Love

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The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ Eden Ahbez

Quotes regarding Love (listed alphabetically by author):

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P -Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z - Anon - Verses - External links

[edit] A

  • The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
  • Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.
    • Woody Allen, reported in James Robert Parish, The Hollywood Book of Love, (2003), p. 35.
  • Who sings of all of Love's eternity
    Who shines so bright
    In all the songs of Love's unending spells?
    Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
    Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
    Hear the music of Love Eternal
    Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.
  • All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect who might be searching for us.
  • The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.
  • Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
    • W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand, and other essays‎ (1962), p. 372.
  • It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.
    • Augustine of Hippo, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392.
  • Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.
    • Augustine of Hippo, In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos, Tractatus VII, 8
    • Latin: "dilige et quod vis fac."; falsely often: "ama et fac quod vis."
    • Translation by Professor Joseph Fletcher: "Love and then what you will, do."

[edit] B

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways....
  • The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.
    • Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A Lovestory (1989), p. 184.
  • I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world.
  • Love means never having to say you're sorry.
    • Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O’Neal) in Love Story, (1970)
  • If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
  • Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by the removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, 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.
  • We have common cause against the night...Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear the music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokecherry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow, and pain...We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.

[edit] C

  • Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d`abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.
    • English: We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
    • Albert Camus, quoted in Robertson, Connie (1998). ""Camus, Albert 1913–1960". The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations. Wordsworth Editions. pp. page 73. ISBN 185326489X. 
  • That's love too. It ain't sex, and maybe that's too bad, but you know, Cindy, when a man and a woman care for each other, that doesn't always mean they have to sleep together or live together.
  • Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. There are three things that last faith, hope and love, and love is the greatest of these.
  • To love this world is to be alone.
    • Michael Castle, World Around his Neck
  • I have often had occasion to observe, that a warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.
    • Richard Cecil, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394.
  • Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding.
    • Dinah Craik, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394.

[edit] D

A song fluttered down in the form of a dove,
And it bore me a message, the one word—Love!

The Dove by Paul Laurence Dunbar
  • If we seek the pleasures of love, passion should be occasional, and common sense continual.
    • Robertson Davies, "The Pleasures of Love," in Saturday Night (23 December 1961); reprinted in The Enthusiasms of Robertson Davies (1990)
  • Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
    • Bette Davis (1908-89), U.S. screen actor. The Lonely Life, ch. 19 (1962).
  • Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. . . . When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
  • Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
    • Madame De Stael, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392.
  • … What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
    • Dostoevsky, Fyodor M. (1999) [1880]. The Brothers Karamazov. Constance Garnett, translator. Signet Classic. pp. p. 312. ISBN 0451527348. 
    • Variation: Hell is the suffering of being unable to love.
  • Love is a passion
    Which kindles honor into noble acts.
    • John Dryden, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392.

[edit] E

  • Affection is the broadest basis of a good life.
    • George Eliot, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393.

[edit] F

Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
  • Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
  • For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.
  • Just one step at a time
    And closer to destiny
    I knew at a glance
    There'd always be a chance for me
    With someone I could live for
    Nowhere I would rather be.
    Is your love strong enough
    Like a rock in the sea?
    Am I asking too much?
    Is your love strong enough?
  • I wish I could take what I'm feeling right now and put it in the water system so everybody could drink it and we would all love each other.
  • I love love
    I love being in love
    I don't care what it does to me
  • If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
    • Erich Fromm, Art of Loving (1957)

[edit] G

  • Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
    Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
    • Emma Goldman, "Marriage and Love" in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)

[edit] H

  • The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
    • Matthew Henry in Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. 1, under Genesis 2:21. [1]
There is scarcely anything else in the world but that: to love one another.
  • The love that gushes for all is the real elixir of life — the fountain of bodily longevity. It is the lack of this that always produces the feeling of age.
    • Josiah Gilbert Holland, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393.
  • The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.
    • Josiah Gilbert Holland, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394.

[edit] I

  • Hold the person that you love closely if they're next to you, the one you love, not the person that'll simply have sex with you.

[edit] J

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.
  • At the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.
    • John of the Cross, reported in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2002), p. 231.
  • Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.

[edit] K

  • The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart.
  • Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people?
  • Love feels no burden, regards not labors, strives toward more than it attains, argues not of impossibility, since it believes that it may and can do all things. Therefore it avails for all things, and fulfils and accomplishes much where one not a lover falls and lies helpless.
  • Love is a word, what matters is the connection that word implies.
  • When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.
  • It's love that holds it all together...it's love thats holding back the weather and the same will let it go

[edit] L

  • The world is wonderful and beautiful and good beyond one's wildest imagination. Never, never, never could one conceive what love is, beforehand, never. Life can be great-quite god-like. It can be so. God be thanked I have proved it.
    • D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Letter, 2 June 1912 (published in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1, ed. by James T. Boulton, 1979). Lawrence wrote the letter after eloping to Germany with Frieda von Richthofen, wife of his old university professor, whom he later married.
  • Ah, how skillful grows the hand
    That obeyeth Love's command!
    It is the heart, and not the brain,
    That to the highest doth attain,
    And he who followeth Love's behest
    Far excelleth all the rest!
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394.

