LOVE QUOTES XXXVIII

quotations about love

We never love with all our heart and all our soul but once, and that is the first time.

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 is something we all talk about but rarely experience. We get sucked into settling, to waiting, to a wilting dating culture, to hatred and to meaningless rendezvous or "ghosting." Love is dying, and we're all forgetting about it.

SONYA MATEJKO

"This Is What I Know About The World At 24", Huffington Post, April 5, 2016


When I think of what true love means to us, I also think of the mundane days of bill paying, chore completing, and grocery shopping. Even though we hate being adults, being adults together somehow seems tolerable and perhaps even survivable.

LINDSAY DETWILER

"True Love Is Built In The Simple Moments", Huffington Post, October 22, 2017


Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing:
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.

SAMUEL DANIEL

Hymen's Triumph

Tags: Samuel Daniel


Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;
They lift their heavy lids, and look;
And, lo, what one sweet page can teach
They read with joy, then shut the book.

COVENTRY PATMORE

"The Revelation"

Tags: Coventry Patmore


Love's language everywhere is known.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

"Love's Language"


To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

T. S. ELIOT

The Cocktail Party

Tags: T. S. Eliot


I loved a being, an idea of my own mind, which had no real existence. I concreted this abstract of perfection, I annexed this fictitious quality to the idea presented by a name; the being, whom that name signified, was by no means worthy of this. This is the truth: Unless I am determinedly blind -- unless I am resolved causelessly and selfishly to seek destruction, I must see it. Plain! is it not plain? I loved a being; the being, whom I loved, is not what she was; consequently, as love appertains to mind, and not body, she exists no longer. I regret when I find that she never existed, but in my mind; yet does it not border on willful deception, deliberate, intentional self-deceit, to continue to love the body, when the soul is no more?

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Jun. 2, 1811


Love begins with love ; and the warmest friendship cannot change even to the coldest love.

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.


I am a bit different than most, in that I have a very strict definition of love. Most people view love as a feeling, or a thing. Most of the definitions that people associate with love really define infatuation. For me, love is not a feeling or a thing; it is not a noun or an adjective. Romantic love is a verb. It is the act of mutual nurture.

BRADY CRAIN

"Altitude Sickness: Romantic love is a verb", Mountain Times, March 9, 2016


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 made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.

JOYCE KILMER

"In Memory"

Tags: Joyce Kilmer


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"

Tags: Emily Dickinson


The sweetness of human love is to be compared, therefore, to the sweetness of a flower, whose glowing colors and voluptuous fragrance are intended by Nature to attract the winged insects, whose visits are necessary for the fertilization of the seed. The color fades, the flower falls, the perfume vanishes, death soon follows after; but Nature is not mocked.

ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM

"Love's Nature", Thoughts on Love and Death


We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse.

JOHN DONNE

The Canonization


Love is an anesthesia. It puts you to sleep, it allows you to overlook, not question, not care ... and then, one day, you come to. And, by God and all his horny angels ... it's an eye opener.

ANN WUEHLER

The Next Mrs. Jacob Anderson

Tags: Ann Wuehler


My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

ANDREW MARVELL

The Definition of Love

Tags: Andrew Marvell


Love must be the same in all worlds.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


Love differs from all the other contagious diseases: the last time a man is exposed to it, he takes it most readily, and has it the worst!

BRET HARTE

"Two Men of Sandy Bar"

Tags: Bret Harte


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.

Tags: Anais Nin