John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems
Quotes about love page 17
Caprice Crane (1970) American writer
Source: Stupid and Contagious
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird
Pt. 1, ch. 2
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
Variant: I never loved reading until I feared I would lose it. One does not love breathing.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
“Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter
Source: Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs
“In this world
love has no color
yet how deeply
my body
is stained by yours.”
Izumi Shikibu Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Source: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
Cesar Millan (1969) Mexican - American dog trainer and television personality
Source: Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
“They call you heartless; but you have a heart and I love you for being ashamed to show it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.”
Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner
“Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.”
Walter Kirn (1962) American novelist
Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama
Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most
Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature
Source: The Great God Brown and Other Plays
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Source: Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
E.M. Forster book A Room with a View
Source: A Room with a View (1908), Ch. 19
Context: It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
“Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy tale.”
Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass
Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
“dont let the old break you; let the love make you”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)
“Oh, you can't describe someone you're in love with!”
Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire
Source: A Streetcar Named Desire
“A burnt child loves the fire.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
“I need sex for a clear complexion, but I'd rather do it for love.”
Joan Crawford (1904–1977) American actress
Source: My Way of Life
“He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.”
Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost
Source: The Canterville Ghost
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)
Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest
"The Evolution of Chastity" (February 1934), as translated in Toward the Future (1975) edited by by René Hague, who also suggests "space" as an alternate translation of "the ether."
Variants:
"One day after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity" — after all the scientific and technological achievements — "we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
As quoted by R. Sargent Shriver, Jr. in his speech accepting the nomination as the Democratic candidate for vice president, in Washington, D. C. (8 August 1972); this has sometimes been published as if Shriver's interjection "after all the scientific and technological achievements" were part of the original statement, as in The New York Times (9 August 1972), p. 18
What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but identifying them.
As translated in The The Ignatian Tradition (2009) edited by Kevin F. Burke, Eileen Burke-Sullivan and Phyllis Zagano, p. 86
Love is the only force which can make things one without destroying them. … Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Seed Sown : Theme and Reflections on the Sunday Lectionary Reading (1996) by Jay Cormier, p. 33
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Fire of Love : Encountering the Holy Spirit (2006) by Donald Goergen, p. 92
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
As quoted in Read for the Cure (2007) by Eileen Fanning, p. v
Variant: Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Context: What paralyzes life is lack of faith and lack of audacity. The difficulty lies not in solving problems but expressing them. And so we cannot avoid this conclusion: it is biologically evident that to gain control of passion and so make it serve spirit must be a condition of progress. Sooner or later, then, the world will brush aside our incredulity and take this step : because whatever is the more true comes out into the open, and whatever is better is ultimately realized. The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 97.
Context: In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
“Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.”
Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist
BBC obituary (2004)
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“I like physics, but I love cartoons.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
“Love is poetry plus biology.”
Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“For man is essentially alone, and one should pity him and love him and grieve with him.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist
Source: All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day
“If you would be loved, be lovable”
Ut ameris, amabilis esto.
Ovid book Ars amatoria
Variant translation: To be loved, be lovable.
Book II, line 107
Compare: Si vis amari, ama. ("If you wish to be loved, love"), attributed to Hecato by Seneca the Younger in Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, Epistle IX
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
Variant: If you want to be loved, be lovable.
“Love people, not things; use things, not people.”
Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
“We loved, sir — used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was —
But then, how it was sweet!”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
"Confessions", line 34 (1864).
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness
Source: 1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
“What we have loved
Others will love
And we will teach them how.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet
“The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
“O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!”
William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
A Drinking Song http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1399/ <br class="br">The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
“The gap between compassion and surrender is love’s darkest, deepest region.”
Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence
Source: The Museum of Innocence
