LOVE QUOTES XIX
quotations about love
The poorest lives some little blossoms bring
To deck Love's altar in the days of spring.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Love is to the soul of him who loves, what the soul is to the body which it animates.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
When a plain-looking woman is loved, it is certain to be very passionately; for either her influence on her lover is irresistible, or she has some secret and more irresistible charms than those of beauty.
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.
Love's wing moults when caged and captured,
Only free, he soars enraptured.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Freedom and Love
Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
UMBERTO ECO
Foucault's Pendulum
If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Love", Essays and Letters
If a thing loves, it is infinite.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Annotations to Swedenborg
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of trees. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, Mar. 9, 1853
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"
A blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.
THOMAS HARDY
The Return of the Native
Love is one of the last things that gives meaning and magic in a world where god is dead and nothing matters anymore.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR
"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but antipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of all antipolitical forces.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
I felt I had stepped into something big and splendid, as if I had been a caterpillar walking into the heart of a red rose. I felt prim and small and petty. Until then I had never known what love meant.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
Simon the Jester
Love is in the fresh bottle of cold water that magically appears by your bedside lamp every night, because he knows you get thirsty when you get up to nurse the baby every two hours.
RASHA RUSHDY
"Love Is Sweatpants and Take-out, Actually", Huffington Post, February 14, 2016
Man loves most that which is his own.
HENRY ADAMS
Historical Essays
I'll tell you ... what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter -- as I did!
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
There is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Ah, love, 'tis a sorrowful land!
KENNETH RAND
"The Old Lovers"
If somebody says "I love you" to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? "I love you, too."
KURT VONNEGUT
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
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