“Love is divine in our belief
Of its eternity — how vain,
When we have known that Love can die,
To think that he can live again!”

“The influence of a woman's first love is felt on her whole after-existence: never can she dream such dream again. For a woman there is no second-love—youth, hope, belief, are all given to her first attachment; if unrequited, the heart becomes its own Prometheus, creative, ideal, but with the vulture preying upon it for ever.—If deceived, the whole poetry of life is gone; the very essence of poetry is belief, and how can she, whose sweet eager credulity has once learnt the bitter truth—that its reliance was in vain, how can she ever believe again?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

“I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.”

W.D. Snodgrass (1926–2009) Poet

“When you love someone as much as that, you don't believe they can die. You think your love protects them.”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

“Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

“The passion of Christ is the victory of divine love over the powers of evil, and therefore it is the only supportable basis for Christian obedience. Once again, Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives? On the cross Jesus fulfilled the law he himself established and thus graciously keeps his disciples in the fellowship of his suffering.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

“I have never ceased to be young, if being young is always loving… Humanity is not a vain word. Our life is made of love, and to love no longer is to live no longer.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known?”

Orhan Pamuk book Snow

“We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram