quotations about love
In a love affair, there is usually one person who loves, and the other qui se laisse aimer; it is only in later days, perhaps, when the treasures of love are spent, and the kind hand cold which ministered them, that we remember how tender it was; how soft to soothe; how eager to shield; how ready to support and caress. The ears my no longer hear which would have received our words of thanks so delightedly. Let us hope those fruits of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late; and though we bring our tribute of reverence and gratitude, it may be to a gravestone, there is an acceptance even there for the stricken heart's oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and pious tears.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Newcomes
In the religion of Love the courtesan is a heretic; but the nun is an atheist.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
In the vacuum of the heart love falls forever.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
It is not love that he feels for me. It is more like a constant resentment that has become such a habit to him that to have it removed, like an aching tooth, brings him no relief.
PHILIPPA GREGORY
The Boleyn Inheritance
It is the terrible deception of love that it begins by engaging us in a play not with a woman of the outside world but with a doll inside our brain -- the only woman moreover that we have always at our disposal, the only one we shall ever possess -- whom the arbitrary power of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the Balbec of my dreams had been from the real Balbec; an artificial creation which by degrees, and to our own hurt, we shall force the real woman to resemble.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
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
It's a cliché, but also a deep truth (as cliché's tend to be), that you can't love another person very well if you don't love yourself.
HARRIET LERNER
"The Top 10 Reasons Women Re-Marry The Wrong Guys", Huffington Post, July 7, 2012
Love ... Just Nature's way of getting one person to pay the bills for another person.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Love always has its price, come whence it may.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Miss Harriet"
Love and money should properly have nothing to do with each other.
JOHN SAUL
Guardian
Love begins at home.
GERMAN PROVERB
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"
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage and Morals
Love cannot be cured by herbs.
ROMAN PROVERB
Love demands that we stop asking "how can my wife/parent/sibling be better" and start asking "how can I make my wife/parent/sibling the happiest in the world?" Love demands death to self.
CHRIS STEFANICK
"Love is Easy Until It's Tested", National Catholic Register, March 19, 2016
Love does not seek equals; it creates them.
STENDAHL
The Red and the Black
Love dwindles by pairing.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Love enters a man through his eyes, a woman through her ears.
POLISH PROVERB
Love for those too easily won does not last long.
ROMAN PROVERB
Love gives impetus and fruitfulness to life and to the journey of faith: without love, both life and faith remain sterile.
POPE FRANCIS
Vatican Radio, October 29, 2017