Quotes about lovers (990 quotes, page 8)

“The times are tough now, just getting tougher.
This old world is rough, it's just getting rougher.
Cover me, come on baby, cover me.
Well I'm looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Cover Me"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

World , Time , Baby

“Well, we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell.
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger?
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

The Stranger.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Love , Secret

“All love affairs are tragedies in the end unless the lovers die at the same moment.”

Katharine Kerr (1944) American writer

[Snare, 2003, Macmillan, ISBN 0312890451, p. 557]

Love

“If you depend on the widespread lover's delusion, 'With my love he or she will change,' you have little chance to help yourself. This delusion is external control to the maximum. If things are not good from the beginning, they are very likely to change, but not for the better.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 105

Love , Change , Chance , Help

“Such is the effect of love's flood rushing into its lovers. It sweeps them away, ravishes them, and swamps them in its waves. These people become love itself — its spirit, its divinity — insofar as it is possible for any creature in this life.”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God

Love , Life , People

“Rhymer, brawler, and musician,
Famed for his lunar expedition,
And the unnumbered duels he fought, —
And lover also, — by interposition! —
Here lies Hercule Savinien
De Cyrano de Bergerac,
Who was everything, yet was naught.
I cry you pardon, but I may not stay;
See, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence!
I would not bid you mourn less faithfully
That good, brave Christian: I would only ask
That when my body shall be cold in clay
You wear those sable mourning weeds for two,
And mourn awhile for me, in mourning him.”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Cyrano, Act 5, Sc. 6
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)

Cry

“A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she begins to smile upon you.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Smile

“I have endowed everyone with a temperament of his own, given everyone an idiom of his own; so that what is praise for him is blame for thee, what is honey for him is poison for thee, what is light for him is fire for thee, what is rose for him is thorn for thee, what is good for him is evil for thee, what is beautiful for him is ugly for thee. In the people of Hindustan the idiom of Hindustan is praiseworthy; in the people of Sind, the idiom of Sind is praiseworthy. I do not see the outward and the speech; I see the inward and the state [of feeling]. For the heart is the substance and speech an accident. So, the accident is subservient, the substance is the [real] object. The religion of love stands apart from all religions. For lovers the [only] religion and creed is God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi, quoted from Harsh Narain, Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990) p. 20-21 https://archive.org/details/MythOfCompositeCultureHarshNarain

Love , God , People , Religion

“I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are those which round us hover:
For him alone our lives we live.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Kiss , Thinking , Light

“The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way from one flower to another. But the historian is an entomologist who must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with sharp pins, which are dates.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

Don Orsino (1891)

Lie , Way , Flowers , Memory

“Still an angel appear to each lover beside,
But still be a woman to you.”

Thomas Parnell (1679–1718) Anglo-Irish cleric, writer and poet.

When thy Beauty appears.

Angels , Appearance

“Why are there stars when there are no people? O God, why don't you just extinguish them? — Cool my brow, ancient night! Divine and fair as you always were — O night, what purpose do you serve? There are no lovers, no dreams. O nursemaid, dead as a sleep without dreams, you no longer hallow anyone's prayers. O mother of us all, you don't bless a single heart smitten with love. There is no love.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Love , God , People , Dreams

“I met my old lover on the street last night,
She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled,
And we talked about some old times, and we drank ourselves some beers,
Still crazy after all these years,
Oh, still crazy after all these years.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Still Crazy After All These Years
Song lyrics, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)

Smile , Beer , Time , Night

“This is the writing of Nagiko Kiyohara no Motosuke Sei Shonagon, and I know you to have blackmailed, violated and humiliated my father. I suspect you also of ruining my husband. You have now committed the greatest crime -- you have desecrated the body of my lover. You and I now know that you have lived long enough.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the thirteenth book, "The Book of the Dead"
The Pillow Book

“It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively: something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse, they may become dear and fasten like so many leeches on your heart.”

Elizabeth Bowen book The House in Paris

The House in Paris (1935)

Dogs , Cats , Business , Light

“She never had public favor; it was a bit like the Hillary Clinton thing. She did all the right things for her country, but she wasn't ultimately revered. So she had a conversation with her confidant-adviser. She asked him, when have they ever looked up to or idolized a woman? Only one, he told her, the Virgin Mary. So she said, Then I will become like the Virgin Mary, and she did. She created a facade for herself; she stopped having lovers; she became like a virgin. She became sexless, and painted her face in a white alabaster way, and turned herself into an icon that was untouchable and sexless, and then she had everybody's respect.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Madonna Interview : Aperture Magazine (Summer 1999), Aperture http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-library/madonna-interview-aperture-magazine-summer-1999,
About Queen of England, Elizabeth I.

Way , Confidence , Painting , Country

“But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart. It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up. These are the old pangs of intelligence, which still comes to set a man at variance against his father, saying, “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me.””

John Erskine (1879–1951) American educator

Source: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (1915), p. 30

Love , Men , Intelligence , Thinking

“There is no penalty attached to a lover's oath.”

Publilio Siro Latin writer

Maxim 23
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave

Penalty

“O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry”

Hart Crane (1899–1932) American writer

To Brooklyn Bridge, Stanza 8; from The Bridge

Cry

“After one of those terrible lovers' quarrels that leave one in a state of incomprehensible despair. I came out of the theater, tears streaming, and overheard the petulant voice of a college girl complaining to her boyfriend, "Well I don't see what was so special about that movie." I walked up the street, crying blindly, no longer certain whether my tears were for the tragedy on the screen, the hopelessness I felt for myself, or the alienation I felt from those who could not experience the radiance of Shoeshine. For if people cannot feel Shoeshine, what can they feel?… Later I learned that the man with whom I had quarreled had gone the same night and had also emerged in tears. Yet our tears for each other, and for Shoeshine did not bring us together. Life, as Shoeshine demonstrates, is too complex for facile endings.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

Review for Shoeshine (1946) as quoted in Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me (2004) by Craig Seligman.

Life , People , Feeling , Girl

“Hence, in Thee, who art Love, the lover -is not one thing and the loved another, and the bond between them a third, but they are one and the same-Thou, Thyself, my God. Since, then, in Thee the loved is one with the lover, and being loved [is one] with loving, this bond of coincidence is an essential bond. For there is nothing in Thee that is not Thy very Essence.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De visione Dei (On The Vision of God) (1453)

Love , God , Art

“I Am China is a parallel story about two Chinese lovers in exile – the external and internal exile that I had felt since leaving China.”

Xiaolu Guo (1973) Chinese-British novelist and film director

Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing up, Chatto & Windus, 2017, page 269 (ISBN 9781784740689).
Memoir, 2017

“That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the worlds tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves.”

Jeanette Winterson book Sexing the Cherry

Source: Sexing the Cherry (1989), p.13

World , Passion , Flying , Night

“When I stopped eating meat, I noticed that it was easier for me to focus, and I was really proud of myself for being green also. … I had a plethora of reasons for going vegetarian. I was eating meat and didn’t know how it affected my health …. I just felt better and brighter and lighter, and I had more energy …. It was a big deal to me, being an animal lover, that I realised what I was eating, and I didn’t separate myself from, say, my animals, my pets.”

Christian Serratos (1990) American actress

"‘Twilight’ Star Hits Graveyard In Sexy, Dark PETA Ad" https://www.peta.org.uk/media/news-releases/twilight-star-hits-graveyard-in-sexy-dark-peta-ad/, interview with PETA (November 2012).

Health , Animals

“Lovers forget that after marriage and kids, it's no longer a 'relationship”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

It's a family.
page 16
The Other Wife (2003)

Marriage , Family , Forgetting

“What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, st. 7 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Dead

“Her breath a warm fire
In every lovers heart
A mistress to magicians
And a dancer to the gods”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Angelsea
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

God , Heart

“Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chap. xi, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 196.

God , Time , Happiness

“The Autumn seems to cry for thee,
Best lover of the Autumn-days!”

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (1835–1905) writer

Cousin Helen's Visit (1935).

Autumn , Cry

“The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L’homme qui nous parle est l’amant, l’homme qui ne nous parle plus est le mari.
Part I, ch. VII.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Relationship

“Come, take my hand
And wander in the willow river
Glistening the blue bells
Come, take my flesh
And wander in the sunny corn
That shimmer stills at snowfalls
'Cause I love you lover
I love you, like I love
The Four high Seasons.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Love , Season

“When a man has been the lover of a woman as that man had been hers, with the vibrating communion of a voluptuousness unbroken for two years, that woman maintains a sort of physiological, quasi-animal instinct. A gesture, the accent of a word, a sigh, a blush, a pallor, are signs for her that her intuition interprets with infallible certainty. How and why is that instinct accompanied by absolute oblivion of former caresses? It is a particular case of that insoluble and melancholy problem of the birth and death of love.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Source: Cosmopolis (1892), Ch. 5 "Countess Steno"

Love , Death , Birth , Problem

“Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Living With Geese http://smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/december/geese.php?page=1, Smithsonian Magazine (December 2006).

Animals

“Even now, I cannot decide whether I was foolish dupe or noble and tragic lover. Or whether the two are one and the same.”

Norman Spinrad book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 7 (p. 82)

“I lost myself to him and laid my face upon my lover's breast
And care and grief grew dim as in the morning's mist became the light
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

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

Light

“For there was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself, as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, That it is impossible to love, and to be wise.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Love
Essays (1625)

Love , Personality

“What do we want our children to get from Henson’s work? The same thing we learned from it. The philosophy of a gentle dreamer. The message that was encapsulated in “The Rainbow Connection” – the one about the “The lovers, the dreamers, and me.” It’s the idea that life is about making a difference, a positive change. And we’ve all heard it, even the Howard Roarks among us, calling our names.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Elizabeth Hyde Stevens, "Millennials just don’t get it! How the Muppets created Generation X" http://www.salon.com/2014/04/06/millennials_just_dont_get_it_how_the_muppets_created_generation_x/, Salon (April 6, 2014)
About

Life , Children , Idea , Learning

“I dare boldly conclude that the most valiant armie of the best approved soldiers, (yea though consisting of lovers themselves, and that giving battaile in the presence of their Ladies and Mistresses) may easily even with a small band of ingenious scholars and Artists be utterly overthrown and vanquished.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

Hugh Platt A new, cheape and delicate Fire of Cole-balles (1603); As cited in: Hugh Plat: Renaissance Man of Early Modern England http://bloggingtherenaissance.blogspot.nl/2006/06/hugh-plat-renaissance-man-of-early.html, at bloggingtherenaissance.blogspot.nl, June 2006.

“.. not exactly prostitutes, but a class of unattached young women, characteristic of the Parisian scene before and after the Empire, changing lovers easily, satisfying any whim, going nonchalantly from a mansion in the Champs-Elyseées to a garret in the Batignolles. [describing the place w:Bain à la Grenouillère at Croissy-sur-Seine and the women there, where Renoir together with Monet painted in open air and used them as models in their paintings 'la Grenouillère', 1868-69]”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

as quoted in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2006, p. 59
undated quotes

Women , Change , Painting

“His meaning is to fasten it faithfully in our heart: for He willeth that it dwell with us in faith to our life’s end, and after in fulness of joy, desiring that we have ever steadfast trust in His blissful behest — knowing His Goodness.
For our faith is contraried in diverse manners by our own blindness, and our spiritual enemy, within and without; and therefore our precious Lover helpeth us with spiritual sight and true teaching in sundry manners within and without, whereby that we may know Him. And therefore in whatsoever manner He teacheth us, He willeth that we perceive Him wisely, receive Him sweetly, and keep us in Him faithfully. For above the Faith is no goodness kept in this life, as to my sight, and beneath the Faith is no help of soul; but in the Faith, there willeth the Lord that we keep us. For we have by His goodness and His own working to keep us in the Faith; and by His sufferance through ghostly enmity we are assayed in the Faith and made mighty. For if our faith had none enmity, it should deserve no meed, according to the understanding that I have in all our Lord’s teaching.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 70

Life , Faith , Soul , Understanding

“all which isn't singing is mere talking
…
and all talking's to oneself alone
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

32
73 poems (1963)

Feeling , Mountain , Silence , Singing

“All lovers of Christ can believe in him without believing the same things about him.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.161

Christ

“We cannot possibly capture reality based on our limited perceptions and insignificant power. Therefore, we want to use our intelligence to sustain the mind properly, in order to prevent it from being dragged under by the senses. We want to use our intelligence to open ourselves up to receiving divine intervention. We want to use our intelligence to truly understand how to become a genuine lover of the Lord.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, Reflections on Sacred Teachings, Volume IV: Sri Isopanisad (Hari-Nama Press, )

Intelligence , Understanding , Reality , Sense

“No lover in any language, and certainly no poet, has confessed to missing the mark more often than Dafydd ap Gwilym. Uncooperative husbands, quick-triggered alarms, crones and walls, strong locks, floods and fogs and bogs and dogs are for ever interposing themselves between him and golden-haired Morfudd, black-browed Dyddgu, or Gwen the infinitely fair. But a great trier, even in church.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Gwyn Jones, in The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (Oxford: OUP, 1977) p. 289.
Criticism

Dogs , Strong

“Love plays its lute behind the screen —
where is a lover to listen to its tune?”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

Love

“We've traveled halfway 'round the world
To find ourselves again
September morn
We danced until the night became a brand new day
Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play
September morning still can make me feel that way”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

September Morn, co-written with Gilbert Bécaud
Song lyrics, September Morn (1979)

World , Way , Travel , Feeling

“The evil we previously objectified and assigned to exterior agents—devils, communists, capitalists, chauvinists, faithless lovers, the system—must be discovered within. We can no longer divide the world between good and evil. The line between saints and sinners runs down the middle of my being... I destroy my propaganda machine that automatically casts me in a favorable light and others in the shadow.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), pp. 146-147

World , Light , Evil

“What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

Shakespeare; or, The Poet
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Life , Religion , Behavior , Knowledge

“Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long! Like a potent knight, an amorous boon, the green-entangled lord of the wildwood, comrade of love and of the birds, whom lovers remember, and their friend, herald of nine score trysts, fond of exalted colloquies.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Hawddamor, glwysgor glasgoed,
Fis Mai haf, canys mau hoed.
Cadarn farchog serchog sâl,
Cadwynwyrdd feistr coed anial;
Cyfaill cariad ac adar,
Cof y serchogion a'u câr;
Cennad nawugain cynnadl,
Caredig urddedig ddadl.
"Mis Mai a Mis Ionawr" (To May and January), line 1; translation from Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (ed. and trans.) A Celtic Miscellany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1951] 1975) p. 75.

Love , Bird

“Lassoes can catch the wild horses
that flee over the hills.
But nothing, not even incantations
can hold a wild beloved
who has stopped loving
her lover.”

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.13

Love , Horse

“I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

How to Save Your Own Life (1977)

Teachers , Change

“I guess you don’t need to agree on everything to be lovers.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 31 (p. 87)

“I know a girl;
She puts the color inside of my world.
But she's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change.
And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands.
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me.Fathers, be good to your daughters,
Daughters will love like you do.
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers,
So mothers, be good to your daughters too.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Daughters
Song lyrics, Heavier Things (2003)

Love , World , Color , Girl

“It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — an existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 24

Pain , War , Youth , World

“Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)

Books , Imagination

“Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act I, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Beauty , Sense

“Pope Benedict XVI is working softly, slowly, often silently, unobtrusively, behind the scenes, mostly unseen. But he is working hard. I like the great job of reconciliation that he is doing inside the Roman Catholic Church: reconciliation between traditionalists and liberals, conservative and reform-oriented faithful, liturgical Latinists and Mass polyglots, old-time lovers and progressives, high-flying souls and pedestrian believers, thinkers and doers--Christians and Catholics. It is a hidden work of diplomacy, interactions, influences, concessions, agreements, acknowledgments. A "hard job" well done until now.”

