quotations about love
What is love? To be delighted by the happiness of another.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Confessio Philosophi
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1 July 1646 - 14 November 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician. His most prominent accomplishment was the development of differential and integral calculus independently of Sir Isaac Newton's contemporaneous achievements.
Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
ITALIAN PROVERB
Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.
APHRA BEHN
The Lover's Watch, Four o'clock
Aphra Behn (1640 - 1689) was an English playwright, poet, and novelist from the Restoration era. As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
If you grew up in a house where you weren't loved, you didn't know there was an alternative.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Marriage Plot
O what a heaven is love! O what a hell!
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt, Master Constable
You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
PAT BENATAR
"Hell is for Children"
You can't love people into who you need them to be.
JULIE MITCHELL
"Love is not written in the stars", Corsicana Daily Sun, November 6, 2017
We often weep beneath Love's cross,
But when she calls we her obey.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Love's Guide-Board"
Upon Love's bosom Earth floats like an Ark
Safely through all the Deluge of the dark.
GERALD MASSEY
"To My Wife"
Love is not a delicate toying,
A slim and shimmering mesh;
It is two souls wrenched into one,
Two bodies made one flesh.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Young Adventure
It is no more in our power to love always than it was not to love at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
Happiest time of youth and life, when love is first spoken and returned; when the dearest eyes are daily shining welcome, and the fondest lips never tire of whispering their sweet secrets; when the parting look that accompanies "Good night!" gives delightful warning of tomorrow.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
You might as well make yourself fly as to make yourself love.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.
SARAH DESSEN
This Lullaby
Some people, right away, do know each other deeply. Love gives them insight into each other. Love makes them pledge themselves to each other. Love makes them inventive. Yes, it also makes them ridiculous. But that's just another of love's glories. It makes being ridiculous permissible.
JAMES KUZNER
"Should we scoff at the idea of love at first sight?", The Conversation, August 30, 2018
James Kuzner is Associate Professor of English at Brown University. With a specialty in early modern literature, his research tends to focus on the relationship between literature, selfhood, and political imagination.
Love is ... the by-product of living in a decent flat.
EVA WISEMAN
"Love is ... let me count the ways you are special", The Guardian, February 14, 2016
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary has been called "the most brilliant work of satire written in America," and his story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature.
It is difficult here to give definite examples, but everybody knows how, in the subtle psychology of Falling in Love, there are involved innumerable minor elements, physical and mental, which strike us exactly because of their absolute adaptation to form with ourselves an adequate union. Of course we do not definitely seek out and discover such qualities; instinct works far more intuitively than that; but we find at last, by subsequent observation, how true and how trustworthy were its immediate indications. That is to say, those men do so who were wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.
GRANT ALLEN
"Falling in Love", Falling in Love and Other Essays
All you need is love.
THE BEATLES
"All You Need Is Love", Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. Rooted in skiffle, beat, and 1950s rock and roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in previously unheard-of ways. The band later explored music styles ranging from ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock.
All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims