LOVE QUOTES VIII
quotations about love
Please do not think for a second, as some people do, that Love is primarily an affair of the emotions. It is not: it never ought to be. It is an affair of the will: it is an act of choice.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Spiritual Letters of Monsignor R. Hugh Benson to One of His Converts
Mother love is the most powerful, the most irrational force on earth, even more powerful than sexual love. However, one does lead to the other, so best not to spurn the former.
RITA MAE BROWN
Full Cry
Love--that divine fire which was made to light and warm the temple of home--sometimes burns at unholy altars.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Love, which, in concert with Abstinence, established Faith, and which, along with Patience, builds up Chastity, is like the columns that sustain the four corners of a house. For it was that same Love which planted a glorious garden redolent with precious herbs and noble flowers--roses and lilies--which breathed forth a wondrous fragrance, that garden on which the true Solomon was accustomed to feast his eyes.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN
letter to the Monk Guibert, 1176
Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
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 will have its day.
U2
"North and South of the River", Staring at the Sun
Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
The Virginians
Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin,
As sweet as clover-honey in its cell;
Love is the password whereby souls get in
To Heaven--the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"What Love Is"
Love -- bittersweet, irrepressible -- loosens my limbs and I tremble.
SAPPHO
"To Atthis"
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."
Life is like a pipe, and love is the fuse.
THEOPHILUS MARZIALS
"Chelsea"
It's logical that everyone wants to be in love. Then, for a while, life isn't taken up with the tedium of thinking everything through, talking things through. It's nice to be able to notice small objects or small moments, to point them out and to have someone eager to pretend that there's more to them than it seems.
ANN BEATTIE
"Moving Water", The New Yorker Stories
It is much easier to tell a woman you love her when you do not than when you do.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
In this day and age, love is temporary and marriage is unnatural--the product of Madison Avenue advertising executives and television producers.
MICHAEL PALMER
The Fifth Vial
If I'm meant to love people, I should love everyone.
What kind of tide can an ocean bestow
if it picks and chooses the rocks it's willing to touch?
SARAH LINDSAY
"Aunt Lydia Practices Loving Komodo Dragons", Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
When love is reached through suffering ... it has a power it can never gain through innocence.
ANNE RICE
Memnoch the Devil
We do not say of Love that he is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker.
MAX BEERBOHM
A Christmas Garland
Unconditional love. That's what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return. All other giving is selfish. But he is being selfish a little, isn't he, by wanting her to love him in return? He hopes that she loves him in return. Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing of rain?
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Reunion
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Henrietta Temple: A Love Story
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 - 19 April 1881) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party and is remembered for his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone. He was also a novelist, publishing works of fiction even as prime minister.
Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep--her face
turned to the wall!
CHINUA ACHEBE
Attento, Soul Brother!
PIGLET: How do you spell 'love'?
POOH: You don't spell it, you feel it.
A. A. MILNE
Winnie the Pooh