Quotes about lovers
page 4

“Love is never any better than the lover.”

Source: The Bluest Eye

“Old lovers go the way of old photographs, bleaching out gradually as in a slow bath of acid: first the moles and pimples, then the shadings. Then the faces themselves, until nothing remains but the general outlines.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Way

“Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Life

“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

Source: A Pair of Blue Eyes

Women, Secret

“Al was looking at me in disbelief. “Not your lover?”
“No.”
“But he is Rachel candy,” Al said, his confusion too honest to be faked.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

“Lover? I don't know. I don't know if she loves me. I don't know if I love her. All I can say is, she's the one I think about. All the time. She's the voice I want to hear. She's the face I hope to see.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Love, Hope, Thinking, Time

“Maybe you’re not willing to give up a lover who’s colder than you are.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Narcissus in Chains

Source: Narcissus in Chains

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Love

“Lovers communicate not inside sentences, but between them. Passion lurks within interstice. It is grouting rather than bricks.”

Lionel Shriver book The Post-Birthday World

Source: The Post-Birthday World

Communication, Passion

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Luck of the Bodkins

Source: The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

World, Law, Girl, Holiday

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Truth, Fear

“For lovers, touch is metamorphosis. All the parts of their bodies seem to change, and they seem to become something different and better.”

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

Change, Parting

“Happy are the beloved and the lovers and those who can live without love.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Love, Happiness

“Anytime you feel love for anything, be it stone, tree, lover, or child, you are touched by the Goddess's magick…”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Book of Shadows

Love, Feeling, Tree

“Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet

“I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.”

Margaret Atwood book Oryx and Crake

Source: Oryx and Crake

Books

“Love is fragile -- she was thinking -- but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love-words, the tenderness learned, and treasured up for the next lover.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book May Day

Source: May Day

Love, Thinking, Learning

“And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn’t fair.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Feeling, Parting

“Gideon was an untamed animal behind closed doors, a lover who bared me to the soul every time he made love to me.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, Soul, Time, Animals

“I would hold you up. I will ever hold you up and hold you dear, lover mine.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

“I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

"Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
1990s
Context: I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.

Truth, Freedom

“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Cats, Past

“There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Time

“I feel like I am floating in plasma
I need a teacher or a lover
I need someone to risk being involved with me.
I am so vain
and I am so masochistic.
How can they coexist?”

Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) American photographer

Feeling, Teachers

“I took to the Bodleian library as to a lover and… would sit long hours in Bodley's arms to emerge, blinking and dazed with the smell and feel of all those books.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Books, Feeling

“When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: Civilization and Its Discontents

Love

“You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.”

Jonathan Carroll book Outside the Dog Museum

Source: Outside the Dog Museum

Love

“A good lover will do that, see something worthwhile in you that you never knew was there. And when there's something you don't like to see in yourself a good lover won't see it either.”

Ana Castillo (1953) novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer

Source: Peel My Love Like an Onion

“Have patience; the lovers will suffer lovers always suffer.”

Clive Barker book Galilee

Source: Galilee

Suffering, Patience

“My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

“Say, ‘Thank you, Phin.’ ”
“Oh, please.”
“Say, Thank youvery much, Phin. ”
“I don’t think so.”
“Say, ‘You are a great lover, Phin.’ ”
“I’m out of here.”

Jennifer Crusie book Welcome to Temptation

Source: Welcome to Temptation

Thinking

“Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

Drink

“If Death is your father, you don't ever have to worry about what part of his body the disease will strike next. If Death is your lover, you don't have to be afraid that he will ever leave you.”

Francesca Lia Block book Echo

Source: Echo

Death, Disease, Parting

“stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Beer

“My domineering lover made no apologies for his caveman tendencies.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

“True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers, and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life”

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

Life, Passion

“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”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

Love

“The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

Source: The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

Love

“All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed… No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.”

Eugene Field (1850–1895) American writer

Source: The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac

Books, Dreams, Reading

“Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Way

“Friends--or lovers--are not always available to each other. Inner turmoils can cause us to be unhearing when someone needs us, to need to receive understanding when we should be giving understanding.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Understanding

“The tune was sad, as the best of Ireland was, melancholy and lovely as a lover's tears.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Born in Fire

Love, Sadness, Tear

“Don't wanna know your name
You're just my lover
Just wanna spend the night
Walking beside you on the water
You look like my lover
But you're words are cold
You say words like him
But thinking has made you grow old.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Thinking, Water, Night

“I watch the boats go by
As the evening colours of the sand
The rain is bringing tears
From my lover's land
I watch the silver stars
melt in love with the sea
I cry to the wind:
– Bring back my lover to me!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Love, Star, Tear, Cry

“Words that warmed women, wooed and won them, snipped the final thread of inhibition and gratified the male egos of ungrateful lovers; […] for which they were eternally in his debt, for which they may eternally hate him.”

Gay Talese Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (Esquire, April 1966)

Women, Hate

“The reputation of a Don Juan gives to a man the most dangerous power. Wise virgins resist it, but foolish virgins frequently yield to the desire to take a celebrated lover from a rival - even from a friend. This emotion is a complex one, mad up of vanity, respect for another woman's taste, and the need to establish self-assurance by winning a difficult victory. Don Juan chose his first mistresses; later he was chosen. Byron said that he had been raped oftener than anyone since the Trojan War.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving

War, Victory, Madness

“Why – even supposing I had the skill – do you bid me compose a song dedicated to Venus the lover of Fescennine mirth, placed as I am among long-haired hordes, having to endure German speech, praising oft with wry face the song of the gluttonous Burgundian who spreads rancid butter on his hair?”
Quid me, etsi valeam, parare carmen Fescenninicolae iubes Diones inter crinigeras situm catervas et Germanica verba sustinentem, laudantem tetrico subinde vultu quod Burgundio cantat esculentus infundens acido comam butyro?

Sidonius Apollinaris book Carmina

Quid me, etsi valeam, parare carmen
Fescenninicolae iubes Diones
inter crinigeras situm catervas
et Germanica verba sustinentem,
laudantem tetrico subinde vultu
quod Burgundio cantat esculentus
infundens acido comam butyro?
Carmen 12, line 1; vol. 1, p. 213.
Carmina

“The Latmian hunter rests in the summer shade, fit lover for a goddess, and soon the Moon comes with veiled horns.”
Latmius aestiva residet venator in umbra dignus amore deae, velatis cornibus et iam Luna venit.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 28–30

Summer

“You’re so hypnotizing,
Could you be the devil, could you be an angel?
Your touch magnetizing,
Feels like going floating, leaves my body glowing.
They say be afraid,
You’re not like the others, futuristic lovers.
Different DNA, they don’t understand you.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

E.T., written by Katy Perry, Lukasz Gottwald, Max Martin, Joshua Coleman, and Kanye West
Song lyrics, Teenage Dream (2010)

Angels, Feeling, Understanding

“The observer is a prince who enjoys his incognito everywhere. The lover of life makes the world his family, just as the lover of the fair sex devises his family from all discovered, discoverable and undiscoverable beauties; as the lover of pictures lives in an enchanted society of painted dreams on canvas.”

Charles Baudelaire Le Peintre de la vie moderne

L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. L'amateur de la vie fait du monde sa famille, comme l'amateur du beau sexe compose sa famille de toutes les beautés trouvées, trouvables et introuvables; comme l'amateur de tableaux vit dans une société enchantée de rêves peints sur toile.
III: "L'artiste, homme du monde, homme des foules et enfant"
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)

Life, World, Family, Beauty

“Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
singing "I won't ever be lonely again"”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I Won't Ever be Happy Again
Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Love, People, Singing

“Sexual dysfunction often plays a key role in risk management by couples over time. It seems crucial not to get too excited about the other, and diminished excitement serves the purposes at once of self-protection and revenge. I was once excited about you, the diminished arousal seems to be expressing, but there is not much to get excited about now. Often lovers work together to pretend they are safer (even if also a bit sadder) over time, by collapsing their expectations of each other in collusively arranged, choreographed routine. Each feels the other is less exciting because of being so familiar and predictable. And each acts towards the other in as wholly and artificially predictable a fashion as possible. But, of course, lowering expectations also empties out passion. No risk, no gain.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 143

Feeling, Fashion, Revenge, Passion

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Women, Happiness, Fools, Art

“Two lovers kissing amongst the screams of midnight,
Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

That's Entertainment
Sound Affects (1980)

Kiss, Solitude

“We are undercover passion on the run,
Chasing love up against the sun,
We are strangers by day, lovers by night,
Knowing it's so wrong but feeling so right.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Part-Time Lover
Song lyrics, In Square Circle (1985)

Love, Feeling, Passion, Sun

“Lovers' quarrels are the renewal of love.”
Amantium irae amoris integratio est.

Terence Andria

Act III, scene 3, line 23 (555).
Variant translation: Lovers’ rows make love whole again.
Andria (The Lady of Andros)

Love, For Him

“I’m a huge lover of animals. My mother wasn’t the best, but despite an abusive childhood, we always had a lot of pets growing up. I was basically raised on a farm with horses, chickens, ducks and cats. We did a lot of rescuing. At early age, I became a vegetarian. There was a lot of resistance from family — “It will stunt your growth. It can’t be healthy.””

Corey Feldman (1971) American actor

… Going vegetarian at such a young age, it was a stance for myself. "Corey Feldman brings Lost Boys Ball, Truth Movement to House of Blues" https://lasvegasweekly.com/blogs/luxe-life/2010/oct/21/corey-feldman-brings-lost-boys-ball-truth-movement/, interview with the Las Vegas Weekly (October 21, 2010).

Age, Family, Cats, Animals

“A world view which supports than they are by Jews (the liberals, the Wall Street people, journalists from the East Coast, lovers of black people, Hillary Clinton’s friends), we have struck quite a good deal. Trump and his friends see Israel as a forefront against the barbarians, and they are not exactly very observant.”

Yaron London (1940) Israeli journalist, actor and songwriter

Why Israel isn’t shocked by anti-Semites in White House (November 21, 2016)

People, World, Support

“I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. It is righteousness that exalteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any people.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech, "Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country" http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=535, Syracuse, New York (September 24, 1847) 1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

People, Feeling, Country

“The problem is all inside your head, she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
Song lyrics, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)

Way, Problem, Help

“I oscillate between loathing Vladimir Nabokov ’s novels (when I think he’s showing off or insisting on making his presence felt) and loving them. This morning, I can’t stand a word of his fiction. But Nabokov’s “Letters to Vera” is not fiction. The showing off, such as there is, is that of a man to his lover, whose absence is felt. The fact that these are the words—such beautiful words—of a writer to his beloved of more than 46 years readies you for the spirit of sincerity in which they were written. Besides, I’m a sucker for a love story.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"12 Months of Reading", Who read what in 2014, December 13, 2014 Who is Reading what in 2014 http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-read-what-in-2014-1418426064 13 December 2014 "The Wall Street Journal". Retrieved on 2014-12-20.

Love, Beauty, Thinking, Sincerity

“Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul

Love, Sun, Night

“My lover took away my robe of sin and I let it fall, rejoicing; then he plucked at my robe of virtue, but I was ashamed and alarmed and prevented him. It was not till he wrested it from me by force that I saw how my soul had been hidden from me.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti

Soul

“He and Marilyn were lovers, but this was never said in so many words. Explicitness about one’s romantic arrangements had apparently been deemed gauche. In my middle-class teen-age world, the whole apparatus of going steady, exchanging ID bracelets, smooching at dances, fighting, breaking up, submitting to the arbitration of friends — that was the point, the public drama.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

My Women, The New Yorker, 6 June 2005
Articles and Interviews

Age, World, Dance, Fight

“Somebody out there, show your compassion, come and kill me. Cut me free and watch me slowly shrivel, or slice me up and flush me down a toilet. Any way you like, I don't mind. Come on! You do it for your youngest children, you do it for your sick old parents. Come and do it for me. I can tell you'd like it. Don't be nervous, lovers! You'll never be found out, if that's what's holding you back: I'll stay silent to the end, be it swift or slow. Come on, people! I'm totally defenceless. Hurry up! Don't be shy. You have the right. You made me, you created me, so you know you have the right.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

The Demon's Passage http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Demons%20Passage, published in Eidolon (Winter 1991) Fiction

Children, People, Way, Parent

“Jesus, lover of my soul,
let me to Thy bosom fly,
While the nearer waters roll,
while the tempest still is high.
Hide me, O my Savior, hide,
till the storm of life is past;
Safe into the haven guide;
O receive my soul at last.”

Charles Wesley (1707–1788) English Methodist and hymn writer

"Jesus, Lover of My Soul"
Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739)

Life, Soul, Water, Past

“The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds;
For his lover was dead, he never would love again.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love, Bird, Cry, Sea

“Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/975693.Helen_Rowland
Other

Art, Boy, Nature

“[T]he most precious gift that a lover could bring to the beloved was not virginity but sexual experience. The union, it was felt, was the more pregnant the more each party could contribute from previous sexual and spiritual intimacy with others.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 3, “The Zenith of the Second Men” (p. 112)

“Let us be lovers we'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate here in my bag.
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies,
And we walked off to look for America”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

America
Song lyrics, Bookends (1968)

“I'm an animal lover and my two cats are my world, so I don't wear any fur. I don't support the fur industry. And I'm not really into animal prints either, I just don't like the idea of me saying "I'm wearing a big cat today."”

Alyssa Campanella (1990) American model

"Meet the former Miss USA turned fashion blogger, Alyssa Campanella, who is dominating NYFW" https://www.aol.com/article/2016/02/11/meet-the-former-miss-usa-turned-fashion-blogger-alyssa-campanel/21310867/?guccounter=1, interview with AOL (February 11, 2016).

World, Cats, Idea, Support

“It was ready-made for them to call an emergency and pretend it was war-time, you know, the war on terrorism is a metaphor, and terrorism is an abstract noun. It's like a "war on dandruff." There's no such thing, you know. It isn't war, it's just a slogan. But using the slogan they got through the U. S. A. Patriot Act, which removes many of our liberties. Nobody made a sound when we lost Habeas Corpus—due process of law—and suddenly Bush managed to get rid of it. Where was a voice on television, aside from mine, that spoke out against this? Where were all those noble jurists, those great lawyers, those lovers of liberty, where the hell were they? They were nowhere!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

War, Law, Hell, Time

“I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother I was oppressed and broken-hearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity — because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath.
It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed — who cannot speak for themselves.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

On Uncle Tom's Cabin in a letter to Lord Denman (20 January 1853).

Heart, Country

“That subtle knot which makes us man:
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T' affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Extasy, line 64

Soul, Sense

“Since he is unable to be the beloved, he will become the lover.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Original: (90).

“Dotty: Archie says the Church is a monument to irrationality.
George: … The National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality! — and so is a nicely kept garden, or a lover's favour, or a home for stray dogs! You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!”

Tom Stoppard Jumpers

Act I
Jumpers (1972)

Stupidity, World, Dogs, Home

“It was snowing at nightfall
when i went out to look for my lover.
Now the secret of where my feet went
is openly visible to everyone.”

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.26

Secret

“So we must say Goodbye, my darling,
And go, as lovers go, for ever;
Tonight remains, to pack and fix on labels
And make an end of lying down together.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"Goodbye", line 1; p. 24.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

Lying

“The secret to successful scrying was to realize that the future was not fixed and there was no way of predicting it. None. All one could do was to identify what already existed unacknowledged. Lovers pledged themselves to each other long before their first kiss. Murder was implicit in friendship. A carcinoma that looked like a speck of dust on the X-ray spelled death. So much of what appeared to be random event was simply the working out of consequences.”

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 13 (p. 222)

Death, Friendship, Secret, Way

“Behind the shower curtain, Zooey closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though his own small craft were listing precariously in the wake. Then he pulled back the shower curtain and stared over at the closed door. It was a weighty stare, and relief was not really a great part of it. As much as anything else, it was the stare, not so paradoxically, of a privacy-lover who, once his privacy has been invaded, doesn't quite approve when the invader just gets up and leaves, one-two-three, like that.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

Parting

“True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824).

Beauty, Heart

“Water has its moods, flowing or still; it can lure you like a lover, or look as bleak as a broken heart.”

Patricia A. McKillip book Winter Rose

Source: Winter Rose (1996), Chapter 7, p. 64.

Mood, Water, Heart

“Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Prithee, why so pale?”

John Suckling (1609–1642) English poet

Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

“No one who was not by nature a lover of logic, and an extreme precisian in the use of words and phrases, could have written the two "Alice" books.”

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) English clergyman, headmaster, author

The Lewis Carroll Picture Book (1899) p. 3.

