Quotes about love
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“One who does not use his intelligence will not succeed and one who does not use his knowledge will have no intellect. One who understands will attain nobility and excellence, and one who is tolerant will triumph. Knowledge is a shield (against evil), truth begets honour and ignorance disgrace, understanding is distinction, generosity is salvation and good manners command love and respect.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī - The Book of Intellect and Ignorance.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General

Truth, Intelligence, Understanding, Knowledge

“I love it when you call me Big Poppa; throw your hands in the air if you's a true player.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Big Poppa"

“What is man’s life but love, love of self;
Man is dust, dust as his passion, dust as the beloved.Death, it is your great act of piety for man –
You take him to your house or he’d be left to himself.Death is a covenant between the lover and the beloved;
Death is a secret wedlock between being and non-being.Death harbors the hidden port of life’s ocean;
Death is helpless and a vision of beauty to itself.Death is the only witness of my life and your grace,
And O strange lord, of night and the crescent.”

Ghani Khan (1914–1996) Pakistani poet

Death, st. 8-12

Life, Death, Secret, Beauty

“Your boyfriends might be angry, my girlfriends might be blue. But no one can deny it, from now on I love you.”

Alexander Rybak (1986) Norwegian singer, actor, violinist, composer, pianist

"Funny Little World" (2009).

“To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

God, Feeling, Lovers

“I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me.”

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) American actress

Tallulah, Darling: A Biography of Tallulah Bankhead (1980)

Making love

“Those in love do not know how to say good-bye: they are with one another all the time.”

Josemaría Escrivá (1902–1975) Spanish theologian

The Furrow (1986)

Time

“To love is to will the good of the other.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Sad, Heartbreaking, Courageous, Depressing

“Mara Margetić from Slavonski Kobaš stands next to Marija Bursać from Kamenica, or even to Judith the daughter of Merari from Bethulia. What a moving example of love, perseverance and loyalty!”

Vinko Vrbanić (1951)

Women

Daughters, Loyalty, Perseverance

“I've always been an actor, the reason I've been successful in the rap-game I think is that I treat my albums like movies, and I treat writing it like I'm a character writing a story, you know, for each album whatever I'm going through, whatever stages I'm going through, and I do it vividly with vivid pitcure, with action and description, and an beginning and with an end, and conflict, and you know, redemption, things like that. So I feel like I always been an actor and acting is my first love.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Interview on the set Gridlock'd (1996)

Feeling, Game, Thinking, Success

“Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self-love.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 521

Beauty, Personality

“People say I'm strange that way,
'Cause I love such elementary things,
It's been my fate to compensate
For the childhood I've never known.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Childhood
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

Fate, People, Way, Childhood

“Why do they always show Christ up there bleeding and dying on the cross? We don't remember John Lennon lying there with a bullet hole in his head. I'm against the arbitrary organization of 'God' as a concept. We should all experience it all individually and purely. I don't agree with the separation of God and the body, I don't believe that we aren't a part of 'it', I don't agree that it's a man. In most religions there's no place for women. There aren't any women in the Holy Trinity and I need that. I love women, I came from a woman.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

B-Side Magazine, October/November 1994
From Interviews

Women, God, Religion, Lying

“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Attributed to de Gaulle by Romain Gary, Life, May 9, 1969
Fifth Republic and other post-WW2

Hate, People

“You say that workin is what a man's supposed to do.
But I say you ain't right if I can't give sweet love to you.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Off the Wall (1979)

“Each Time The Wind Blows
I Hear Your Voice So
I Call Your Name.
Whispers At Morning
Our Love Is Dawning
Heaven's Glad You Came.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

I Just Can't Stop Loving You
Bad (1987)

Time

“People always told me, 'Be careful what you do,
Don't go around breaking young girls' hearts,'
And momma always told me, 'Be careful who you love,
Be careful what you do, 'cause a lie becomes the truth.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Thriller (1982)

People, Truth, Lie, Girl

“For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

196
The Symposium

“Get on the floor and dance with me,
I love the way you shake your thing especially.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Get on the Floor (co-written with Louis Johnson)
Off the Wall (1979)

Way, Dance

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Je ne sais point de plus grande finesse pour parvenir à aimer que d'aimer, comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à parler en parlant, à travailler en travaillant.
Francis de Sales, quoted in Vie de saint François de Sales, évèque et prince de Genève by André Jean Marie Hamon (Librairie Victor Lecoffre, Paris, 1896), Vol. II, Book VII, Ch. V: Son amour pour Dieu
Variant of sourced quotation: Comme on apprend à étudier en étudiant, à jouer du luth en jouant, à nager en nageant; aussi apprend-on à aimer Dieu et le prochain en l'aimant. — Francis de Sales, quoted in Jean-Pierre Camus, "L'esprit du bienheureux saint François de Sales" (1641), Part I, Section 31; published in Oeuvres complètes de saint François de Sales, ed. Jean-Irénée Depéry (Berche et Tralin, Paris, 1875), Vol. I
Misattributed

Way, Study, Learning

“Sweetheart we're alone
And you are mine.
Let's make this night a night to remember.
Don't make our love a cold dying ember,
For with the dawn, you'll be gone.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

You'll Be Gone, written by Elvis Presley, Red West and Charlie Hodge (1961)
Song lyrics

Night

“If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with.”

