Quotes about love
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“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”

William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well

Source: All's Well That Ends Well

Life, Silence

“If I thought this would never happen again I would die. But this is wrong, nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Sex

“Dogs are my favorite role models. I want to work like a dog, doing what I was born to do with joy and purpose. I want to play like a dog, with total, jolly abandon. I want to love like a dog, with unabashed devotion and complete lack of concern about what people do for a living, how much money they have, or how much they weigh. The fact that we still live with dogs, even when we don't have to herd or hunt our dinner, gives me hope for humans and canines alike.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Money, People, Dogs, Hope

“When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Nature, Thinking, Sincerity

“I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see I’m just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.”

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

Kiss

“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Source: Cry, The Beloved Country

“Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person's stature is as large as one's own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Personality

“So does that mean you're going to fall in love with me again?
What makes you think i ever stopped?”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Hidden Riches

Thinking

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Source: In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Life, Perfection, Loyalty

“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings. [Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century. [Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis. The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,. [Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4]. Misattributed

Life, Sadness, Peace, Faith

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

“Sad thing is, you can still love someone and be wrong for them.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Sadness

“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Source: The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Life, Fools

“If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.”

Marvin J. Ashton (1915–1994) Apostle of the LDS Church

Understanding, Thinking, Heart, Patience

“You don't have to think about love; you either feel it or you don't.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Feeling, Thinking

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Context: Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Dead

“I have loved another with all my heart, and for me that has always been enough.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Heart, Romantic

“Happiness means being close to the one you love, that's all. (Taking immediate possession is not necessary.)”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Happiness

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Victory

“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces… But I loved her”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Money, Shoe, Time

“That’s the problem with falling in love. It makes you start talking like a bad country song”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

Problem, Country

“If I am more alive because love burns and chars me,
as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation,
it's that he who lays me low is my salvation,
and invigorates the more, the more he scars me.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Feeling

“Nothing can be accomplished without love.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

“It is at moments like these that I know my what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Life, Learning

“This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.”

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

Time, Wise

“Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.”

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

Understanding, Time

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Sea, Romantic, Wedding, love

“Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Source: The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in ‪Primary Education‬ (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody.
Misattributed

“Under loves heavy burden do I sink.
--Romeo”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

“I guess that's part of growing up, too--saying goodbye to the things you used to love.”

Jenny Han book Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Parting, Goodbye

“Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Soul, Courage, Heart

“I'm a teacher. A teacher is someone who leads. There is no magic here. I do not walk on water. I do not part the sea. I just love children.”

Marva Collins (1936–2015) American schoolteacher

Children, Teachers, Water, Parting

“Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Fear

“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Fear, Victory

“I have made a lot of mistakes falling in love, and regretted
most of them, but never the potatoes that went with them.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

“Don’t do it. Don’t love me.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Happiness, Personality, Happy, Relationship

“If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 1
Source: Why I Write
Context: Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters. And how right they are, after all! For, moneyless, you are unlovable. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. But then, if I haven't money, I DON'T speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Women, Men, Money

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

Personality, Forgetting

“To love someone is nothing, to be loved by someone is something, but to be loved by the one you love is everything”

Bill Russell (1934) American professional basketball player and coach

“Your love is like the wind… you cant see it, but you can feel it…”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Variant: Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it.
Source: A Walk to Remember

Feeling

“The most important thing is that you love what you are doing, and the second that you are not afraid of where your next idea will lead.”

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

Idea

“Love begets courage, moderation creates abundance and humility generates power.”

B.K.S. Iyengar book Light on Yoga

Source: Light on Yoga

Courage

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.”

