Quotes about heart
page 7

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"Love after Love"
Source: "A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

Love, Life, Wine

“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: Complete Works

Dreams, Time

“The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart.
And now my soul was crying.”

Tracey Emin (1963) English artist, one of the group known as Britartists or Young British Artists

Source: Strangeland

Soul, Cry

“A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.”

John Grogan (1958) American journalist

Source: Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

Education, Dogs

“Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure

“intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Way

“Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?”

Jim Butcher book Storm Front

Source: Storm Front

Despair

“Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart.”

Phil Jackson (1945) basketball player and coach from the United States

For Team

“I'm always going to keep your heart safe, even if mine has to stop beating for that to happen.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“To you I belong. My heart beats only for you. No other will tempt me, from this day and beyond. To you I belong.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Heart of the Dragon

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.
Source: Macbeth

“By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Love, Sleep, Night

“One must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Source: Humboldt's Gift

Love

“Betrayed and wronged in everything,
I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.”

Molière The Misanthrope

Source: The Misanthrope

World

“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.”

Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States

Soul, Kiss, Good Morning, Cute

“Give me the waters of Lethe that numb the heart, if they exist, I will still not have the power to forget you.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Source: The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters

Water, Forgetting

“My heart was a hysterical unreliable organ.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

“A mistake made with good in your heart is still a mistake, but it is one for which you must forgive yourself.”

Linda Sue Park book When My Name Was Keoko

Source: When My Name Was Keoko

Forgiveness

“Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will bring you happiness again, as long as you live.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Happiness

“love is dangerous for your tiny heart even in your dreams so please dream softly”

Mathias Malzieu book La Mécanique du cœur

Source: La Mécanique du cœur

Love, Dreams

“Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart which beats only for you.”

Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) French poet

Flowers, Valentine's Day

“If I were the rain… that binds together the Earth and the sky, whom in all eternity will never mingle… Would I be able to bind two hearts together?”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 01

“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

People, Thinking

“The heart is what is important." There is nothing more vulnerable, nothing more corruptible than the human mind; nor is there anything as powerful, steadfast and ennobling.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

“When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

“When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Help

“If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived. (The Inconvenient Messiah, BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 1982)”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

People

“He who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.”

John Ruskin book The Stones of Venice

Volume III, chapter II, section 99.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Source: The Stones of Venice: Volume I. The Foundations

Truth, Fear

“Your twisting is done--you have the last thread of my heart. I wonder: when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?”

Sarah Waters Affinity

Source: Affinity

Feeling

“Nïx clasped her hands over her chest,
sighing, “He gave you his heart. That’s so romantic.
So much better than a candy heart.
Those get stuck in the fangs, you know.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Variant: Nïx clasped her hands over her chest, sighing, “He gave you his heart. That’s so romantic. So much better than a candy heart. Those get stuck in the fangs, you know.
Source: Lothaire

“Body or mind, heart or soul, we're all human, and we're supposed to feel pain. You cut yourself off from it at your own risk.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Pain, Feeling, Soul

“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey

People, Beauty

“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

St. 5 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/ Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Context: In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise. And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

Beauty, Learning

“Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

God, Idea, Passion, Time

“You, yes, you, linger inside my heart
The same you who stopped us before we could start.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

“Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity.”

Mark Twain book The Prince and the Pauper

Source: The Prince and the Pauper

Learning

“No one but a woman can help a man when he is in trouble of the heart.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Help

“I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Star, Laughter, Sleep

“I kissed his cheek, damp and salty. I could feel his heart beating against my ribs, and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever, not moving, not making love, just breathing the same air.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Love, Making love, Feeling, Kiss

“What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.”

Aleister Crowley book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Life, Lie, World, Dreams

“It's usually the selfish people who are loved the most. They do what you deny yourself, and you love them for it. You give them your heart.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Love, People, Selfishness

“What's the point of living if you're going to hate the world? Guard your heart if you have to, but don't shut it away.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Hate, World

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Spring

“Sentence first; verdict afterwards." -Queen of Hearts”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“What you're really supposed to be doing is whatever makes your heart sing.”

Barbara Sher (1935) American writer

Source: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was: How to Discover What You Really Want and How to Get It

Singing

“O, ah! The awareness of emptiness brings forth a heart of compassion!”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

“It's such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can't find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

Source: Snow

Love, People, Country

“Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Winter, Parting

“Romance is the sweetening of the soul
With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Source: The Lion and the Jewel

Soul

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backwards.

Love, Star, Sea, Wise

“Fear no more, says the heart…”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Fear

“Well, at heart I knew she'd never be a normal woman. And I didn't want her to be one, because what I loved in her were the indomitable and unpredictable aspects of her personality”

Mario Vargas Llosa book The Bad Girl

Source: Travesuras de la niña mala

Love, Personality

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130

God, Fear, Dreams, Search

“… an everlasting funeral marches round your heart.”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Source: The Crucible

“The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Love, Boy

“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head”

William Shakespeare Titus Andronicus

Source: Titus Andronicus

Death, Revenge

“WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?

The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of the potato. SQUEAK, he said.

Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.”

Terry Pratchett book The Truth

Source: The Truth

Death, Men, Evil

“From bitter searching of the heart,
quickened with passion and with pain
we rise
to play a greater part
this is the faith from which we start.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Pain, Faith, Search, Passion

“The visions you glorify in your mind,
The ideals you enthrone in your heart..
This you will build your life by…
This you will become.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals
Context: In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not. Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; they are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart — this you will build your life by, this you will become.

Life

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.”

Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons

Source: Walk Two Moons

Love

“The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Death, Hope, Hope

“How frail the human heart must be —
a mirrored pool of thought.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: "I Thought I Could Not Be Hurt," quoted in the introduction to Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (1975) as Plath's first poem, written at age 14

“The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

God, Soul, Sea

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost–a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.”

Anne Rice The Wolf Gift

Source: The Wolf Gift

Death, God, Help, Forgetting

“Wild Nights – Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile – the winds –
To a heart in port –
Done with the compass –
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden –
Ah, the sea!
Might I moor – Tonight –
In thee!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Sea, Night

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Joy, Moving On

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Color, Night

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Variant: You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.
Source: Letters to Felice‎

Imagination

“One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.” That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present. To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead. Things will not always be like this. Jesus has promised to “make all things new.” Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God. Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation. We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.”

John Eldredge

Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God

God, Lie, Hope, Imagination

“I love you, Marks. My heart is completely and utterly yours. And unfortunately for you, the rest of me comes with it.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Love

“Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life. Could it think, the heart would stop beating.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Life, Thinking, Loss

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Hurt

“My heart is breaking for a little love”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Love, Sad, Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“Sometimes life, will get you down, break your heart, steal your crown.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Life

“I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Memory, Loneliness

“I know my heart will never be the same
But I'm telling myself I'll be okay”

Sara Evans (1971) American country singer and songwriter

Heartbreaking

“My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde

God, World

“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Success, Success

“Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Source: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Bird

“It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

“I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Love, Life

“There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart -
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Clothes

“Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is no quiet in my heart.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.”

Robert Burns My Heart's in the Highlands

My Heart's in the Highlands, st. 1
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

“My heart bleeds buttermilk.

-Daine”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

“The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

1950-07-17 http://books.guardian.co.uk/firstchapters/story/0,6761,222716,00.html The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Pain

“Then your heart is a black, shriveled thing, because you absolutely betray me.”

P. C. Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

“The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”

Immaculée Ilibagiza (1972) Rwandan writer

Source: Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Love, World

“The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.”

Oscar Wilde book A House of Pomegranates

Source: A House of Pomegranates

World, Suffering

“The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Variant: Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic.
Source: The Glass Menagerie

Memory

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so shall he be”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh