Quotes about lovers
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“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Feeling, Thinking, Passion

“Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”

John Cheever (1912–1982) American novelist and short story writer

Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

World, Literature, Despair

“A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Girl, Sleep, Waiting

“Now piercèd is her virgin zone;
She feels the foe within it.
She hears a broken amorous groan,
The panting lover's fainting moan,
Just in the happy minute.”

John Wilmot (1748–1815) English politician

Source: The Complete Poems

Happiness, Feeling

“I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Learning

“The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Enough Rope

“If you look closely you'll find all my lovers inscribed on my skin.”

Jill Ciment (1955) Canadian writer

Source: The Tattoo Artist

“You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful.”

Charlaine Harris book Club Dead

Source: Club Dead

Future

“Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

God, Beauty

“They reciprocated the great and saving lie--that our love for things is greater than our lover for our love for things--willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Love, Life, Lie, Parting

“Does it matter how long they were together that night? To lovers, an hour can last a century. But even for lovers, every hour ends.”

Scott Snyder (1976) American writer

Source: American Vampire, Vol. 1

Night

“The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers' meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: More Poems

Light

“It is not sex that gives the pleasure, but the lover.”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

Pleasure, Sex

“The queen's guards might have been the best of the best, but Dimitri… well, my former lover and instructor was in a category all his own. His fighting skills were beyond anyone else's, and he was using them all in defense of me.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Variant: ... but Dimitri... well, my former lover and instructor was in a category all his own. His fighting skills were beyond anyone else's, and he was using them all in defense of me.
"Stay back," he ordered me. "They aren't laying a hand on you.
Source: Spirit Bound

Fight

“Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Time

“He was the mighty Fezzik, lover of rhymes, and you did not give up, no matter what.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

Love, Life, Death

“The star-crossed lovers”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Star

“I'm such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Funny

“a man doesn't prove he's a man by getting an erection. He's only a real man if he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block" -Nyah”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Pleasure, Thinking

“In every heart there is a room,
A sanctuary safe and strong,
To heal the wounds from lovers past,
Until a new one comes along”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Strong, Past, Heart

“Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,
Lover of loneliness, and wandering,
Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!
Thee must I praise above all other glories
That smile us on to tell delightful stories.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

Love, Smile, Dreams, Loneliness

“The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies, but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship, and the more real moments you will experience together.”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Soul, Heart

“Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence.”

Jan Morris (1926) British historian

Pleasure, Books, Understanding, Parting

“Saxton was indeed clear on things: Blay was still in love with Qhuinn— and probably always would be.
“Why?” he said to his lover.
“Because I want you for however long I have you.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Unleashed

Love

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe.”

Toni Morrison book The Bluest Eye

Source: The Bluest Eye

Love, People, Stupidity

“All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

Source: Of Time and the River: A Legend of Man's Hunger in His Youth

Love, Travel, Home, Sea

“For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

Idea

“Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

The Moon, Act IV, l. 451
Variant: Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
Source: Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Soul

“You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, For Him, For Friend, For Boyfriend

“I want him to burn for me, to not be able to go a day without touching me, holding me, caressing me. He’ll be an excellent lover. I want a man who knows how to please me”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: The Tycoon's Rebel Bride

“I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover”

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

Source: The Spice Box of Earth

Kiss

“I'm not sure I even need a lover, male or female. Sometimes I think I'd settle for five good friends.”

Armistead Maupin (1944) American writer

Source: 28 Barbary Lane: The Tales of the City Omnibus

Thinking

“And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

The Irresistible Revolution (2006)
Source: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

People, World, Way, Thinking

“I am a lover and have not found my thing to love.”

Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) writer

Love

“Everyone knows that drunkards and lovers have a protecting diety.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Variant: Everyone knows that God protects drunkards and lovers.
Source: The Three Musketeers

“You'll call me Damon. I see no need for dramatic titles. I, on the other hand will call you beautiful, lover, mine. I'll call you mine." (Damon to Serena)”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Persuasion

Beauty

“For I have never wanted a lover, but I have always wanted to love, and to be loved.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Understanding

“Table talk and Lovers' talk equally elude the grasp; Lovers' Talk is clouds, Table Talk is smoke."

Les Miserables”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“You attract what you need like a lover”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“So that's who Finnick loves, I think. Not his string of fancy lovers in the Capitol. But a poor, mad girl back home.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Love, Home, Girl, Thinking

“They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Kiss

“Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Life, Personality, love

“But whathappened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars

Love, Fools, Suffering

“We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.”

Patti Smith Just Kids

Source: Just Kids

“How stupid lovers can be! But if they were not, there would be no story.”

Eleanor Hibbert (1906–1993) English novelist

Source: The Courts of Love

Stupidity

“My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.
I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Thinking

“Your name is Lily Whitney. You are the woman I want at my side night and day. I want you to be the mother of my children someday. I want you for my lover. I want you for the person I turn to when the world gets to be too much.”

