Quotes about lovers (990 quotes, page 10)

“All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

"Four for Sir John Davies," ll. 73-78
The Waking (1953)
Context: Dante attained the purgatorial hill,
Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw,
Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, —
Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw?
All lovers live by longing, and endure:
Summon a vision and declare it pure.

“Since the political struggles of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, the word patriotism has been employed, throughout continental Europe, to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil; in short, patriotism there is used rather to express the interest felt in the human race in general, than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And patriot, in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement, rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs. Used in this sense, patriotism is a virtue, and a patriot a virtuous man.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Independence Day speech (1828)
Context: In continental Europe, of late years, the words patriotism and patriot have been used in a more enlarged sense than it is usual here to attribute to them, or than is attached to them in Great Britain. Since the political struggles of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, the word patriotism has been employed, throughout continental Europe, to express a love of the public good; a preference for the interests of the many to those of the few; a desire for the emancipation of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and of the human race from the thrall of despotism, religious and civil; in short, patriotism there is used rather to express the interest felt in the human race in general, than that felt for any country, or inhabitants of a country, in particular. And patriot, in like manner, is employed to signify a lover of human liberty and human improvement, rather than a mere lover of the country in which he lives, or the tribe to which he belongs. Used in this sense, patriotism is a virtue, and a patriot a virtuous man. With such an interpretation, a patriot is a useful member of society, capable of enlarging all minds, and bettering all hearts with which he comes in contact; a useful member of the human family, capable of establishing fundamental principles, and of merging his own interests, those of his associates, and those of his nation, in the interests of the human race. Laurels and statues are vain things, and mischievous as they are childish; but, could we imagine them of use, on such a patriot alone could they be with any reason bestowed.

Love , Sense , Country

“In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat.”

Philip Wicksteed book The Common Sense of Political Economy

Pages 153–154.
The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910), Systematic and Constructive (Book I), "Money and Exchange" (ch. 4)
Context: But neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i. e. without the command of exchangeable things. All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it. Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships! … But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does. In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat. The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever. The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command. Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them.

“Lover waiting in my bed
to give me your soft, sweet body,
do you mean me well?
What will you take off me,
Besides my clothes?”

Tsangyang Gyatso, 6th Dalai Lama (1683–1706) sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet

Source: Attributed, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso tr. Paul Williams 2004, p.27

Waiting , Clothes

“This is that Wayless Being which all fervent interior spirits have chosen above all things, that dark stillness in which all lovers lose their way.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

If we could prepare ourselves through virtue in the ways I have shown, we would at once strip ourselves of our bodies and flow into the wild waves of the Sea, from which no creature could ever draw us back.
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Way

“No oath can be too binding for a lover.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Fragment 848.
Phædra

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.

Love , Life , Way , Heart

“For pleasure is a state of soul, and to each man that which he is said to be a lover of is pleasant…. Now for most men their pleasures are in conflict with one another because these are not by nature pleasant, but the lovers of what is noble find pleasant the things that are by nature pleasant; and virtuous actions are such… Happiness then is the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing in the world, and these attributes are not severed as in the inscription at Delos: Most noble is that which is justest, and best is health; but pleasantest is it to win what we love.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book I, 1099a.6
Nicomachean Ethics

Love , Men , Health , Pleasure

“All mankind love a lover.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Love
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Essays, First Series

Love

“And I was in such a state as I had been so many times before, so passionate and so terribly unnerved that I thought I should not satisfy my Lover and my Lover not fully gratify me, then I would have to desire while dying and die while desiring.”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Visions
Context: One Pentecost at dawn I had a vision. Matins were being sung in the church and I was there. And my heart and my veins and all my limbs trembled and shuddered with desire. And I was in such a state as I had been so many times before, so passionate and so terribly unnerved that I thought I should not satisfy my Lover and my Lover not fully gratify me, then I would have to desire while dying and die while desiring. At that time I was so terribly unnerved with passionate love and in such pain that I imagined all my limbs breaking one by one and all my veins were separately in tortuous pain. The state of desire in which I then was cannot be expressed by any words or any person that I know. And even that which I could say of it would be incomprehensible to all who hadn't confessed this love by means of acts of passion and who were not known by Love. This much I can say about it: I desired to consummate my Lover completely and to confess and to savour in the fullest extent--to fulfil his humanity blissfully with mine and to experience mine therein, and to be strong and perfect so that I in turn would satisfy him perfectly: to be purely and exclusively and completely virtuous in every virtue. And to that end I wished, inside me, that he would satisfy me with his Godhead in one spirit (1 Cor 6:17) and he shall be all he is without restraint. For above all gifts I could choose, I choose that I may give satisfaction in all great sufferings. For that is what it means to satisfy completely: to grow to being god with God. For it is suffering and pain, sorrow and being in great new grieving, and letting this all come and go without grief, and to taste nothing of it but sweet love and embraces and kisses. Thus I desired that God should be with me so that I should be fulfilled together with him.

Passion , Time

“Real saints are dearest and nearest to my heart. Perfect Ones and lovers of God adorn the world, and will ever do so.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Life Circulars (20 July 1957), p. 77.
General sources
Context: Being the Avatar, I have come to awaken mankind, and would like the entire world to come to me. Real saints are dearest and nearest to my heart. Perfect Ones and lovers of God adorn the world, and will ever do so. The physical presence of the Perfect Masters throughout eternity is not necessarily confined to any particular or special part of the globe. My salutations to all — the past, present and future Perfect Masters, real saints — known and unknown — lovers of God, and to all other beings, in all of whom I reside, whether consciously felt by them or not.

God , World , Heart , Perfection

“When ice appears out of doors, and boys seize it up while it is solid, at first they experience new pleasures. But in the end their pride will not agree to let it go, but their acquisition is not good for them if it stays in their hands. In the same way an identical desire drives lovers to act and not to act.”

Sophocles (-496–-406 BC) ancient Greek tragedian

Achilles' Loves, only surviving fragment, often quoted as "Love is like ice in the hands of children".

Pleasure , Way , Boy , Appearance

“This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing
Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this
Booming and booming of the new-come bee.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: Should there be a question of returning or
Of death in memory’s dream? Is spring a sleep?This warmth is for lovers at last accomplishing
Their love, this beginning, not resuming, this
Booming and booming of the new-come bee.

Love , Bee

“Polyamory — that's where you're freely confessed that you have more than one lover at a time.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

Planet JH Weekly interview (2005)
Context: Polyamory — that's where you're freely confessed that you have more than one lover at a time. And actually I'm less that way than I used to be, but I was trying to make people understand, that at least for some folks, this was a fairly natural state. And instead of skulking around about it that we'd all do better to avoid the deceit and be honest.

Time

“Robert Ingersoll was humorist, iconoclast and lover of humanity.”

Alice Moore Hubbard (1861–1915) American activist

Introduction.
An American Bible (1912)
Context: Robert Ingersoll was humorist, iconoclast and lover of humanity.
It is said that the difference between man and the lower animals is that man has the ability to laugh.
When you laugh you relax, and when you relax you give freedom to muscles, nerves and brain-cells. Man seldom has use of his reason when his brain is tense. The sense of humor makes a condition where reason can act.
Ingersoll knew that he must make his appeal to man's brain.

“Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Strangers" - Live @ Great American Music Hall (27 February 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAX3P1ueR6w
Actor (2009)
Context: Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.
Paint the black hole blacker. Paint the black hole blacker

“The lover becomes the thing he loves
By virtue of much imagining;
Since what I long for is already in me,
The act of longing should be enough.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Transforma-se o amador na cousa amada

Love

“This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take… So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Horvendile, in Ch. 13 : What a Boy Thought
The Way of Ecben (1929)
Context: My immortality has sharp restrictions. For it is at a price that I pass down the years, as yet, in eternal union with the witch-woman whose magic stays — as yet — more strong than the magic of time. The price is that I only of her lovers many not ever hope to win Ettare. This merely is permitted me: that I may touch the hand of Etarre in the moment I lay that hand in the hand of her last lover. I give, who may not ever take... So do I purchase an eternally unfed desire against which time — as yet — remains powerless.

Time

“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title. To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.

Food , Nature , Sense , Parting

“Who a Lover can deceive?”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

“Tonight the lilacs magnify
The easy passion, the ever-ready love
Of the lover that lies within us and we breathe”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: p>Tonight the lilacs magnify
The easy passion, the ever-ready love
Of the lover that lies within us and we breatheAn odor evoking nothing, absolute.
We encounter in the dead middle of the night
The purple odor, the abundant bloom.</p

Love , Passion

“God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God's forms. What He is cannot be described.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 148
Context: Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta's love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God's forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so disappears. He cannot find his "I" any more.

God , Feeling , Knowledge , Sun

“Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other — that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Equality (1943)
Context: Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other — that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

“Who can deceive a lover?”
Quis fallere possit amantem?

Virgil Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Line 296

“I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Visions
Context: At that time I also had, for a short while, the strength to bear it. But all too soon I lost external sight of the shape of that beautiful man, and I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. All of this was external, in sight, in taste, in touch, just as people may taste and see and touch receiving the external sacrament, just as a beloved may receive her lover in the full pleasure of seeing and hearing, with the one becoming one with the other. After this I remained in a state of oneness with my Beloved so that I melted into him and ceased to be myself. And I was transformed and absorbed in the spirit, and I had a vision about the following hours.

People , Pleasure

“With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology (1918 edition)
Context: Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

“For over the world a dim hope hovers,
The hope at the heart of all our songs —
That the banded stars are in league with lovers,
And fight against their wrongs.”

Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet

Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, II
Context: p>We are caught in the coil of a God's romances —
We come from old worlds and we go afar:
I have missed you again in the Earth's wild chances —
Now to another star!Perhaps we are led and our loves are fated,
And our steps are counted one by one;
Perhaps we shall meet and our souls be mated,
After the burnt-out sun.For over the world a dim hope hovers,
The hope at the heart of all our songs —
That the banded stars are in league with lovers,
And fight against their wrongs.</p

World , Hope , Star , Heart

“Life is my lover.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

Life

“A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.”

Thomas Hardy book The Hand of Ethelberta

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 20

“And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.”

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

"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

Night

“Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever
beneath the dry earth.
Andalusia has
long, red-colored roads.
Córdoba, green olive trees
for placing a hundred crosses
to remember them.
Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Color , Tree

“The creation of a supreme and ideal society with the arrival of a perfect human being who is a true and sincere lover of all human beings, is the guaranteed promise of Allah. He will come alongside with Jesus Christ to lead the freedom and justice lovers to eradicate tyranny and discrimination, and promote knowledge, peace, justice freedom and love across the world. He will present to every single individual all the beauties of the world and all good things which bring happiness for humankind.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Ahmadinejad United Nations Speech: Full Text Transcript, https://www.ibtimes.com/ahmadinejad-united-nations-speech-full-text-transcript-317114 International Business Times, 22 Oct 2011
2011

Peace , Justice , Freedom , Beauty

“Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not been introduced into religious thought. She took lovers, but for pleasure, not to provide her children with a father. Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre, and motherhood their prime mystery.”

Robert Graves book The Greek Myths

Volume 1, Introduction
The Greek Myths (1955)

God , Children , Pleasure , Fear

“Seeing a lot of water like that every day is probably an important thing for human beings. For human beings might be a bit of a generalization—but I do know it’s important for one person: me. If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me. It’s probably like the feeling a music lover has when, for whatever reason, he’s separated from music for a long time. The fact that I was raised near the sea might have something to do with it.”

Haruki Murakami book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

What I Talk about When I Talk about Running (2009)

Time , Personality , Music , Water

“We were and still are recreating our own reality. Our vision is that we have been a hard working, courageous people. There have been three prevalent images of the chicano in this country— 1) the pachuco, a violent, urban vato loco; 2) the farmworker, a passive peon, Don Juan-Yaqui brujo type; and 3) el Spanish grandee or Latin lover type.”

Luis Valdez (1940) American film director

On what he aimed to portray in his early works in “An Interview with Luis Valdez” https://journals.ku.edu/latr/article/download/491/466/ in LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW (Spring 1982)

Courage , Country , People , Reality

“Savarkar is widely reviled in Indian history as an apostle of hate; through a reading of Hindutva I argue that he might better be understood as a spurned lover . . . Hindutva in its time was also a reminder to a Hindu community that even if Gandhi had left the political milieu, there was no need to worry. A political Hindu and a true nationalist was back and ready to lead India, even from behind prison walls. Hindutva was a pugilistic punch thrown against Gandhi in the competitive political ring for national leadership.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past

Time , Hate , History , Reading

“Reliance’s Big cinema had backed out as sponsors of MAMI as it was going through a massive financial crunch and there were rumours that it might shut down. ... From down-to-earth, genuine filmmakers like Shyam Benegal, the festival now was in the hands of corporates, critics, powerful people’s wives and their admirers. This was the year when MAMI officially transformed from a cinema lovers’ festival to a corporate club festival. I learnt this when I reached Chandan cinema with Pallavi for the closing award ceremony. We were official nominees, yet we were asked to sit in a corner seat in the tenth or twelfth row whereas the front rows were all occupied by commercial stars, star wives, their friends and people who are inconsequential to indie cinema. I was officially nominated; my wife Pallavi, besides being a senior actor is a national award winner and has been on the jury of the national awards, but nobody was ready to recognize those who did not make great press.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Star , Making love , People

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Aristotle book Metaphysics

Metaphysics by Aristotle – Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928<sup>b</sup> 17–20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

Sun , Star , Universe , Thinking

“She had lovers and, if the secret must be out, she drank. What else accounts for the naughtiness of her eyes? Like so many tawaifs (geishas, courtesans) there were ups and downs in her childhood, the father leaving the mother and so on, but she was blessed with the divine gift and her art transcended the various accidents of her life. In the end all else was forgotten. Only the legend and the accomplishment survive.”

Begum Akhtar (1914–1974) Indian musician

Begum Akhtar the Undisputed Malika of Ghazals

Childhood , Art , Secret , Life

“While we call ourselves animal lovers, and lavish kindness on our dogs and cats, we inflict brutal deprivations on billions of animals that are just as capable of suffering. The hypocrisy is so rank that future generations will marvel at how we could have failed to see it.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

"Goodbye – and good riddance – to livestock farming" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/04/livestock-farming-artificial-meat-industry-animals, The Guardian, 4 October 2017.

Future , Dogs , Suffering , Cats

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception (1954)

Family , Suffering , Nature , Universe

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

-- David W. Orr, Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect ISBN 1559632941
Misattributed, Successful people

Courage , Success , People , Fight

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

-- Facebook image meme
Misattributed, Successful people

Success , People

“Sometimes a woman accepts tho favours of many lovers, but this is generally now-a-days scouted by all respectable people, and the fashion is daily becoming more and more prevalent for the woman to leave her ancestral home for that of the husband of her choice, although, as matter of law, the husband occupies no recognized legal relation involving rights and responsibilities in regard either to his wife or his children.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 136 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n148
Malabar Manual (1887)

Home , Law , Children , People

“Marxism had a lot to offer Hitler. Largely saddled with an unmovable, single-mindedness, hardcore Marxism allowed proponents to see themselves as noble crusaders saving humankind. Here too, Hitler could identify with such closed-mindedness, political messianism, and authoritarian tactics that licensed him to see himself as the savior of the world. A lover of the power of politics, Hitler’s hidebound views pushed him into the unshaded world of white and black antipodes, a battleground where you were either with him or undoubtedly against him, leaving no luxury of neutrality. Such exacting standards of political absolutism likely blinded him to other alternatives, or at least to the possibility of subjective objectivity that would allow the people to freely display their own diversity of opinions.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 341-342

World , People

“The Void Which Binds is touched by all of us who have wept with happiness, bidden a lover good-bye, been exalted with orgasm, stood over the grave of a loved one, or watched our baby open his or her eyes for the first time.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Aenea is looking at me as she speaks, and I feel the gooseflesh rise along my arms.
“The Void Which Binds is always under and above the surface of our thoughts and senses,” she continues, invisible but as present as the breathing of our beloved next to us in the night. Its actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit.”
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 400)

Baby , Time , Love , Making love

“Protima Gauri (as she renamed herself) had zest for living. She loved her men, her liquor and drugs. She had a large range of her lovers, most of whom she names.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

By Khushwant Mubarak Singh quoted in "She had a lust for life"

Love , Making love , Men

“She abandoned her dance school and other business to become a sanyasin, but death took her unawares: she was killed in a landslide while on a pilgrimage to Kailash-Mansarovar. Oddly enough even as a sanyasin she was accompanied by one of her lovers.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

By Khushwant Mubarak Singh quoted in "She had a lust for life"

School , Business , Dance , Death

“I salute you, Freja, as your lover for ever. Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Francis Selwyn, Hitler's Englishman op cit, p. 211
Last letter to his wife Margaret before he was hanged, 3 January 1946.

“It is not easy to write of my good friend, John Muir. The impression of his personality was so strong on those who knew him that all words seem cheap beside it. Those who never knew him can never, through any word of ours, be brought to realize what they have missed. … He had a quaint, crisp way of talking, his literary style in fact, and none of the nature lovers, the men who know how to feel in the presence of great things and beautiful, have expressed their craft better than he.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

David Starr Jordan, first President of Stanford University (page 8)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Personality , Beauty , Strong , Nature

“In Lady Chatterley’s Lover we meet the ancient honest word fuck.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Lawrence believed that it could be cleansed of its centuries of accumulated filth and stalk nakedly through his pages like Connie and Mellors themselves, standing for an act of love which had been too long swaddled in euphemisms. There are many people who cherish the fallacy of a golden age of Anglo-Saxon candour in which lovers invited each other to fuck or be fucked….This was never so. The word has always been taboo. You will find no Anglo-Saxon document which contains it. True, it is old, cognate with the German ficken, but it stands for a brutal act unsuitable for the marriage bed. It connotes impersonality and aggression. When Dr Johnson said that drinking and fucking were the only things worth doing…he was referring to getting drunk and going to brothels. A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife….fuck is a…dysphemism….there is no love in it. Lawrence made an aesthetic rather than a moral gaffe….
Non-Fiction, Flame Into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (1985)

“Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

A note to his grandson, Will (2005) http://books.google.com/books?id=9Zy4GJrn--UC&pg=PA350&dq=%22truth+seekers,+lovers+and+warriors%22&hl=en&ei=AyvoTYrBIIq8sQOBg7XtDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22truth%20seekers%2C%20lovers%20and%20warriors%22&f=false, reprinted in "Outlaw Journalist : The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson" (2008), by William McKeen
2000s

Forgetting , Learning , Music , Truth

“My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me to love what the people abhor and to show good will toward the one they hate. It showed me that Love is a property not of the lover but of the beloved. Before my Soul taught me, Love was for me a delicate thread stretched between two adjacent pegs, but now it has been transformed into a halo; its first is its last, and its last is its first. It encompasses every being, slowly expanding to embrace all that ever will be.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)

Soul , Hate , People , Love

“One must say Yes to life, and embrace it wherever it is found — and it is found in terrible places. … For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

From Nothing Personal, a collaboration with the photographer Richard Avedon (1964). Baldwin's text for the volume can be found " here https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1042&context=cibs".

Faith , Light , Children , Sea

“The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artist have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Faith , Time , Justice , Country

“The demon of avarice, it seems to me, is extraordinarily complex and is baffling in his deceits. Often, when frustrated by the strictness of our renunciation, he immediately pretends to be a steward and a lover of the poor; he urges us to prepare a welcome for strangers who have not yet arrived or to send provisions for absent brethren. He makes us mentally visit prisons in the city and ransom those on sale as slaves. He suggests that we should attach ourselves to wealthy women, and advises us to be obsequious to others who have a full purse. And so, after deceiving the soul, little by little he engulfs it in avaricious thoughts and then hands it over to the demon of self-esteem.”

Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) Christian monk

On Discrimination, vol. 1, p. 51
The Philokalia

Soul , Self-confidence , Making love , Women

“That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 3
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Loss , Soul , Time , Sun

“Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on”

Boney M.

Boney M., in their 1978 song "Rasputin"

Cats , Love , Making love

“A group of women around a shattered man.
I said with a smile: Let's call him Qais, Laila's mad lover.
The termperature sank abruptly.
Never in my life did I see eyes like those with trailing dresses.
The moment I left him they had, of course, to come after me.
And there they waited for me, one after the other.
I was in a rural city, a strange place on the banks of a river.
And even without my smiling, the shattered man had tired me.
It was in the old house that our meeting took place, and my jokes turned into blood.
I killed them with classic boredom.”

Ounsi el-Hajj (1937–2014) Lebanese poet, journalist, and translator

An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, p. 75
Poetry, Rendezvous

Housing , Waiting , Smile , Life

“What sweeter than this in the world!
Friend met friend and the lover joined his Beloved.
That was all sorrow, this is all joy
Those were all words, this is all reality.”

Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (967–1049) poet

World , Joy , Reality

“How a pleasant word of an old lover that said
When there is lovem there is no comfort.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Joseph and Zuleika, p. 254
Poetry, Poetry from Joseph and Zuleika

“Heart is not free from love pain
Painless body is only soil and water
Everybody vecomes lover
O, there is no leveless heart in the worls.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Joseph and Zuleika, p. 78
Poetry, Poetry from Joseph and Zuleika

Pain , Heart , Water , Love

“And isn't it usually so, that lovers who share their daily lives with each other gradually find they need to put very little into words?”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Death Kit (1967), p.270

“An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Joyce, Act I
Stoppard called this "the most important" speech in the play
Source: Travesties (1974)

War , Art , Horse , Relation ships

“The beauty in her lover's eyes
Was admiration of her own.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book II, Canto II, III Lais and Lucretia.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Beauty

“I see the nations of the world arming in ways that have never before been known in the modern world. I am not speaking of new forms of poison gas, heavier or swifter bombing planes, or parachutes to land brigades of soldiers… What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world today is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 33-34

War , Children , World , Way

“For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this — a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create — to create — to create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"The Creative Mind at Work," William Vaughn Moody Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago (1935), as quoted in Pearl S. Buck: A Biography, Volume 2 - Her Philosophy as Expressed in Her Letters (1971) by Theodore F. Harris, p. 217.

God , Beauty , Music , Joy

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza 2
Poems (1820), Ode on a Grecian Urn

Tree , Kiss , Youth , Love

“Don't worry, He (Allah) will not separate his lovers from Himself. It is not possible to unrecognize after having full cognition of Him. But one must not give up struggle, nor becomes negligent.”

Shah Badakhshi Indian poet

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 203

“The animals [nature] brings forth (not to speak of the plants and the minerals) are in many cases ugly, unamiable, ferocious, and tormented with monstrous appetites, which can only be satisfied by devouring their fellow-creatures; nearly all of them are quite selfish and immoral; and the few of them that are philanthropic (such as surly old lions, tigers, wolves, sharks, vultures and other sweet carrion fowl; all genuine lovers of man) are almost as disagreeably so as our human philanthropists themselves.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 60
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Animals , Selfishness , Nature

“Men are not zoophilists (being-lovers). Not many of them are philanthropists (man-lovers). They are barbarians. And the wrongs inflicted by them on non-human beings are for the most part inflicted simply because they feel like it. Human nature is so constructed that men get pleasure out of doing the most monstrous deeds. It is worse than this. Human nature is so constructed that it contains elements which demand exercise, demand motor expression, and in whose expression the most lamentable and appalling effects are produced.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Perils of Over-population, p. 154

Nature , Pleasure , Men , Feeling

“True lovers will be able to enter the garden of beauty without fear of being judged. They will no longer be two bodies and two souls meeting, but a single fountain out of which pours the true water of life.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About sex

Life , Soul , Beauty , Water

“Loving someone who doesn't love me back is like loving the wind, which is felt but cannot be seen. The lover does not love the feeling of getting love in return, but sacrifices himself for his happiness.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Original: What's your?

