quotations about love
Nothing is so strange when one is in love ... as the complete indifference of other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Love prepares us for martyrdom.
PHILIP KOSLOSKI
"Love is What Prepares Us For Every Form of Martyrdom", National Catholic Register, March 22, 2016
True love is a giant cheese wheel.
DAYNA EVANS
"True Love Is a Giant Cheese Wheel", New York Magazine, December 21, 2015
We are told from an early age that our true love is out there, waiting for us and so we yearn to find them, to know what it feels like to experience true love, to know you have made the right choice. The truth about love is that it is often bewildering and unknowable. You may never know if you have made the right choice. But when love is true, you embrace all the unknowns, regardless.
ROXANNE GAY
"Where the Hell Is the Love of My Life?", New York Times, October 18, 2018
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow.
ST. AUGUSTINE
On the Mystical Body of Christ
There are many kinds of love, and people have the capacity to love many different people.
DAVID BALDACCI
One Summer
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
It is as absurd to deny that it is possible for a man always to love the same woman, as it would be to affirm that some famous musician needed several violins in order to execute a piece of music or compose a charming melody.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
In love, the quickest is always the best cure.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Surfacing
Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Her works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics".
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept--our own selves--that we love.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
Loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy
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
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
Love is when you know you are right but you bite your tongue anyway. What greater love could you show for anyone than to swallow it, to deny yourself the supreme pleasure of proving that you are right by virtue of a long legalistic argument that proves your point? But sometimes you need to just leave it be. Let them be happy rather than you be right.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
Is it the beloved who evokes love, or the lover who has love to give?
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Lost Diary of Don Juan
You see, love is strong. Stronger than hate even. Love is the only thing that can kill hate, nothing else. You see, hate destroys and that's why love is stronger. It builds.
PETER ABRAHAMS
The Path of Thunder
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
Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Rival Ladies
Love is about feeling that there is something bigger than just ourselves and our own worries and existence. Whether it is love of another person, of country, of God, of an idea, love is fundamentally an intense devotion to this notion that something is bigger than us. Love is ultimately larger than friendship, comfort, ceremony, knowledge, or joy. Indeed, as the Four Wise Ones once said, it may be all you need.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
The World in Six Songs