quotations about love
Love likes not the falling fruit,
Nor the withered tree.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
As Ye Came from the Holy Land
Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 - 1618) was an English writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularizing tobacco in England.
It is certain there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Passion of Love", Essays Moral and Humorous
Never mingle love and business.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Barchester Towers
Love and death were what novels were about.
OAKLEY HALL
Love and War in California
Love abounds in all things,
excels from the depths to beyond the stars,
is lovingly disposed to all things.
She has given the king on high
the kiss of peace.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
"Caritas abundat"
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
Caressing reassures lovers that their love endures.
WITTER BYNNER
"Rose-Time"
O, high the happy bosom heaves
When love is in the dancer!
WITTER BYNNER
"Three Poplars"
A woman findeth in her last lover much of her first love; but a man seeth his next-to-the-last love, alway.
GELETT BURGESS
The Maxims of Methuselah
The highest evidence that love exists is its readiness to overlook and pardon faults.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
He gives a ripe apple for an apple-blossom that changes an old love for a new.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
journal, Apr. 4, 1831
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
If dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am I lost and hopeless living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Men's Wives
Love is the impulse which directs the world,
And all things know it and obey its power.
Man, in the maelstrom of his passions whirled;
The bee that takes the pollen to the flower;
The earth, uplifting her bare, pulsing breast
To fervent kisses of the amorous sun;--
Each but obeys creative Love's behest,
Which everywhere instinctively is done.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"What Love Is"
I love you pretty baby
You're the only love I've ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my throne
Beyond here lies nothin'
Nothin' we can call our own
BOB DYLAN
"Beyond Here Lies Nothin'", Together Through Life
Why is the measure of love loss?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Salmon of Doubt
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
ANITA BROOKNER
A Friend from England