Books, Nature

“The eloquent Lysias, posing as a non-lover, had concealed designs upon Phaedrus, so that his fine speech was really a sheep’s clothing. Socrates discerned in him a “peculiar craftiness.” One must suspect the same today of many who ask us to place our faith in the neutrality of their discourse.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 22.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)

Faith, Clothes

“But ’neath yon crimson tree
Lover to listening maid might breathe his flame,
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy,
Her blush of maiden shame.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Autumn Woods. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Attributed

Tree

“No riches from his scanty store
My lover could impart
He gave a boon I valued more—
He gave me all his heart!”

Helen Maria Williams (1759–1827) British writer

from 'A Song', Poems 1786, kindle ebook ASIN B00849523Q

Heart

“Sex is communication and creation. In my novel, "Flight", two lovers have sex by becoming a forest and rain.”

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

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Sex, Communication

“You can't be a lover if you want to keep on using
What are you using that's stronger than the love
Sometimes I'm knocked out by the damage that you're doing
Knocked out, locked out, push comes to shove
Listen to the wind tearing at the windows
Watching how the white moon melts into the cloud
Important little tyrants, impotent little pharaohs
Men/man of sorrows lost into the crowd ~ Richochet”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Love, Men, Tear

“Young lovers and young nations face the same problem: after orgasm, what?”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Problem

“In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.”

Margaret Atwood book Morning in the Burned House

Morning in the Burned House (1995), The Loneliness of the Military Historian

Women, War, Children, Peace

“I became a vegetarian in 1969. … About eight and a half years ago, my husband and I decided to stop eating meat and then about six months later we stopped eating fish. … Partly because of my attitude towards health, and partly because of my husband's attitude toward animals. He's such an avid animal lover that, slaughtering them for food, he felt, was a worthless endeavor. I came to it from the point of view of someone who likes to be healthy, energetic, and vital. Together we both came to the same conclusions, but from different viewpoints, and eventually our reasons began to mingle. I began to share his attitude about animals and he began to appreciate the physical rewards of being a vegetarian. … I had two beautiful births as a vegetarian; they were great labors—no bleeding, no complications, no problems. The diet worked perfectly for me.”

Susan Saint James (1946) American actress and activist

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1979), pp. 46–47.

Health, Food, Beauty, Birth

“The lovers, appearing happy,
walk, holding hands.
Though it appears everything is perfect,
only they know the truth.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Appears
Lyrics, Loveppears

Happiness, Truth, Appearance, Perfection

“If ever I have a son in life, I'll call him in one day
Sit him down upon my knee and here is what I'll say.

You might lose your lover, people do sometime.
Oh, but it won't make sense for you to sit around cryin'.
Son, don't you know that when you fall in love,
Sometimes, you're gonna have the blues.
Well it may take years, but you're gonna shed some tears.
'Cause everybody's got to pay some dues, now, now.
Everybody's got to pay some dues.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

Everybody's Gotta Pay Some Dues, written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White (1961)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Love, Life, People, Sense

“All, all of a piece throughout:
Thy chase had a beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
'Tis well an old age is out,
And time to begin a new.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

Source: Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), The Secular Masque (1700), Lines 86–91.

War, Age, Time

“The lover in the husband may be lost.”

George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton (1709–1773) British politician

Source: Advice to a Lady (1731), Line 112.

“This morning I will not
Comb my hair.
It has lain
Pillowed on the hand of my lover.”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XX, p. 22
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

“It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secrets of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 229.
The God of Small Things (1997)
Variant: It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secrets of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.

Love, Secret, Way, Housing

“Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958), I

Kiss, Time

“My love! My lover! Beloved Friend!
Grab this wondrous, fleeting moment,
Drink it inside me,
Let’s drink it together to the end!
[…]
And upon returning, love…
Taking mysterious paths along the meadows
On grassy carpets on the forest floor,
We will make a star of our two shadows.”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

Meu amor! Meu amante! Meu amigo!
Colhe a hora que passa, hora divina,
Bebe-a dentro de mim, bebe-a comigo!
Sinto-me alegre e forte! Sou menina!
[...]
E à volta, Amor... tornemos, nas alfombras
Dos caminhos selvagens e escuros,
Num astro só as nossas duas sombras!...
Quoted in Florbela Espanca (1995), p. 81
Translated by John D. Godinho
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Passeio ao Campo"

Love, Star, Drink

Quotes about lovers page 4

Quotes about lovers
page 4