quotations about love
To have loved, to have been made happy thus,
What better fate has life in store for us?
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"O Do Not Love Too Long", In the Seven Woods
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
I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer think that. There's nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish.
RITA MAE BROWN
Bingo
Love released from bond, and unburdened of its fetters, is love no longer.
THOMAS BURKE
A Love Lesson
Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.
O. HENRY
"The Count and the Wedding Guest"
Any love is enveloping and potentially dangerous; after all, you are putting your heart into someone else's hands and with that an incredible power to cause pain of various kinds (and vice versa). That's a given. But there is an additional absolutism about first love, when you have nothing to compare it with. You don't know anything, yet you feel you know everything -- this can be calamitous.
JULIAN BARNES
interview, The Guardian, January 29, 2018
For me, however, if I understand the concept, to love properly and in earnest one would have to do it anonymously, or at least in an undeclared fashion, so as not to seem to ask anything in return, since asking and getting are the antithesis of love--if, as I say, I have the concept aright, which from all I have said and all that has been said to me so far it appears I do not. It is very puzzling. Love, the kind that I mean, would require a superhuman capacity for sacrifice and self-denial, such as a saint possesses, or a god, and saints are monsters, as we know, and as for the gods--well.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Infinities
The capacity to love is the fruit of age, not the monopoly of youth.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Love is a concept none of us really understand but yet we try to define it in the small square of accepted norms. When two people love each other and want to be together in more than one way, gender, society, age, caste, creed stops mattering.
SHRIYA JOSHI
"This Short Film About Freedom To Love Is Our Gift To You On Independence Day", Storypick, August 12, 2016
Biologically speaking, love is the backbone of the social bonds that are critical for our survival and adaptation. These intimate bonds alter the brain's circuitry and tip the hormonal balance to shape our memories, emotions and ultimately our 'self.' In essence, every important relationship we have shapes our brain, which in turn shapes our very relationships. Lucky for us, there are many different types of love: maternal love, familial love, the kind we feel when we cuddle a pet, hug a tree, or even a special blanket. While love itself is characterized as an emotion like anger and sadness, there is also a strong biological desire -- sexual desire -- which drives all living species to populate our world.
CLAUDIA AGUIRRE
"Your Brain on Love", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016
What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air -- you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all-consuming, a physical pain. Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. It is the point before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything.
JOJO MOYES
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
True love is a giant cheese wheel.
DAYNA EVANS
"True Love Is a Giant Cheese Wheel", New York Magazine, December 21, 2015
Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.
C. S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Love thy neighbor, but pull not down thy hedge.
GERMAN PROVERB
Experience is bitter, but its teachings we retain; It has taught me this--who once has loved, loves never on earth again!
GEORGE ARNOLD
"Introspection"
Love is a great beautifier.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.
ROBERT FULGHUM
True Love