quotations about love
With his venom
irresistible
and bittersweet
that loosener
of limbs, Love
reptile-like
strikes me down
SAPPHO
With His Venom
Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Although most of her poetry is now lost, she was regarded in ancient times as one of the greatest lyric poets and given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess," just as Homer was called "the Poet."
It is certain there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Passion of Love", Essays Moral and Humorous
When [men] see a pretty woman, and feel the delicious madness of love coming over them, they always stop to calculate her temper, her money, their own money, or suitableness for the married life.... Ha, ha, ha! Let us fool in this way no more. I have been in love forty-three times with all ranks and conditions of women, and would have married every time if they would have let me. How many wives had King Solomon, the wisest of men? And is not that story a warning to us that Love is master of the wisest? It is only fools who defy him.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Men's Wives
Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, Dec. 20, 1810
So this love still hold true
now what you gonna do
I won't give up on you
Between the moon and sun
this life is never done
I won't give up on you
Set up set up set up my love
I wont give up on you
TREVOR HALL
"Moon/Sun"
Love is the rule of rules, the key to all mysteries.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Invisible Monsters
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Love: Quotes and Passages from the Heart
Love! Love until the night collapses!
PABLO NERUDA
"Come Up with Me"
The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.
PHILIP ROTH
The Dying Animal
No rose without a thorn, nor love without a rival.
TURKISH PROVERB
We love instinctively, but we love well because we've learned how.
BOB LONSBERRY
A Various Language
Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common sense.
HELEN ROWLAND
Inter-Collegiate World
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
And folds over the world its healing wings.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
Once you love someone it's like cancer. It spreads and spreads until it eats you up.
ANN WUEHLER
Interviews With Loneliness
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Love
When people fall in love they not only change themselves, but in their eyes the whole world changes. They may have been commonplace or dull before. But once in love they take on a strange brightness. And however uninteresting and dreary the world may have seemed to them, it at once becomes a fairyland.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Love", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire
Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"In the Wood of Finvara"
Love is many things and sometimes we are never really sure if it even exists, but all I know is that if you were to show me her soul in a photograph, I wouldn't even ask to see the others.
CHRISTOPHER POINDEXTER
Remington Typewriter Poetry
Love is like infinity: You can't have more or less infinity, and you can't compare two things to see if they're "equally infinite." Infinity just is, and that's the way I think love is, too.
FRED ROGERS
The World According to Mister Rogers