quotations about love
Love is a spiritual force, the deep aliveness that is the essence of being before we think about it.
JUDITH SEDGEMAN
Love Is Not What You Think
It is certain there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Passion of Love", Essays Moral and Humorous
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"The Meeting in a Dream", Other Inquisitions
In the vacuum of the heart love falls forever.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Love made you vulnerable; if you gave your heart to another, they could leave you or die.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
Heav'nly love shall outdo Hellish hate.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
The measure of love is to have no mean, the end to be everlasting.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues and His England
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Looking Glass War
Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Fraternity
When people fall in love they not only change themselves, but in their eyes the whole world changes. They may have been commonplace or dull before. But once in love they take on a strange brightness. And however uninteresting and dreary the world may have seemed to them, it at once becomes a fairyland.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Love", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
Being in love is an elaborate state of anticipation for the continual exchanging of certain kinds of gifts. The gifts can range from a glance to the offering of the entire self. But the gifts must be gifts: they cannot be claimed. One has no rights as a lover--except the right to anticipate what the other wishes to give.
JOHN BERGER
G. John Berger
If you have a history of bad relationships, what feels natural to you is probably NOT the best thing for you. This is counter-intuitive, but the things that feel good or exciting to you may actually be red flags that you're with someone who is fulfilling an old pattern of yours. Ironically, the kind of love that you deserve is going to feel uncomfortable at first, because it will be something NEW and off your neural map, so to speak. It may not be as exciting, and you'll likely not even be as initially attracted to the person who you'll ultimately create a strong relationship with, but true love is a marathon, not a sprint.
JENEV CADDELL
"The Part You're Missing About Manifesting True Love", Huffington Post, December 30, 2015
Love ... Just Nature's way of getting one person to pay the bills for another person.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
It was always about love. Always, always about love. Lost love, love denied, the obsessive hunger for love. Parental or romantic. Whether it was twisted or pure, fulfilled or unrequited, love was always at the source.
JAMES W. HALL
Magic City
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"
The first love disappears, but never goes. That ache becomes reconciliation.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.
JACK LONDON
The Valley of the Moon
Love cannot in its very nature be peaceful or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting love just as I can grant a lasting unsatisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be coupled with possession, for love is pain and desire and possession is easement and fulfilment.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
There is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love.
IVAN KLIMA
Love and Garbage
A man loves with more or less passion according to the number of cords which his pretty mistress binds to his heart.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage