„I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.“

— Tom Stoppard

Last update March 28, 2022.

Tom Stoppard116

British playwright 1937

— Marc Norman Screenwriter 1941

Source: Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay

Love, Life

„I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.“

— Percy Bysshe Shelley English Romantic poet 1792 - 1822

St. 8
Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/17889 (1821)

Love, Life, Art, Home

„I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.“

— Hazrat Inayat Khan Indian Sufi 1882 - 1927

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love, Life, Death, Men

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

— Nicholas Sparks American writer and novelist 1965

Love, Heart, Romantic

„True love, true love.
It must be true love.
Nothing else can break my heart like
True love, true love.
It must be true love.
No one else can break my heart like you.“

— Pink (singer) American singer-songwriter 1979

True Love, featuring Lily Allen, written by Pink, Greg Kurstin and Lily Allen
Song lyrics, The Truth About Love (2012)

Love, Heart

„I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life.“

— Ayn Rand, book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love, Life, Question

„In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps,
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.“

— Philip Larkin English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian 1922 - 1985

Love, Life, Sense, Sleep

„Because i've suffered. Because many times in my life i have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed.“

— Paulo Coelho, book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Life, Suffering, Time

„People think of hearts when they think of love, but a heart is a bloody organ in the body. It doesn't have any emotions. It's like a metaphor for love that has nothing to do with what love actually is.“

— E. Lockhart American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily Jenkins 1967

Source: Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything

Love, People, Thinking, Heart

„Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.“

— Jane Austen, book Emma

Source: Emma

Love, Way, Nature, Thinking

„Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another.“

— William Penn English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania 1644 - 1718

554-556
Fruits of Solitude (1682), Part I
Context: Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we'll Hear; what we Love, we'll Trust; and what we Love, we'll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he'll Love us; then we shall be his Friends; then he'll send us the Comforter; then whatsover we ask, we shall receive; and then where he is we shall be also, and that for ever. Behold the Fruits of Love; the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another.

Love, God

„I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love“

— Anna Akhmatova Russian modernist poet 1889 - 1966

Source: The Akhmatova Journals, Volume I: 1938-1941

Love, Pain, Fear

„All the truths taken together make only one truth. I had had to wait until that day to learn this simple thing. It was this truth of truths which I needed.
Not because of my love of mankind. It is not true that we love mankind. No one ever has loved, does love, or will love mankind. It was for myself, solely for myself, that I sought to attain the full truth, which is above emotion, above peace, even above life, like a sort of death.“

— Henri Barbusse French novelist 1873 - 1935

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: I wanted to know the secret of life. I had seen men, groups, deeds, faces. In the twilight I had seen the tremulous eyes of beings as deep as wells. I had seen the mouth that said in a burst of glory, "I am more sensitive than others." I had seen the struggle to love and make one's self understood, the refusal of two persons in conversation to give themselves to each other, the coming together of two lovers, the lovers with an infectious smile, who are lovers in name only, who bury themselves in kisses, who press wound to wound to cure themselves, between whom there is really no attachment, and who, in spite of their ecstasy deriving light from shadow, are strangers as much as the sun and the moon are strangers. I had heard those who could find no crumb of peace except in the confession of their shameful misery, and I had seen faces pale and red-eyed from crying. I wanted to grasp it all at the same time. All the truths taken together make only one truth. I had had to wait until that day to learn this simple thing. It was this truth of truths which I needed.
Not because of my love of mankind. It is not true that we love mankind. No one ever has loved, does love, or will love mankind. It was for myself, solely for myself, that I sought to attain the full truth, which is above emotion, above peace, even above life, like a sort of death. I wanted to derive guidance from it, a faith. I wanted to use it for my own good.

Love, Life, Death, Truth