LOVE QUOTES XIV

quotations about love

love quote

In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames.

STEFAN ZWEIG

Beware of Pity

Tags: Stefan Zweig


All love that has not friendship for its base,
Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
Though brave its walls as any in the land,
And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;
Though skilful and accomplished artists trace
Most beautiful designs on every hand,
And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,
And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place:
Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust
Of adverst fate is blown, or sad rains fall
Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,
Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.
Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,
Needs friendship's solid masonwork below.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Upon the Sand"


Love makes you do crazy things. Right, and alcohol makes you drink too much. It's romantic to think that love is this uncontrollable force that sweeps us off our feet. "You can't help whom you love." "I can't help myself, I'm in love." "I have no choice but to love you." That all sounds amazing, until we consider that an uncontrollable force can't be promised or predicted. We can't commit to love that we're not responsible for. We can't give love that we don't own. If a gust of wind knocked you off your feet, you couldn't turn and offer that wind to the person behind you for as long as you both shall live. So maybe the most romantic thing someone can say to you is, "I have full capacity over all my faculties. I'm in total control. I'm thinking very clearly. I'm choosing to give you my love, because you deserve it."

JULIE MITCHELL

"Love is not written in the stars", Corsicana Daily Sun, November 6, 2017


At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Animal Dreams

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Love, such as it is in society, is only the exchange of two fantasies, and the contact of two bodies.

SEBASTIEN R. N. CHAMFORT

Maximes et pensées

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


The great unrequited love tears open your heart to the beauty of the world, its small rivers and upland meadows. It also makes you kinder to the next hundred thousand persons who cross your path.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Life's Variety Pack", A Prairie Home Companion, Nov. 3, 2009

Tags: Garrison Keillor


If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.

SERGEI LUKYANENKO

Day Watch


Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it's only faith that gives love its strength and joy.

SERGEI LUKYANENKO

Night Watch


We cannot reason ourselves into love, nor can we reason ourselves out of it, which suggests that love and reason have little to do with each other.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

HONORE DE BALZAC

A Woman of Thirty


Whoever said "You can't buy love" probably never went into a pet shop!

TOM WILSON

Ziggy, Jan. 29, 1998

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Any human love a man gets he can make fill his life. It's like the grain of mustard-seed.

WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE

Where Love Is

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In love, all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. In love loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column and gifts are added to gains.

SWAMI ABHEDANANDA

"Realisation in Love", The Free Press Journal, August 21, 2018


We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides


I saw her, met her, liked her, got to know her, let her know I was interested, pursued her, wooed her, won a place with her, spent time with her and grew to love her.

BRADY CRAIN

"Altitude Sickness: Romantic love is a verb", Mountain Times, March 9, 2016


Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones.

MARGARET ATWOOD

Cat's Eye

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".

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They stayed together and watched each other slowly become strangers, watched their love die as you watch a great old gum tree succumb to dieback.

RICHARD FLANAGAN

The Unknown Terrorist

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Whoever came up with the term "love is a drug" was spot on. That first time doing a drug is unreal, but afterward, you are left chasing that first high that will never come again. Love is the same way, nothing will ever compare to the first, we can chasetrack it for an eternity, might find a few suitable replacements to fill that void but in the back of your mind, you know the truth.

IDOTHIS4THELOVE

"Dating & Relationships: Do You Ever Get Over Your First Love?", Inscribe Magazine, September 1, 2016


The truth about love is that it is ever changing. Throughout the life of a relationship, individuals change and life itself changes. Love has to be flexible enough to accommodate new information, new roles, and new ways of loving one another.

PATRICIA LOVE

The Truth About Love

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Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Chill'd with tears, kill'd with fears, endless torments dwell about thee: yet who would live, and live without thee!

JOSEPH ADDISON

Rosamond

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