C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves:
There is no safe investment. To
love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly
be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully
round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up
safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe,
dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will
become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or
at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven
where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love
is Hell.
Lemony Snicket in Horseradish:
Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid:
Love can change a person the way
a parent can change a baby — awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
Ambrose Bierce, with the
characteristic wryness of The Devil’s Dictionary:
Love, n. A temporary insanity
curable by marriage.
English novelist Iris Murdoch,
cited by the great Milton Glaser in How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer:
Love is the very difficult
understanding that something other than yourself is real.
Agatha Christie, who echoes Anaïs
Nin above in her autobiography:
It is a curious thought, but it
is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much
you love them.
“That’s when I finally got it. I
finally understood. It wasn’t the thought that counted. It was the actual
execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it
wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn’t enough to know that deep
down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared.
And he just didn’t. Not enough.” ― Jenny Han
“Most men claim to desire driven,
independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature
reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be
needed.” ―Tiffany Madison
“It is not a lack of love, but a
lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche
“No relationship is perfect,
ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give
something up in order to gain something greater…The love we have for each other
is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie
chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can
make up for a lot.” ―Sarah Dessen
“Love is a fire. But whether it
is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”
―Joan Crawford
“Sometimes it’s a form of love
just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be
fascinated by their presence.” ―David Byrne
“I no longer believed in the idea
of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a
very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was
exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but
because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate
beings to hinge together.” ―Lisa Kleypas
“As he read, I fell in love the
way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” ―John Green
“When love is not madness it is
not love.” ― Pedro Calderón de la Barca
“Love is not affectionate
feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it
can be obtained.” ―C.S. Lewis
“Sometimes love means letting go
when you want to hold on tighter.” ―Melissa Marr
“The heart has its reasons which
reason knows not.” ―Blaise Pascal
“Anyone who falls in love is
searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets
sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you
have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.” ―Haruki Murakami
“I do not trust people who don’t
love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which
is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” ―Maya Angelou
“For the two of us, home isn’t a
place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” ―Stephanie Perkins
“You think because he doesn’t
love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn’t want you
anymore that he is right — that his judgement and opinion of you are correct.
If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because
you want to belong to him. Don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when
you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever
see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes
you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up
top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head
pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him
keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can’t
own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him.
Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You
really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the
door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he. You’re turning over your whole
life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can
just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He
can’t value you more than you value yourself.” ―Toni Morrison
“Anyone who loves in the
expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.” ―Paulo Coelho
“Letting go doesn’t mean that you
don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you
really have control over is yourself.” ―Deborah Reber
“The course of true love never
did run smooth.” ―William Shakespeare
“Perhaps the reason we are unable
to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from
our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking
for nothing but his company.” ―Milan Kundera
“For my part, I prefer my heart
to be broken.It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.” ―D.H.
Lawrence
“They say a good love is one that
sits you down, gives you a drink of water, and pats you on top of the head. But
I say a good love is one that casts you into the wind, sets you ablaze, makes
you burn through the skies and ignite the night like a phoenix; the kind that
cuts you loose like a wildfire and you can’t stop running simply because you
keep on burning everything that you touch! I say that’s a good love; one that
burns and flies, and you run with it!” ―C. JoyBell C.
The most precious gift we can
offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they
will bloom like flowers. Thich Nhat Hanh
Love takes off masks that we fear
we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. James Baldwin
Love is now, is always. All that
is missing is the coup de grâce — which is called passion. Clarice Lispector
when you love someone / you are
scared of getting hurt / and you will get hurt Brandon Scott Gorrell
And now we’re apart and you’re
just some stranger who knows all my secrets and all my family members and all
my quirks and flaws and it doesn’t make sense. Gaby Dunn
He’s not perfect. You aren’t
either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh
at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and
making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to
quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a
part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him,
and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes
you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love
hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but
there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.
Bob Marley
I love you without knowing how,
or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love
you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in
which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my
hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close. Pablo Neruda
What most people call loving
consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear,
I’ve seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning
bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the
courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I
think it’s just the siteoppo. Beatrice wasn’t picked out, Juliet wasn’t picked
out. You don’t pick out the rain that soaks you to a skin when you come out of
a concert.
Julio Cortázar
It’s often just enough to be with
someone. I don’t need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between
you both. You’re not alone. Marilyn Monroe
We must get beyond passions, like
a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each
other so much to live outside of time… detached. Federico Fellini
I like not only to be loved, but
also to be told I am loved. George Eliot
Love is the voice under all
silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere
force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star… E.E.
Cummings
as a girl where I was a Flower of
the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used
or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I
thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask
again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and
first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my
breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I
will Yes. James Joyce
The only thing we never get
enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love. Henry
Miller
I fell in love with her courage,
her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe
in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she
should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything. F. Scott
Fitzgerald
i am afraid / that i am not
learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding / and it feels like no
one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your room /
it was the effect of an extremely distinct
sensation that ‘i am the only person / alive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and
‘i can feel the universe expanding / and making things be further apart / and
it feels like a declarative sentence / whose message is that we must try harder
Tao Lin
We’re born alone, we live alone,
we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion
for the moment that we’re not alone. Orson Welles
"One word frees us of all
the weight and pain of life: That word is love." - Sophocles
"Attention is the most basic
form of love; through it we bless and are blessed." - John Tarrant
"We love because it's the
only true adventure." - Nikki Giovanni
"Love is like quicksilver in
the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts
away." - Dorothy Parker
"Love is friendship set on
fire." - unknown
"Love is an ideal thing,
marriage a real thing." - Goethe
"Love is everything it's cracked
up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth
fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk
everything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong
"Sometimes love is stronger
than a man's convictions." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"Love is the master key that
opens the gates of happiness." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Maybe love is like luck.
You have to go all the way to find it." - Robert Mitchum
"Love stretches your heart
and makes you big inside." - Margaret Walker
"Love has no awareness of
merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature." -
Howard Thurman
"Love is like war: Easy to
begin but hard to end." - Anonymous
"Love consists in this, that
two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other." - Rainer Maria
Rilke
"Where love is, no room is
too small." - Talmud
"Loves makes your soul crawl
out from its hiding place." - Zora Neale Hurston
"Love is the irresistible
desire to be irresistibly desired." - Mark Twain
"True love is eternal,
infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent
demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the
heart." - Honore de Balzac
"Love 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." - Nicholas Sparks
"To love is to receive a
glimpse of heaven." - Karen Sunde
"A love song is just a
caress set to music." - Sigmund Romberg
"Love is an act of endless
forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov
"Love is like a violin. The
music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever." - unknown
"Love is the only sane and
satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." - Erich Fromm
"In the final analysis, love
is the only reflection of man's worth." - Bill Wundram, Iowa Quad Cities
Times
"Love doesn't make the world
go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile." - Elizabeth Browning
"We're all a little weird,
and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is
compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and
call it love." — Dr. Seuss
The hunger for love is much more
difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
~Mother Teresa
Gravitation is not responsible
for people falling in love. ~Albert
Einstein
There is no surprise more magical
than the surprise of being loved. It is
God's finger on man's shoulder. ~Charles
Morgan
You have to walk carefully in the
beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only
come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip. ~Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog
Museum"
Ah me! love can not be cured by
herbs. ~Ovid
Love is the only sane and satisfactory
answer to the problem of human existence.
~Erich Fromm
Love has no desire but to fulfill
itself. To melt and be like a running
brook that sings its melody to the night.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of
loving. ~Kahlil Gibran
Infatuation is when you think
he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph
Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as
Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as
Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him
anyway. ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975
Love is only a dirty trick played
on us to achieve continuation of the species.
~W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook, 1949
Life has taught us that love does
not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same
direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière
When love is not madness, it is
not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Let your love be like the misty
rains, coming softly, but flooding the river.
~Malagasy Proverb
Do I love you because you're
beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I
love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein II, Cinderella
For you see, each day I love you
more
Today more than yesterday and
less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard
Forget love - I'd rather fall in
chocolate! ~Sandra J. Dykes
Love is much like a wild rose,
beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. ~Mark Overby
Love is a symbol of
eternity. It wipes out all sense of
time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. ~Author Unknown
Love - a wildly misunderstood
although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain,
causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to
pucker. ~Author Unknown
Love is a sweet tyranny, because
the lover endureth his torments willingly.
~Proverb
The lover is a monotheist who
knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that
there could be other gods. ~Theodor
Reik, Of Love and Lust, 1957
Hate leaves ugly scars, love
leaves beautiful ones. ~Mignon
McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Love looks not with the eyes, but
with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid
painted blind.
~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer
Night's Dream, 1595
The art of love... is largely the
art of persistence. ~Albert Ellis
Love one another and you will be
happy. It's as simple and as difficult
as that. ~Michael Leunig
Love must be as much a light, as
it is a flame. ~Henry David Thoreau
To find someone who will love you
for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate
happiness. ~Robert Brault,
www.robertbrault.com
Without love, what are we
worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking
around lonely. ~Laurence Marks, M*A*S*H,
"Love Story," original air date 7 January 1973, spoken by the
character Hawkeye
A baby is born with a need to be
loved - and never outgrows it. ~Frank A.
