quotations about love
To speak of love is to make love.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
To love is to will the good of the other.
THOMAS AQUINAS
Summa Theologica
Though this faith in love as the one democratic, even universal, form of salvation open to us moderns is the result of a long religious history that saw divine love as the origin of human love and as the model to be imitated, it has paradoxically come into its own because of a decline in religious faith. It has been possible only because, since the end of the eighteenth century, love has increasingly filled the vacuum left by the retreat of Christianity.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Though she had been besieged, courted, and pursued by men who had fallen in love with her, she did not in her heart believe in the existence of love. It seemed to her as unreal as the painted drop scenes, the temples of love, and the banks of roses that formed the settings for her dances. But though she was cold and insensitive to love, she was esteemed a wonderful mistress. She herself practiced love as a duty imposed by her profession, a part to be played that might sometimes please but always fatigued her and called for a high degree of art.
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Love", Essays and Letters
There's love, sweet love, for one and all--
For love is best for great and small.
MAUD LINDSAY
"Inside the Garden Gate", Mother Stories
There's always a side of folly with any serving of love. And isn't that what makes it so delicious?
MINA SAMUELS
"Truly, Madly, Deeply--A Fable Explains Why Love is Crazy", Huffington Post, October 31, 2017
There is nothing like young love. It is exciting, it is stimulating, and it is often the most complicated. Why? Because the two of you are still on a path of self-discovery, defining yourselves and trying to define a combined relationship at the same time.
ZANE
Dear G. Spot
There is no passion that more excites us to every thing that is noble and generous than virtuous Love.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
There is hope for all the colored people in this country while one white woman can love one colored man.
PETER ABRAHAMS
The Path of Thunder
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"The Advantages of Having One Leg", On Lying in Bed and Other Essays
The pain of love is how slowly it dies.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.
PHILIP ROTH
The Dying Animal
The highest evidence that love exists is its readiness to overlook and pardon faults.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.
HERBERT SPENCER
The Study of Sociology
That adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself, is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so? whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies, all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Swift doth young Love flee,
And we stand wakened, shivering from our dream.
GEORGE MEREDITH
Modern Love
Sometimes love makes you selfish. Sometimes it makes you stupid. Sometimes it reminds you why you love your gun.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Cerulean Sins
Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.
WOODY ALLEN
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Perhaps love's greatest gift--that it is indeed unconditional--is also its greatest curse.
KRISTIN ARMSTRONG
O Magazine, Feb. 2007