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.
JOHN LENNON
ATV interview, Dec. 2, 1969
Love, how many roads to reach a kiss.
PABLO NERUDA
"Love, How many Roads to Reach a Kiss"
Some meet love's dreams when kissed by death,
And some again in youth,
But all have felt the quickening breath
Of love's undying truth.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Love's Dreams"
Edwin Leibfreed published several books of poetry, including A Garland of Verse (1910), A Soliloquy of Life (1915), and The Man of a Thousand Loves (1932).
True love begins in heaven's bower,
Unfolds on earth a perfect flower.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Language"
Unconditional love. That's what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn't he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Reunion
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
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
Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
Other Voices, Other Rooms
Love lives in sealed bottles of regret.
SEAN O'FAOLAIN
Saturday Evening Post, Aug. 13, 1966
Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk