quotations about love
But the most common species of love is that which first arises from beauty, and afterwards diffuses itself into kindness and into the bodily appetite. Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. The one is, perhaps, the most refined passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar. The love of beauty is placed in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that it is so singularly fitted to produce both.
DAVID HUME
"Of the Amorous Passion, or Love Betwixt the Sexes", A Treatise of Human Nature
I was thinking what a curious thing love is; only a sentiment, and yet it has power to make fools of men and slaves of women.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
A Long Fatal Love Chase
Well they say that love is in the air, but never is it clear,
How to pull it close and make it stay
Butterflies are free to fly, and so they fly away
And I'm left to carry on and wonder why
SHERYL CROW
"Always on Your Side"
Love fades, the dreamer wakes, the dream is brief.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dawn"
Our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.
PABLO NERUDA
"The Furies"
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
attributed, Zen Soup: Tasty Morsels of Wisdom from Great Minds
Love is ... telling someone when they have crap between their teeth.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love is just a system for getting someone to call you Darling after sex.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Man ever is and always shall be blessed; for he loves, and love is an onward current that never ebbs; and borne upon this current humanity will at last make its far, fair haven; and meanwhile, as it voyages, it will find the course not too rough, but glorified by frequent halcyon days and calm nights set with stars.
FRANK CUMMINS LOCKWOOD
Robert Browning
Love defies all calculation. We are not judicious in love; we do not select those whom we ought to love, but those whom we cannot help loving.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
attributed, Proust Was a Neuroscientist
If you think love makes you happy, you've either never been in love, or never been in love long enough to have to start compromising.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
I love Love -- though he has wings,
And like light can flee.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou"
Love sometimes elevates, creates new qualities, suspends the working of evil inclinations; but only for a day. Love, then, is an Oriental despot, whose glance lifts a slave from the dust, and then consigns him to it again.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
What amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy--and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love any more. And there is no logic or use to any of this, that I can see.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
Nothing goes far which has not the wings of love to make it buoyant, so that it can fly.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Hello beautiful thing, maybe you could save my life.
In just a glance, down here on magic street,
Loves a fool's dance
And I ain't got much sense, but I still got my feet.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Girls in Their Summer Clothes", Magic
Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Kafka on the Shore
If you listen to neurologists and psychiatrists, you'd never fall in love.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Changing My Mind, Among Others
How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek,
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by
The quivering lid of an averted eye--
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh
Thus doth Love speak.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Love's Language"
Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
The Reed of God