quotations about love
Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela.
GEORGE MOORE
Confessions of a Young Man
Expressing love is one of the most beautiful things of life -- for husbands and wives, children and parents, etc. I know that people often claim they prefer to express love by doing things like mowing lawns or making a nice dinner or buying gifts, etc. (There is even a popular book that has you take a questionnaire to find out what your primary way of showing love is so that people will be able to detect when you are showing love, in case you never verbally express it.) To be honest, I don't like promoting the idea that some people are just programmed to express love in certain ways, and not in others. There! I said it. (Sorry if you're a big fan of the book!) I say we don't let a questionnaire or our previous habits and norms limit us. How about we ALL learn to express love -- verbally -- with words!
MARA KOFOED
"The Language of Love", Danny + Mara, December 12, 2012
Love makes you do stupid things -- like making someone an omelet for no good reason other than to see them smile. Gross.
CARLA HERRERIA
"6 Reasons Being In Love Is The Absolute Worst", Huffington Post, February 12, 2016
No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Love fattens on smooth words.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
Me: Stories of My Life
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish companionship is the strongest and most enduring: when passion comes to unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
The kind of love my mum talks about is full of worry and work and forgiving people and putting up with things and stuff like that. It's not a lot of fun, that's for sure. If that really is love, the kind my mum talks about, then nobody can ever know if they love somebody, can they? It seems like what she's saying is, if you're pretty sure you love somebody, the way I was sure in those few weeks, then you can't love them, because that isn't what love is. Trying to understand what she means by love would do your head in.
NICK HORNBY
Slam
The strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart's history.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The Burning Secret and Other Stories
Love is like a good piece of wood: It just gets stronger and stronger as the years go by.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death: I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
All or nothing at all, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Other Wind
Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction. Her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, yielding more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books.
Love is the one thing stronger than desire and the only proper reason to resist temptation.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
I say love, and the world populates itself with doves.
PABLO NERUDA
"Get Used to Seeing the Shadow Behind Me"
Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Optimism"
He who would not be idle, let him fall in love.
ROMAN PROVERB
If you want to be loved, then love.
ROMAN PROVERB
When a man and woman are successfully in love, their whole activity is energized and victorious. They walk better, their digestion improves, they think more clearly, their secret worries drop away, the world is fresh and interesting, and they can do more than they dreamed that they could do. In love of this kind sexual intimacy is not the dead end of desire as it is in romantic or promiscuous love, but periodic affirmation of the inward delight of desire pervading an active life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Morals
A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess 'em.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Esmond
Love's a fire that needs renewal
Of fresh beauty for its fuel.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
You don't need scores of suitors. You need only one ... if he's the right one.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women