quotations about love
Love and money should properly have nothing to do with each other.
JOHN SAUL
Guardian
Love enters a man through his eyes, a woman through her ears.
POLISH PROVERB
In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
With his venom
irresistible
and bittersweet
that loosener
of limbs, Love
reptile-like
strikes me down
SAPPHO
With His Venom
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
Love does not seek equals; it creates them.
STENDAHL
The Red and the Black
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
Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You don't know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, the roots cling to you. I've seen men and women give up everything for love that once was.
WALTER MOSLEY
The Man in My Basement
Who is he who will affirm that there must be a web of flesh and bone to hold the shape of love?
WILLIAM FAULKNER
"Beyond"
In a love affair, there is usually one person who loves, and the other qui se laisse aimer; it is only in later days, perhaps, when the treasures of love are spent, and the kind hand cold which ministered them, that we remember how tender it was; how soft to soothe; how eager to shield; how ready to support and caress. The ears my no longer hear which would have received our words of thanks so delightedly. Let us hope those fruits of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late; and though we bring our tribute of reverence and gratitude, it may be to a gravestone, there is an acceptance even there for the stricken heart's oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and pious tears.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
Maybe love never dies, maybe it hides between our veins that frail our nerves, maybe it is the clog in our arteries that makes our heart ache ... maybe love is like a mysterious stowaway living inside our body that our cells keep chasing but it never gets caught & that chase keeps us alive.
AMIT MEHRA
"As I Watch a Love End I Realize, Love is Always a Stowaway", The Good Men Project, March 14, 2016
Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
ANITA BROOKNER
attributed, Women Writers Talk
Never mingle love and business.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Barchester Towers
To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'
AYN RAND
The Fountainhead
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
Love is a stream that will find its course.
JAMAICAN PROVERB
Love called, and I could not linger,
But sought the forbidden tryst,
As music follows the finger
Of the dreaming lutanist.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
"Telepathy"
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"For What Binds Us"
Even kindergarten love is hard work.
JEFF HICKS
"Kindergarten love flourishes, 50 years later", The Record, September 3, 2018
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
Love made you vulnerable; if you gave your heart to another, they could leave you or die.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler