quotations about love
Love is woman's eternal spring and man's eternal fall. It is a game at which men must play against stacked cards, and without the slightest inkling of the trump.
HELEN ROWLAND
Inter-Collegiate World
Love is the desire to give, not to receive, something. Love is the art of producing something with the other's talents.
BERTOLT BRECHT
"Love of Whom?"
Love is an amazing magnet.
NICHOLSON BAKER
Traveling Sprinkler
Love is a very ancient force, which served its purpose in its day but no longer is essential for the survival of the species.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Rival Ladies
Love comes in at the window and goes out at the door.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Love born of anxiety resembles a thorn shaped so that efforts to pull it out of one's flesh merely cause it to penetrate more deeply therein.
ANDRE MAUROIS
An Art of Living
Love -- thou art deep --
I cannot cross thee --
But, were there Two
Instead of One --
Rower and Yacht -- some sov'reign Summer --
Who knows -- but we'd reach the Sun?
EMILY DICKINSON
"Love thou art high"
It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
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
I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"Tandy", Winesburg, Ohio
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.
ANAIS NIN
attributed, French Writers of the Past
Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 - January 14, 1977) was a French-Cuban American diarist, essayist, novelist and writer of short stories and erotica. Nin's most studied works are her diaries or journals, which detail her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole, in addition to her numerous affairs, including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller.
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
"God is love" became inverted into "love is God", so that it is now the West's undeclared religion--and perhaps its only generally accepted religion.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness; and of all things, it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time: a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes: the scene consecrates the object I am going to love.
ROLAND BARTHES
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
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
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
A Brave and Startling Truth
We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour -- the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room; and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will be no more seen.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Roundabout Papers