Clark
Love is the condition in which
the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~Robert Heinlein
The hours I spend with you I look
upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to
it. You and you alone make me feel that
I am alive. Other men it is said have
seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. ~George Moore
The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to
give, not our kind. ~Mignon McLaughlin,
The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
Absence diminishes small loves
and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the
bonfire. ~François Duc de La
Rochefoucauld
My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
~Jessie B. Rittenhouse
We choose those we like; with
those we love, we have no say in the matter.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
The ultimate test of a
relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.
~Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self
Love is, above all, the gift of
oneself. ~Jean Anouilh
When a man is in love or in debt,
someone else has the advantage. ~Bill
Balance
Anyone can be passionate, but it
takes real lovers to be silly. ~Rose
Franken
A bell is no bell 'til you ring
it,
A song is no song 'til you sing
it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay -
Love isn’t love
'Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of
Music, "You Are Sixteen (Reprise)"
(Thanks, Krystel)
Love is like dew that falls on
both nettles and lilies. ~Swedish
Proverb
Passion makes the world go
round. Love just makes it a safer
place. ~Ice T, The Ice Opinion, quoted
in Reader's Digest, "Quotable Quotes," February 2002
Love is no respecter of age or
practicality
Neither morality: unabashed
She enters where she will
Unheeding that her immortal fires
Burn up human hearts...
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Beyond Me,
www.originals.net
Love is an ocean of emotions
entirely surrounded by expenses. ~Lord
Dewar
Only in love are unity and
duality not in conflict. ~Rabindranath
Tagore
It is astonishing how little one feels
alone when one loves. ~John Bulwer
'Tis sweet to know there is an
eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come. ~Lord Byron
A hundred hearts would be too few
To carry all my love for you.
~Author Unknown
Love is the thing that enables a
woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across
it in his barn boots. ~Author unknown, as printed in The Hoosier Farmer
You know you have found love when
you can't find your way back. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Love is an exploding cigar we
willingly smoke. ~Lynda Barry
Those who are faithful know only
the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies. ~Oscar
Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Love cures people—both the ones
who give it and the ones who receive it. ~Karl Menninger
If grass can grow through cement,
love can find you at every time in your life. ~Cher
Love is staying up all night with
a sick child - or a healthy adult. ~David Frost
Love doesn't sit there like a
stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new. ~Ursula
K. Le Guin
Love is not singular except in
syllable. ~Marvin Taylor
People who are sensible about
love are incapable of it. ~Douglas Yates
While duty measures the regard it
owes
With scrupulous precision and
nice justice,
Love never reasons, but profusely
gives,
Gives, like a thoughtless
prodigal, its all,
And trembles then, lest it has
done too little.
~Hannah More
Ah me! why may not love and life
be one? ~Henry Timrod
Take away love and our earth is a
tomb. ~Robert Browning
Love is not love which alters
when it alteration finds. ~William Shakespeare, "Sonnet CXVI"
He felt now that he was not
simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. ~Leo
Tolstoy
It is the same in love as in war;
a fortress that parleys is half taken. ~Marguerite de Valois
Love.... Its eternal goal is
life.... No one who has ever brought up a child can doubt for a moment that
love is literally the life-giving fluid of human existence. ~Smiley Blanton,
quoted in Woman's Home Companion, 1956
A joyful heart is the inevitable
result of a heart burning with love.
~Mother Teresa
Sometimes the shortest distance
between two points is a winding path walked arm in arm. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
No one can understand love who
has not experienced infatuation. And no
one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced
it. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's
Notebook, 1960
Love me and the world is
mine. ~David Reed
It would be impossible to
"love" anyone or anything one knew completely. Love is directed towards what lies hidden in
its object. ~Paul Valéry, Tel quel, 1943
The love game is never called off
on account of darkness. ~Tom Masson
They who meet on an April night
are forever lost in love, if there's moonlight all about and there's no moon
above. ~E.Y. "Yip" Harburg and
Fred Saidy, dialogue just before the song "Old Devil Moon" in the
musical Finian's Rainbow (Thanks, Katherine!)
You know you're in love when you
don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your
dreams. ~Dr. Seuss
Whatever our souls are made of,
his and mine are the same. ~Emily Brontë
The excesses of love soon pass,
but its insufficiencies torment us forever.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
An old man in love is like a
flower in winter. ~Portuguese Proverb