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

“Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Life, Color, Box

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Faith

“courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway"

"A goal, A love and A dream give you total control over your body and your life”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Life, Death, Dreams, Courage

“Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant…”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Pain, Solitude, Distant, Singing

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”

Robert B. Cialdini (1945) American social psychologist

Source: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Way, Sad, Heartbreaking

“To get rid of an enemy one must love him.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

“Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Making love, Sleep, Relationship

“I know that each one of us travels to love alone,
alone to faith and to death.
I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help.
Let me come with you.”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Moonlight Sonata

Death, Faith, Travel, Help

“Well, I'd love to wear a rainbow everyday and tell the world that everything's okay / But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back / 'Til things are brighter, I'm the man in black.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Source: Man in Black

World

“I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

Age, Thinking

“Adapt yourself to the environment in which your lot has been cast, and show true love to the fellow-mortals with whom destiny has surrounded you.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VI, 39
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982)

Life, Books, Feeling, History

“One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love”

Elizabeth Aston (1948–2016) English writer

Source: The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy

Perfection

“From love's plectrum arises
the song of the string of life
Love is the light of life
love is the fire of life”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Life, Light

“It's a very brave thing to fall in love. You have to be willing to trust somebody else with your whole being, and that's very difficult, really difficult and very brave.”

Nicole Kidman (1967) Australian-American actress and film producer

“We are born sad and we die sad, but meanwhile we love bodies whose sad beauty is a miracle.”

Mario Benedetti (1920–2009) Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet

Sadness, Beauty

“Wherever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason utter their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers and prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man’s heart.”

Albert Pike (1809–1891) Confederate States Army general and Freemason

God, Faith, Heart

“Endymion, you are my first love, my only love… even if we're reborn, in another life, we'll find each other… and then… We'll fall in love again… - Princess Serenity”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Life, Princess

“I glanced up at him. "I love things that are beautiful when you don't expect them to be.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: The Back Door of Midnight

Beauty

“She was, if anything, on the plain side, at least not the type to attract men wherever she went. But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone. Everytime we met, I took a good look at her. And loved what I saw.”

Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun

Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun

Men

“He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Suffering

“The knight of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

Der Mensch der Erkenntniss muss nicht nur seine Feinde lieben, er muss auch seine Freunde hassen können.
Foreword, in the Oscar Levy authorized translation.
Variant translations:
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Ecce Homo (1888)

Hate, Knowledge

“He loved Big Brother.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Love and fantasy, go hand in hand.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

“Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

Lovers, Thinking

“Forgive and give as if it were your last opportunity. Love like there's no tomorrow, and if tomorrow comes, love again.”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Every Day Deserves a Chance: Wake Up to the Gift of 24 Hours

Forgiveness

“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Coffee, Drink, Beer, Tea

“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

"Jubal Harshaw" in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "Uncut" edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: "Dr. Harshaw says that 'the word "love" designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.'"
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Happiness, Personality, Wise, Happy

“Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.”

William Congreve The Mourning Bride

Act III, scene viii; often paraphrased: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned". A similar line occurs in Love's Last Shift, by Colley Cibber, act iv.: "We shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman".
The Mourning Bride (1697)
Variant: Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
Context: Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

Hell, Rage

“Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

Source: Ava: My Story

Sex

“As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap the joy of love.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

Attribution to Pythagoras by Ovid, as quoted in The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of Humane Thought (1985) by Jon Wynne-Tyson, p. 260; also in Vegetarian Times, No. 168 (August 1991), p. 4
Context: As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

Men, Pain, Animals, Joy

“Living with someone you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one that you love doesn't love you.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Plays

Loneliness

“Falling in love is kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”

Spike Jonze (1969) American director and actor

Source: her

“Maybe I didn't treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn't love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Time

“When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness… all the good things.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Happiness, Peace, Joy

“We didn't love freedom enough.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII

Freedom

“Love me like you'll never see me again.”

Alicia Keys (1981) American singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress

“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love

Knowledge

“The Beatles were just four guys that loved each other. That's all they'll ever be.”

Ringo Starr (1940) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Guy

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

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

Madness, Wise, Relationship, Cute

“For a country to have a great writer … is like having another government. That’s why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Innokenty, in Ch. 57.
Variant translation: For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
The First Circle (1968)

Country

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Thinking, Sleep