Michael Jackson book Dancing the Dream

Dancing the Dream (1992), also used in his funeral invitation. Quoted in "Dead stars and classic art will surround Michael Jackson" in CNN.com/entertainment (3 July 2009) http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/michael.jackson.funeral/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

World, Relationship

“I became a vegetarian because I felt really bad for the animals and I love them a lot. Animals are very sweet, and I don't think that they deserve to be tortured.”

Mckenna Grace (2006) American child actress

“Young Actors Visit a Rescued Animal Sanctuary,” video interview with PETA Kids (14 November 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jq4n3Pnku0.

Thinking, Animals

“Lovely is the feeling now,
Fever, temperature's rising now,
Power is the force, the vow,
That makes it happen,
It asks no questions how.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Off the Wall (1979)

Feeling, Question

“I have lived such an unnatural life, devoid of love, sex, and pleasure.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Perspective on incelness

Life, Pleasure, Sex

“Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to Theo, from Nuenen, c. 9 March 1884, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/14/359.htm 1880s, 1884 Context: Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.... I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc. - yes - but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom - and the world no more good than we are. One may try one's best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig - as Uncle Vincent calls it - one may be even as good as one likes.

“People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Patch Adams and clowns spreading laughter at hospital" (2 March 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gtw5nzgYpA Context: You know, it's always the same. I've clowned in 81 countries. People hunger for love, and clowning is a trick to get love close. As a clown I can do things that people are too frightened of Love to allow you to do.

Hunger, People

“Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion”

Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.

Life, Money, Freedom

“Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love…. The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

As quoted in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007) by Brian Kolodiejchuk
2000s

“But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.”

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

"Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" · Duet with Judy Collins on Soundstage (January 1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJImYNGqwk Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967) Context: I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm, Yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new, In city and in forest they smiled like me and you, But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

Way

“In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916) Context: In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love. In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what brings together and inseparably connects both the act of abandoning and that of receiving.

“And before the stars were born.
The greatest gift you can offer anyone is their complete freedom.
Freedom to love, to laugh, to cry, to feel scared, angry, insecure, full of doubt or full of joy.
To hold them in that safe and sacred space.
You don't exist to make anyone else happy.
But you can be present.
Present to their unhappiness, their excitement.
Present to the life that moves in them.
And you can invite them to a deeper Happiness.
The Happiness of Being itself.
The Happiness that holds them exactly as they are.
The way you hold them now.
The way the ground holds the flowers, the trees, the great mountain ranges.
The way you were held as a little one.
And before the stars were born.”

Джефф Фостер (1977) American basketball player

Life, Happiness, Way, Feeling

“Actually, love is everywhere, isn't it? ”

Lara Fabian (1970) Belgo-Canadian singer

“It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Making love

“Love me or hate me, it's one or the other. Always has been. Hate my game, my swagger. Hate my fadeaway, my hunger. Hate that I'm a veteran. A champion. Hate that. Hate it with all your heart. And hate that I'm loved, for the exact same reasons.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

Hunger, Hate, Making love, Game

“Dwelling on one side of the Chauci and Chatti, the Cherusci long cherished, unassailed, an excessive and enervating love of peace. This was more pleasant than safe, for to be peaceful is self-deception among lawless and powerful neighbours. Where the strong hand decides, moderation and justice are terms applied only to the more powerful; and so the Cherusci, ever reputed good and just, are now called cowards and fools, while in the case of the victorious Chatti success has been identified with prudence. The downfall of the Cherusci brought with it also that of the Fosi, a neighbouring tribe, which shared equally in their disasters, though they had been inferior to them in prosperous days.”

Tacitus book Germania

Source: Germania (98), Chapter 36

Making love, Peace, Justice, Fools

“Time is the architect of fate,
fleeting omen, pure phantom
in enchanting light of absence,
and our life the play of love and death,
only love will never die,
because In love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
only the blossom of sacred unity.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Life, Death, Fate, Making love

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Love has always passed me by

Sad, Wise, Heartbreaking, Hurtful

“A musician is similar to someone who wrote a letter to the loved one. Then decided to read it out loud instead of sending it.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Reading

“God is love but God has got nothing to do with religions. Same as love is free from any religious belief”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Religion

“God is love but God has got nothing to do with religions. Same as love is free from any religious belief.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Religion

“In the society where competition is a driving force and motto for every citizen, you can always expect less love emitted from it.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Love is the primary cure of all the diseases. But no one knows the cure of love.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Disease