Leon Bertoletti (1971)

Christians and Catholics http://www.hicsuntleones.co.uk/2008/10/christians-and-catholics.html, Hic Sunt Leones, 9/10/2008

Faith , Soul , Time , Flying

“Not a single one of our ancient sources indicates that Jesus was married, let alone married to Mary Magdalene. All such claims are part of modern fictional reconstructions of Jesus' life, not rooted in the surviving accounts themselves. The historical approach to our sources may not be as exciting and sensationalist as fictional claims about Jesus (he kept a lover! he had sex! he made babies!), but there's something to be said for knowing what really happened in history, even if it is not as titillating as what happens in novels.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Source: Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code (2004), Ch. 7: 'Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Marriage'

Life , Sex , History , Parting

“Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,
Two lovers blow together like music blowing:
And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea.
Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them,
They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Music , Tree , Sea

“In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, act V, scene 1, we find this exchange between the two young lovers: JESSICA: I am never merry when I hear sweet music
LORENZO: The reason is, your spirits are attentiveThe opening of the finale of Beethoven' s 'Emperor' Concerto provides a splendid example of the kind of theme that is the inspiration for this book. A completely unified theme that hangs together beautifully, it nevertheless portrays vividly a series of contrasting sentiments in a succession that amounts to a small narrative …”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Prologue
Music and Sentiment (2010)

Books , Music , Success

“My happiness is my business. I can see finality for myself, an end, an absolute end; but none for my business. There one has room to breathe, to grow, to expand, and the possibilities are boundless. One can go to places like the Congo, and organize, organize, organize, well, very big things indeed. But I don’t work at business only for the sake of money. I am not a lover of money as money and never have been. I work at business because business is life. It enables me to do things.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

William Lever, quoted in C. Wilson, The History of Unilever, London: Cassell, 1954, vol. 1, p. 187; Requoted in Witzel (2004: 166)

Life , Money , Business , Happiness

“According to some of the pious writers of antiquity, they made large fires, which might be seen at a great distance, upon the vigil of this saint [John], in token that he was said in holy writ to be "a shining light." Others, agreeing with this, add also, these fires were made to drive away the dragons and evil spirits hovering in the air; and one of them gravely says, in some countries they burned bones, which was called a bone-fire; for "the dragons hattyd nothyng mor than the styncke of brenyng bonys." This, says another, habent ex gentilibus, they have from the heathens. The author last cited laments the abuses committed upon thes occasions. "this vigil," says he, "ought to be held with cheerfulness and piety, but not with such merriment as is shewn by the profane lovers of this world, who make great fires in the streets, and indulge themselves with filthy and unlawful games, to which they add glotony and drunkenness, and the commission of many other shameful indecencies."”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 360
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Bonfires

World , Game , Light , Evil

“People tend to fall into three psychological types, all differently motivated. There is the type, motivated by economic factors, money…And there is the type motivated by ‘face,’ or pride. This type is a spender, fighter, boaster, lover, sportsman, gambler; he has a will to power and an itch for glory. And there is the professional type, which claims to follow a code of ethics rather than simply seeking money or glory—priests and ministers, teachers, scientists, medical men, some artists and writers. The idea is that such a man believes that he is devoting his life to some purpose more important than his individual self. You follow me?”

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 9 “Long Haul”, p. 111

Life , Men , Money , People

“From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road
We’ll be lovers once again on the
Bright side of the road”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Bright Side of the Road
Song lyrics, Into the Music (1979)

“You see, dream-lover of a lady, what shakes me to the core
Is the thought as you caress me, you've done this all before
I think about the future with me out and others in
Will I, too, have disappeared like I've never ever been?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Happened to Him
Song lyrics, Dance Band on the Titanic (1977)

Dreams , Thinking , Future

“Somehow, women’s romance novels are not titled He Stopped When I Said “No”. They are, though, titled Sweet Savage Love, in which the woman rejects the hand of her gentler lover who saves her from the rapist and marries the man who repeatedly and savagely rapes her. It is this “marry the rapist” theme that not only turned Sweet Savage Love into a best-seller but also into one of women’s most enduring romance novels.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Love , Women

“I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 30

Love , Lie , Secret , Books

“My lover and I, we meet in complete
privacy, in the southern valley forest.
Then I hear some parrot in the market
jabbering our secrets.”

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.61

Secret

“Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, Ch. VI

Religion , Passion

“He always thought of the sea as la mar, which is what people call her in spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her, but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fisherman, those who used buoys as floats for their lines or had motorboats bought when the shark lovers had much money, spoke of her as el mar, which is masculine, they spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine, as something that gave or withheld great favors. If she did wild or wicked things, it is because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Love , Money , People , Help

“The wind breath'd soft as lover's sigh,
And, oft renew'd, seem'd oft to die,
With breathless pause between,
O who, with speech of war and woes,
Would wish to break the soft repose
Of such enchanting scene!”

Walter Scott The Lord of the Isles

Canto IV, stanza 13.
The Lord of the Isles (1815)

War

“Once my lover, now my friend;
What a cruel thing to pretend.
What a cunning way to condescend;
Once my lover, and now my friend.Oh, you creep up like the clouds
And you set my soul at ease.
Then you let your love abound,
And you bring me to my knees.”

Fiona Apple (1977) singer-songwriter, musician

Shadowboxer
Song lyrics, Tidal (1996)

Love , Way , Soul

“All my sermons are prepared in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. As recreation is most pleasant and profitable in the sun, so homiletic creativity is best nourished before the Eucharist. The most brilliant ideas come from meeting God face to face. The Holy Spirit that presided at the Incarnation is the best atmosphere for illumination. Pope John Paul II keeps a small desk or writing pad near him whenever he is in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament; and I have done this all my life — I am sure for the same reason he does, because a lover always works better when the beloved is with him.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Treasure in Clay : The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen (1980)

Life , God , Idea , Sun

“The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts
Not of two lovers, but two loves the nests.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 18, Love's Progress, line 61
Elegies

Love

“It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word.”

George Gordon Byron Parisina

Parisina, Stanza 1, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Immeasurable at every hour:
He first taught lovers how to kiss,
He brings down sunshine after shower,
Thunder and hate are his also,
He is YES and he is NO.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The God Called Poetry"
Country Sentiment (1920)

Hate , Kiss

“When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.”

James Elroy Flecker (1884–1915) Poet

The Golden Journey to Samarkand (l. 7)

Peace , Star , Sea

“Homosexuality is so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

As stated to Gary Carey in Brando's 1976 biography The Only Contender

Men , People , Fashion , Thinking

“Here we are, naked lovers,
beautiful to each other—and that's enough.
The leaves of our eyelids our only covers,
we're lying amidst deep night.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Openess
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)

Beauty , Lying , Night

“The music broke from the piano like clear cold water from a prophet-touched rock, pouring and splashing around us while her fingers leaped and spread, curled and stiffened and melted and flickered in magic pass and streaked lightning above the keyboard. Never before had she played for me… because we were lovers now, was she free to play…?”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)

Music , Water

“Fierce boils in every vein
Indignant shame and passion blind,
The tempest of the lover's mind,
The soldier's high disdain.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book XII, p. 465

Passion

“My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

The Passion (1987)

Love , Passion

“Obviously, I am the cook. The cook is the director. He arranges the menu, the seating order of the guests; he gives refuge to the lovers; he prepares the repast of the lover's body. The cook is a perfectionist and a rationalist, a portrait of myself.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Die Zeit, 24 Nov 1989
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Cooking

