quotations about love
Love gives impetus and fruitfulness to life and to the journey of faith: without love, both life and faith remain sterile.
POPE FRANCIS
Vatican Radio, October 29, 2017
Why the pull of sexual attraction to someone who is unfamiliar, whose allure as Horace marked, portends a war with one's self? As we'll consider, the object of sexual desire has a different constitution from the focus of personal love. With sexual love, there is an emphasis upon touch and kinesthesia that alters the whole/part structure of objects. It brings with it a shift in temporality as well as makes the pleasure of repetitive sexual scenarios curiously new and unique.
PETER HADREAS
A Phenomenology of Love and Hate
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
So soon as this want or power [of love] is dead, man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Love", Essays and Letters
Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Dec. 20, 1810
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
The single greatest predictor of happiness and success in life is a healthy love relationship.
PATRICIA LOVE
official website
Love! Love until the night collapses!
PABLO NERUDA
"Come Up with Me"
I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.
NORMAN MAILER
The Man Who Studied Yoga
You can't make me love you.
NEIL GAIMAN
Coraline
Neil Gaiman (born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, films, and nonfiction. He is best known for the comic book series The Sandman and novels such as American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book.
Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.'
MARY BAKER EDDY
"Love that finds solutions", Christian Science Monitor, April 6, 2016
Pure Christian love is not derived from the merit of the object.
MARTIN LUTHER
Sermon XI, A Selection of the Most Celebrated Sermons of M. Luther and J. Calvin
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
LYNDA BARRY
attributed, The Surrendered Single
To love another human in all of her splendor and imperfect perfection, it is a magnificent task ... tremendous and foolish and human.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Love covers a multitude of sins.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Only little boys and old men sneer at love.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Rector of Justin
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 never free ... It is the most expensive emotion we have.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Burnt Offerings
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.