LOVE QUOTES XXXVII

quotations about love

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? An enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

GEORGE ELIOT

Daniel Deronda

Tags: George Eliot


For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

letter, May 14, 1904


False love is like the counterfeiter's coin,
A criminal deception.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"Love's Counterfeits"


Falling in Love, as modern biology teaches us to believe, is nothing more than the latest, highest, and most involved exemplification, in the human race, of that almost universal selective process which Mr. Darwin has enabled us to recognise throughout the whole long series of the animal kingdom. The butterfly that circles and eddies in his aerial dance around his observant mate is endeavouring to charm her by the delicacy of his colouring, and to overcome her coyness by the display of his skill. The peacock that struts about in imperial pride under the eyes of his attentive hens, is really contributing to the future beauty and strength of his race by collecting to himself a harem through whom he hands down to posterity the valuable qualities which have gained the admiration of his mates in his own person. Mr. Wallace has shown that to be beautiful is to be efficient; and sexual selection is thus, as it were, a mere lateral form of natural selection--a survival of the fittest in the guise of mutual attractiveness and mutual adaptability, producing on the average a maximum of the best properties of the race in the resulting offspring. I need not dwell here upon this aspect of the case, because it is one with which, since the publication of the 'Descent of Man,' all the world has been sufficiently familiar.

GRANT ALLEN

"Falling in Love", Falling in Love and Other Essays


Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

The Looking Glass War

Tags: John le Carré


Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Marriage and Morals

Tags: Bertrand Russell


Burning with tender love is not really an image for someone who has warmed mercury over a gentle flame. In slowness, gentleness, and hope we have the hidden force of moral perfection and of material transmutation.

GASTON BACHELARD

The Formation of the Scientific Mind

Tags: Gaston Bachelard


Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasseled flower.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance


Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover--except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give.

JOHN BERGER

G. John Berger

Tags: John Berger


As your lover describes you, so you are.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Sexing the Cherry

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


And you tempt me into your House of Love--
I, who have come from far
Through wintry forest and homeless heath,
Friend of the wind and star?
Ah, I fear the warmth of the ingleside
And the depths of your dear caress
Will make me forget what I learned out there
In the stubble and loneliness!

KARLE WILSON BAKER

"The Moor-child", Blue Smoke

Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960) was an American poet and author. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for her last collection of poetry, Dreamers on Horseback, in 1931.

Tags: Karle Wilson Baker


And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"For What Binds Us"

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"The Buried Life"

Tags: Matthew Arnold


Ah, love, 'tis a sorrowful land!

KENNETH RAND

"The Old Lovers"

Tags: Kenneth Rand


A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult.

GEORGE ELIOT

Felix Holt


A man loves with more or less passion according to the number of cords which his pretty mistress binds to his heart.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Physiology of Marriage

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


A love affair begins with a fantasy. For instance, that the beloved will always be there.

AMY HEMPEL

"The Dog of the Marriage"

Tags: Amy Hempel


A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and clichéd notion of love. I had never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you're sorry. It was a many-splendored thing. Love was a rose and a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round.

DAVID SEDARIS

Naked

Tags: David Sedaris


The feeling of love is a rich feeling, but the expression of love in word or deed is a joy.

ALEXANDER LOWEN

Depression and the Body

Tags: Alexander Lowen


If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

LYNDA BARRY

attributed, The Surrendered Single