“To be a philosopher, that is to say, a lover of wisdom (for wisdom is nothing but truth), it is not enough for a man to love truth, in so far as it is compatible with his own interest, with the will of his superiors, with the dogmas of the church, or with the prejudices and tastes of his contemporaries; so long as he rests content with this position, he is only a philautos, not a philosophos [a lover of self, not a lover of wisdom]. For this title of honor is well and wisely conceived precisely by its stating that one should love the truth earnestly and with one’s whole heart, and thus unconditionally and unreservedly, above all else, and, if need be, in defiance of all else. Now the reason for this is the one previously stated that the intellect has become free, and in this state it does not even know or understand any other interest than that of truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 21–22
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real

Love , Wisdom , Truth , Understanding

“The danger is perhaps not great if the people of one State, through their legislature, decide that Lady Chatterley's Lover goes so far beyond the acceptable standards of candor that it will be deemed offensive and non-sellable, for the State next door is still free to make its own choice. At least we do not have one uniform standard. But the dangers to free thought and expression are truly great if the Federal Government imposes a blanket ban over the Nation on such a book. […] The fact that the people of one State cannot read some of the works of D. H. Lawrence seems to me, if not wise or desirable, at least acceptable. But that no person in the United States should be allowed to do so seems to me to be intolerable, and violative of both the letter and spirit of the First Amendment.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Concurring in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 496 (1957) (striking down a federal censorship act as unconstitutional).

People , Books , Reading , Personality

“Individuals of the earlier species had suffered from an almost insurmountable spiritual isolation from one another. Not even lovers, and scarcely even the geniuses with special insight into personality, ever had anything like accurate vision of one another.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 1, “The Appearance of a New Species” (p. 102)

Suffering , Personality

“Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto I, line 15.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Dogs

“Willow: Questions. Great.
Tara: W-we can answer questions.
Nigel: Good. I need to know a little bit more about the Slayer, and about the both of you. Your relationship, whatever you can tell me.
Tara: O-o-our relationship?
Willow: We're friends.
Tara: Good friends.
Willow: Girlfriends, actually.
Tara: Yes, we're girlfriends.
Willow: We're in love. W-we're lovers. We're lesbian, gay-type lovers.
Nigel: I meant your relationship with the Slayer.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

All the Way [6.6]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Love , Question

“I've been an animal lover all my life, and the more I learned of the torture that animals go through in the name of fashion, I just think it's so unnecessary; it's unbelievable to me. I’m blessed to team up with my pageant sisters to take a united stand and to tell the pageant industry not to support the fur industry.”

Susie Castillo (1979) MTV VJ, Miss USA 2003

"Miss Universe official promises surprises that could shake up the whole show", LasVegasSun.com (13 June 2013) https://m.lasvegassun.com/vegasdeluxe/2013/jun/13/miss-nevada-official-promises-surprises-could-shak/.

Life , Fashion , Support , Thinking

“"Life is like a train Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so."
"Why?"
"Because the train gets to its journey's end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle."
"'Journeys end in lovers meeting'" Lenox laughed. "That is not going to be true for me."
"Yes — yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it".”

Agatha Christie book The Mystery of the Blue Train

The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)

Life , Training

“St. Jerome, whose heir methinks I am in the endurance of foul slander, says in his letter to Nepotanius: "The apostle says: 'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.' He no longer seeks to please men, and so is made Christ's servant" (Epist. 2). And again, in his letter to Asella regarding those whom he was falsely accused of loving: "I give thanks to my God that I am worthy to be one whom the world hates" (Epist. 99). And to the monk Heliodorus he writes: "You are wrong, brother, you are wrong if you think there is ever a time when the Christian does not suffer persecution. For our adversary goes about as a roaring lion seeking what he may devour, and do you still think of peace? Nay, he lieth in ambush among the rich."
Inspired by those records and examples, we should endure our persecutions all the more steadfastly the more bitterly they harm us. We should not doubt that even if they are not according to our deserts, at least they serve for the purifying of our soul. And since all things are done in accordance with the divine ordering, let every one of true faith console himself amid all his afflictions with the thought that the great goodness of God permits nothing to be done without reason, and brings to a good end whatsoever may seem to happen wrongfully. Wherefore rightly do all men say: "Thy will be done." And great is the consolation to all lovers of God in the word of the Apostle when he says: "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God" (Rom. viii, 28). The wise man of old had this in mind when he said in his Proverbs: "There shall no evil happen to the just" (Prov. xii, 21). By this he clearly shows that whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation. ///Even such are those who yield to their own rather than to the divine purpose, and with hidden desires resist the spirit which echoes in the words, "Thy will be done," thus placing their own will ahead of the will of God. Farewell.”

