LOVE QUOTES XXIII
quotations about love
A lover is often most unjustly ridiculed for investing the woman for whom he has a passion, with qualities and feelings that she may not in reality possess; but in this, as in most cases, the world delights to judge unkindly; for it ought not to be overlooked that he is merely clothing the idol of his affections with his own beautiful conceptions of what she should be--transferring to her a superiority of sentiment which, in fact, belongs to himself, since it must have existed in his own mind before it could have been brought forward to adorn that of another. The pleasures of the world are all in imagination, else what a curse would existence be!
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
It isn't being happy together ... that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Ministry of Fear
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Tell not thy previous loves to a woman, lest she also telleth thee hers.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
The loves of men but vary in degrees--
They find no new expression for the flame.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Isaura"
We need to cooperate to survive, to subsist, to learn, to reproduce and to raise our children. Romantic and parental love is essentially the neurochemical reward for cooperating, which is cognitively quite difficult.
ANNA MACHIN
"What is love? You asked Google -- here's the answer", The Guardian, July 11, 2018
I want love on demand. Take it away when it hurts, but deliver it when desired, straight to my door.
HEIDI K. ISERN
"The responsibility to fall out of love is on you", Quartz, August 5, 2016
Love seems to beautify and inspire all nature. It raises the earthly caterpillar into the ethereal butterfly, it paints the feathers in spring, it lights the glowworm's lamp, it wakens the song of birds, and inspires the poet's lay. Even inanimate Nature seems to feel the spell, and flowers glow with the richest colours.
JOHN LUBBOCK
The Use of Life
Of all things in this world love is the most unmanageable. Parents and guardians are sadly foiled when they undertake to guide and coerce it: and the best thing they can do with it is to leave it to itself.
ROBERT BELL
The Ladder of Gold
Our love is about small days to build memories upon, simple adventures we experience together.
LINDSAY DETWILER
"True Love Is Built In The Simple Moments", Huffington Post, October 22, 2017
Since to be loved endures,
To love is wise.
ROBERT BRIDGES
Since to be Loved Endures
I'd call it love if love didn't take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH
Necessities of Life
I've found out that falling in love doesn't have anything to do with time. It can take a year or an instant. It happens when it's ready to happen.
NORA ROBERTS
The Calhouns
It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in a play not with a woman of the outside world but with a doll inside our brain -- the only woman moreover that we have always at our disposal, the only one we shall ever possess -- whom the arbitrary power of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the Balbec of my dreams had been from the real Balbec; an artificial creation which by degrees, and to our own hurt, we shall force the real woman to resemble.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
When love grows diseas'd, the best thing we can do is to put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a ling'ring and consumptive passion.
GEORGE ETHEREGE
The Man of Mode
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Hero and Leander
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Looking Glass War
I used to be all about the grand gestures. The big demonstrations of love. The utterly romantic, perfectly crafted moments that take your breath away. It's funny though, because after almost ten years, and two kids, later, I've come to see love and romance in a whole different light. And I can honestly say that this year, for the first time, I've made peace with the fact that we aren't buying each other the obligatory chocolates or flowers. I'm actually okay with it. I promise. Husband dearest, in case you're wondering if this is a trap, it isn't.
RASHA RUSHDY
"Love Is Sweatpants and Take-out, Actually", Huffington Post, February 14, 2016
If with love thy heart has burned;
If thy love is unreturned;
Hide thy grief within thy breast,
Though it tear thee unexpressed;
For when love has once departed
From the eyes of the false-hearted,
And one by one has torn off quite
The bandages of purple light;
Though thou wert the loveliest
Form the soul had ever dressed,
Thou shalt seem, in each reply,
A vixen to his altered eye;
Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,
Thy praying lute will seem to scold;
Though thou kept the straightest road,
Yet thou errest far and broad.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
To Rhea
Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another's soul.
JAMES JOYCE
notes for his play Exiles