Happiness , Love , Feeling

“This was a strictly a one-nighter
to delight us
we both knew this must stay quiet
It was vital
we couldn't forget though
We never let go we just held on tighter
See I'm a lover not a fighter
so I didn't fight the fact that I more than liked you”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"One Night" (song). Based on "Heartbeats" by José González (originally "The Knife")
("One Night" on YouTube (with lyrics) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4V0oIquNZQ, feat. José González)
Remix albums, We Didn't Invent the Remix (2007)

Forgetting , Fight

“Even vegetarians always cause more damage to plants. The same as steak lovers do to animals.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Animals

“When steak lovers advise you to reincarnate as an animal. You know you are dead before you even begin to live. Reincarnation is a universal joke.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dead , Universe , Animals

“Time passes quickly with lovers.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book The Pavilion on the Links

The Pavilion on the Links, ch. V.
The New Arabian Nights (1882)

Time

“What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!”

Hafez (1326–1389) Persian poet

In A Century of Ghazels, or. a Hundred Odes, Selected and Translated from the Diwan of Hafiz (1875), p. 77; quoted with a slight change in Love: A Book of Quotations (2012), ed. Ann Braybrooks, p. 71

Life

“Money is shy and elusive. It must be wooed and won by methods not unlike those used by a determined lover, in pursuit of the girl of his choice.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Power of the Master Mind
Source: Think & Grow Rich, January 1963, p. 152.

Money , Girl

“Love unifies by individuating and individuates by unifying. At what moment do lovers come into the most perfect possession of themselves as individuals if not when they are most lost in each other? Self, is given up, but "he who loses his self will find it."”

Peter Kreeft (1937) American philosopher

Matthew 16:25
Source: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven … But Never Dreamed of Asking (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 74

Perfection , Love

“If you don not come to repent your existence,
You'll never approach the circle of gnostics and drunkards
Unless in other's eyes you become an infidel,
In the creed of lovers, you'll never be Muslim.”

Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr (967–1049) poet

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 98

“Gnosis truly, is a light which God casts into the heart. True knowledge of God is gained when the lover comes in contact with the Beloved through secret communion with Him.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 86

God , Light , Heart , Knowledge

“Pure love of God illuminates the soul of the lover and the mysteries of His divinity are revealed by God when the vision of the Beloved is contemplated.”

Abu Talib al-Makki Scholar, mystic

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 86

Soul , God , Love

“We are enraptured lover and insane, we searched the Beloved everywhere. When I smell the fragrance of His divinity, I get intoxicated in His lane.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 271

Search

“The beauty of worldly allurements makes it lovers so much oblivious that they forget the passage of temporal as well as celestial worlds. They fail to understand the challenge before them.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

Understanding , Forgetting , Beauty , World

“Become lover. Think both the worlds beauty of the Beloved and think own self the beauty of the Beloved.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 270

Thinking , World , Beauty

“Love is a defeat of human egoism before the selflessness of the lover.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Love

“Some weeks ago my boyfriend broke up with me due to some issues.

I did everything to get him back but nothing worked.

I contacted a relationship doctor i saw online.

I told the relationship doctor everything that happened,

He promised to fix my relationship.

My relationship was restored just as promised,

My Ex-boyfriend is back and promised never to leave me again

I am the happiest lady on earth,

Never too late to fix your broken heart.

You can still get your lover back…

Fix broken relationship/marriage…

Thanks a lot🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

address:::::: R. buckler11@ gmail. com”

Ritabowen

Marriage , Heart

“There is no parting of ways for those who hold sincere feelings in their hearts. Either as friends or as lovers.”

Titon Rahmawan

Heart , Sincerity , Way , Feeling

“Lovers of the night, we try to compose notes from our actions, without any duration, but only with the wants to convey emotions.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Amanti della notte, cerchiamo di comporre note dalle nostre azioni, senza alcuna durata, ma solo con la voglia di trasmettere emozioni.
Source: prevale.net

Night

Quotes about lovers page 10

Quotes about lovers
page 10