Peter Abelard (1079–1142) French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician

Source: Historia Calamitatum (c. 1132), Ch. XV

Love , Men , God , Hate

“We are an endangered species, you and me. We fans of speed, we devotees of power, we lovers of performance and beauty, and mechanical soul. We dare not speak of cams or cranks or double wishbones. We fear for our love of roaring V8s and the smell of burnt rubber. We're told to think of the economy, the environment, and not excitement and enjoyment. In an age of hybrid-this and automatic-that, we are the odd ones out. Yet there is hope. There is a haven. A place that celebrates speed, grip, gears, and fun. And it's all here for you to explore.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Voice-over introduction to Forza Motorsport 4 (2011)

Love , Age , Fear , Beauty

“It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Wisdom for a Man's Self
Essays (1625)

Nature , Housing

“I am a great lover of morality, public and private, but the intercourse of nations cannot be strictly regulated by that rule.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Princess Lieven (18 August 1828), reprinted in Guy Le Strange (ed.), Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey. Volume I: 1824 to 1830 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1890), p. 130.
1820s

“He sees himself in his lover as if in a mirror, not knowing whom he sees, And when they are together, he too is released from pain, and when apart, he longs as he himself is longed for; for reflected in his heart is love's image, which is love's answer. But he calls it, and believes it, not love but friendship…”

Mary Renault book The Charioteer

Phaedrus as translated in the novel, p. 104
The Charioteer (1953)

Love , Pain , Friendship , Heart

“The great quality teacher, Shoji Shiba, often tells people that the biggest barrier to changing understanding is the following word: IAKI, which is not a Japanese word at all. It is an acronym for I ALREADY KNOW IT… Professor Shiba then goes on to say: “Yes, you may know it, but you don't know how to do it!” There is an enormous difference between knowledge and know-how… Too many executives believe that if they listen to a lecture or read a book they will know how to do something…. Nobody ever became a great lover by just reading a book or watching a video. You have to get in and do it. There are some things you can only learn through experience.”

Myron Tribus (1921–2016) American academic

Myron Tribus "You Cannot Lead What You Do Not Understand — You Do Not Understand What You Haven't Done". Journal of Innovative Management, Fall 1996; As quoted in: William J. Altier (1999) The Thinking Manager's Toolbox. p. 9

People , Books , Understanding , Knowledge

“I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as the lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.”

Hans Haacke (1936) conceptual political artist

Hans Haacke in: Roberta Smith "A Giant artistic Gibe at Jesse Helms," in New York Times, April 20, 1990; Republished in: The New York Times Guide to the Arts of the 20th Century: 1900-1929, (2002) p. 2929
1990s

Hostility , Art

“Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Palamon and Arcite, book ii, line 758.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Fools

“I am not a dog lover. A dog lover to me means a dog that is in love with another dog.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"I Like Dogs", For Men (April 1939); reprinted in People Have More Fun Than Anybody (1994); slightly paraphrased in "And So to Medve", Thurber's Dogs (1955)
From other writings

Love , Dogs

“I wanted to get involved with [PETA’s anti-fur campaign] because first off, I’m an animal lover. I have a dog. And I couldn’t imagine someone just taking my dog’s fur or skinning my dog alive or killing him just to be selfish. … If you have a heart, I’m pretty sure it’ll touch you to see how these animals suffer.”

Brandon Flowers (American football) (1986) American football player

"The NFL's Brandon Flowers Says, 'Don't Be Selfish'—Be Fur-Free" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgitAeybVOw, video interview with PETA (11 December 2014).

Dogs , Imagination , Suffering , Heart

Quotes about lovers page 8

Quotes about lovers
page 8