[edit] M

  • Contrary to Pascal's saying, we don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.
  • To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.
  • Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
    Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
    Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
    And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
    Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
    Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
    Yet many a man is making friends with death
    Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
  • "True love is hard to find, sometimes you think you have true love and then you catch the early flight home from San Diego and a couple of nude people jump out of your bathroom blindfolded like a goddamn magic show ready to double team your girlfriend..."
  • Love would master self; and having made the mastery stretch onward and upward toward infinitude.
    • Donald G. Mitchell, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 394.

[edit] N

  • Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes one feel as you might when a drowning man holds unto you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
    • Anaïs Nin, as quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126.
  • Love works magic.
    It is the final purpose
    Of the world story,
    The Amen of the universe.
    • Novalis, in Blüthenstaub-Fragmente (1798)

[edit] O

[edit] P

  • Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
    • Petrarch, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392.
  • "In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all..."

[edit] Q

[edit] R

  • Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.
    • Tom Robbins, Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas (1994), p. 103. In the book, it is a beat poem written by the main character's mother. Paraphrased by Matt Groening in the comic strip, Life in Hell.

[edit] S

  • We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.
  • Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt my love.
  • The night has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; Yet the light of the world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done.
  • The feeling of love - is a fervent desire of goodness to a man.
  • When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you.
    When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you.
    When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you.
    Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you.
    • The Voice Of Love, by Silard Somorjay, The Streets of Beijing movie soundtrack, Video Art Beijing
  • But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
  • In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.
  • At the heart of its strength is a weakness: a lone candle can hold it back. Love is more than a candle, love can ignite the stars.
  • In love we are poets. In marriage we are philosophers.

[edit] T

I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
  • "How come we don't always know when love begins, but we always know when it ends?
  • Love reflects the thing beloved.
    • Alfred Tennyson, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 393.
  • They say it is to know the union with love that the soul takes union with the body.
  • The throb of life is love. Without it, humans are bodies of bones clad with skin.
  • Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
  • Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
  • To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.
  • I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.
  • What are wanted ...are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes... but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth ...that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind
  • The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.
    God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...

[edit] U

[edit] V

  • 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".
  • I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency."

[edit] W

There's a reason for the sunshinin' sky
And there's a reason why I'm feelin' so high
Must be the season when that
Love light shines all around us. ~ Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow
  • Love is a minefield. You take a step and get blown to pieces, put yourself back together again and stupidly take another step. I guess that's human nature. It hurts so much to be alone that we'd all rather blow up than be single.
  • An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
    • John Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley (1830), p. 393.
  • 'Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing.'
    'But it's true-'
    'Still doesn't mean anything. What you feel only matters to you. It is what you do to the people you love; that's what matters. That's the only thing that counts.'
  • Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
    And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
    And let your love show and you'll know what I mean
    It's the season
Let your love fly like a bird on a wing 
 And let your love bind you to all livin' things 
 And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean 
 That's the reason.
  • Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking.
    Loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making
  • Love is the true antithesis of fear. It expands where fear constricts. It embraces where fear repels.
    • Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson, Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness, p. 45 (1997)

[edit] X

[edit] Y

I know a lot about love. I've seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. ~ "Yvaine" in Stardust (2007 film)
  • Love is in the air
    Everywhere I look around
    Love is in the air
    Every sight and every sound
    And I don't know if I'm being foolish
    Don't know if I'm being wise
    But it's something that I must believe in
    And it's there when I look in your eyes.
  • Love is in the air
    In the whisper of the trees
    Love is in the air
    In the thunder of the sea
    And I don't know if I'm just dreaming
    Don't know if I feel sane
    But it's something that I must believe in
    And it's there when you call out my name.
  • You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, seen centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... Made me want to turn away and never look down again. But to see the way that mankind loves... I mean, you could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So, yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan, is... I think I love you. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange — no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me, too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.

[edit] Z

[edit] Anonymous

This section is for widely quoted statements by authors unknown or Anonymous
  • There really is only one question about the future of civilization: Which is stronger love or hate? If the answer is hate we are all doomed.
    • Anonymous

[edit] Verses

A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought with gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was a fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping and I cried, "Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
Then sighing said the other, "Have thy will,
"I am the Love that dare not speak its name."
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs
Being purged, the fire in lovers' eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day;
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away."

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