Christine Feehan book Shadow Game

Source: Shadow Game

Children, World, Personality, Night

“I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one's wife's lover in one's socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Kreutzer Sonata

Source: The Kreutzer Sonata

“Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.”

Patrick O'Brian (1914–2000) English novelist

Source: H.M.S. Surprise

“Death is my lover and he wants to move in.”

Sarah Kane book Crave

Source: Crave

Death

“Often you don't know whether a woman is friend, enemy or lover until it is too late. Sometimes, she is all three.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Thom Merrilin
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

“They were inlove, but they hadn't been lovers; they were friends and yet also strangers for so many years”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

“No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer book The Cost of Discipleship

Source: The Cost of Discipleship

“I make mistakes. That's what I do. I
speak without thinking, I act without
knowing. I drink so much that I can
barely walk… I'm a fantastic lover
though, and an amazing friend. God
knows I mean well.”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

God, Drink, Thinking

“She looked at me like I was crazy. Most of my lovers do, and that's partly why they love me, and partly why they leave”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Love

“I have friends. I want more from you than that. I’m a selfish guy, Jane. If I can’t be your lover, if I can’t have all of you, then I don’t want anything.”

Rachel Gibson (1961) American writer

Source: See Jane Score

Guy, Selfishness

“Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi (2001), Chapter 99, p. 330
Context: Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?

Love

“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

Children, Faith, Light, Sea

“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover”

Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999) American editor

Wine

“Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Bird

“If death is your lover, you don't got to be afraid ever that he will ever leave you”

Francesca Lia Block book Echo

Source: Echo

Death

“And you,
You can be mean
And I,
I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers,
And that is a fact
Yes we're lovers,
And that is that”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Drink, Time

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Motivation, Forgiveness, Selfishness

“Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

“Star-crossed lovers desperate to get home together. Two hearts beating as one. Romance.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Home, Star, Heart

“fraught, adj.

Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”? Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night deserve to be spent on a lover?
If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Love, Kiss, Night

“Film lovers are sick people.”

Francois Truffaut (1932–1984) film director

People

“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

World

“Young lovers see a vision of the world redeemed by love. That is the truest thing they ever see, for without it life is death.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

Love, Life, Death, World

“It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Dreams

“Illusion is Reality's coy lover who cheers him when he is grim. Illusion is cunning to his wisdom of ages, weet oblivion to his knowledge. A bounty to his lack. [Sabine]”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

Wisdom, Age, Knowledge, Reality

“All knots that lovers tie
Are tied to sever.
Here shall your sweetheart lie,
Untrue for ever.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Source: More Poems

Lie

“.

At the end of the French movie, the lover sings, "Love me less, but love me for a long time.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Singing, Time

“The girl's lover was gone, but his shadow was still there.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Girl

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Variant: Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
Source: The End of the Affair

Marriage, Feeling, Sense

“Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Fools

“Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

Source: The Thief's Journal

World, Night

“If you will die for me,
I will die for you
and our graves will be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat
If you will bring the soap
I will bring the bleach.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Clothes

“Three is the number of those who do holy work;

Two is the number of those who do lover's work;

One is the number of those who do perfect evil

Or perfect good.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

Evil, Perfection

“You're beautiful, but you're somewhere else. That's okay. I can handle that. But we won't continue as friends, not just now. I like you as a lover, not a friend.”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Source: Isabelle the Navigator

Beauty

“Close, close all night
the lovers keep.
They turn together
in their sleep,

Close as two pages
in a book
that read each other
in the dark.

Each knows all
the other knows,
learned by heart
from head to toes.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Source: Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box: Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments

Books, Sleep, Learning, Reading

“I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.”

Sherwood Anderson book Winesburg, Ohio

Source: Winesburg, Ohio

Love, Understanding

“Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love;
Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.

Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how
In the grave all love shall sleep:
Love is aweary now.”

James Joyce book Chamber Music

Source: Chamber Music

Love, Sadness, Sleep, Singing

“Quiet Prayer:
As long as the sun shall rise goes the old lovers vow. But we are children of a scientific age & have no time for poetry. Still, I offer a quiet prayer of thanks for the sunlight each time I see your face.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Children, Age, Time, Sun

“Go moan for man. It's the pathos of people that gets us down, all the lovers in this dream.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

People, Dreams

“The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.”

Florence King (1936–2016) American writer

Life, Women

“The girl traced the outline of her lover's shadow so she would always have a record of how he looked…”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Girl

“Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in Marilyn Monroe : In Her Own Words (1983), edited by Roger Taylor
Variant: Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

“Luna! Artemis! lovers' spats are icing on the cake! Your just showing off to us single people! -Minako”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Source: Sailor Moon, #11

People

“If a man can possess a woman sexually -really possess- he won't need to control her ideas, her opinions, her clothes, her friends, even her other lovers.”

Toni Bentley (1958) Australian writer

Idea, Clothes