“The love of God is so hot than a burning coal. It burns the heart and warms the chest; while at the same time calming the mind like still water.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Water, Time, Heart

“True love is so strong and at the same time confusing to understand—Perhaps, the force that move the planets is the same force that moves two lovers. Only God knows!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Lovers, Understanding, Strong

“We must consider that wisdom is embedded in knowledge. Here is the list of the desires in order: Love, wealth, health, power and knowledge.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Wisdom, Health, Knowledge, Wealth

“For love is beautiful only when you have mastered your emotions and mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Beauty

“Going beyond good and evil is training to start loving the things you hated and trying to hate the things you loved so much for no reason.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Hate, Evil, Training

“It takes pure love to be possessed by the spirit of God.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God

“Call on Me…
Call on Me..
Call on Me.

I am the Lover you dreamt about in your Angel filled Dreams.

I have sat awaiting your love for an eternity.

Please do not shun Me for I shall die.

My entire existance is the pure essence of You, My dear.

How you have entrapped Me like a Siren.

If I had known what I know now..

If only I had known what I know now.

I do not wish to exhibit My Undying Love for You, My dear.

However it is completely Transparent.

Awaken

and see me.

I am your Destiny.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Dreams, Angels, Lovers

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Problem, Relationship, Romantic

“Love is the evolution of true friendship. Любовь — эволюция настоящей дружбы.”

Robert Pattinson (1986) English actor

Friendship

“I truly love our Code of Chivalry. We are taught that noblemen must take everything and say nothing. Noblemen must stand alone. Well, we're men, and men aren't born to stand alone.
-Myles of Olau”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Men

“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Happiness, Sadness, Reading

“But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love forever.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Bonny Lesley.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For Nature made her what she is,
And never made anither!

“What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 217

Understanding

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Women, Men

“Follow me reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out!”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book Two in 'Margarita', P/V, opening lines of Book Two
Variant: Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!
Source: The Master and Margarita (1967)

World, Faith

“Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

“Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire - for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness - that is the way to live in this world.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Source: In the Sanctuary of the Soul: A Guide to Effective Prayer

God, Hate, World, Way

“It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Variant: It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
Source: An Ideal Husband

World, Courage

“I warn you, Eragon, beware of whom you fall in love with, for fate seems to have a morbid interest in our family.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Fate, Family

“Sometimes I think I should just buy a blow-up party doll. Same level of intelligence, plastic, and full of air.

The problem is, I'd probably fall in love.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Intelligence, Problem, Thinking

“How can anyone love someone who is less than a full person, unless love itself is domination per se?”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse

Personality

“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Friendship

“I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that's love, even if it doesn't seem very exciting.”

Sylvester Stallone (1946) American actor, screenwriter, and film director

People, Learning, Dependency, Loyalty

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in The Wright Style (1992) by Carla Lind, p. 3

Nature, Study, Beauty, Peaceful

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine; if he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have; the sea could be as readily contained in that house-trough as her whole affection be monopolized by him. Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like me; how can she love in him what he has not?

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Hate, People, Sadness, Feeling

“Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Variant: So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”
“Pretty much.
Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Personality

“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them…. I destroy them.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“There's no time for hatred, only questions. Where is love? Where is happiness? What is life? Where is peace?”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Life, Happiness, Peace, Question

“He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Soul

“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Notebook

Fish, Heart, For Him

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors have taken over the Ship (1998)

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Parting, Goodbye

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Lysander, Act I, scene i.
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

Heartbreaking, Moving On, For Wife

“A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.”

Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ

Source: The Imitation of Christ

Lovers

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Good Night, Cute, Romantic, Anniversary

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Dream Work (1986)
Source: "Wild Geese"

Animals, Beauty

“Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Friendship, Family, Time

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Way, Personality

“People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel hate or love.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women (1978)

Hate, People, Feeling

“Its not the love you make. It's the love you give.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

“Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Part I, section 3.
Source: Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Angels, Star, Forgetting

“I love a lot of people, understand none of them…”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

People, Understanding

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84 (2009-2010)

Understanding, Learning, Personality

“Declarations of love amuse me. Especially when unrequited.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited.
Source: City of Bones

“(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst

Dreams, Understanding, Sleep, Box

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Money, Truth

“Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Hate, Dreams

“Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you”

Kristin Cast (1986) American writer

Truth, Time, Hurt, For Him

“She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

“The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Book 4, chapter 1. Often misquoted as "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end".
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

Sad, Heartbreaking

“we wouldn't ask why a rose that grew from the concrete for having damaged petals, in turn, we would all celebrate its tenacity, we would all love its will to reach the sun, well, we are the roses, this is the concrete and these are my damaged petals, dont ask me why, thank god, and ask me how”

Tupac Shakur book The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Source: The Rose That Grew from Concrete

God, Sun