Relationship quotes

A line written by Ono many years before, and quoted by Lennon in December 1980, as quoted in All We Are Saying : The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono (2000) by John Lennon, Yōko Ono, David Sheff, p. 16.
Source: Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings

"In Search of a Majority: An Address" (Feb 1960); reprinted in Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_My_Name (1961)

Variant: You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

Disputed <br class="br">Source: Claimed to be from Men Without Women, but it does not appear in that work. May have originated in a 2011 blogpost by Marc Chernoff entitled 30 things to stop doing to yourself http://www.marcandangel.com/2011/12/11/30-things-to-stop-doing-to-yourself/.

Variant: Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

1979

Source: The Alchemist

The Prophet (1923)

Variant: Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.
Source: Letter to My Daughter

Source: Revolutionary Petunias

Variant: You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 52 (in 1998 edition)

Attributed to Monroe in self-help books and on social media, this quotation is of unknown origin and date.
Misattributed

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

"In Blackwater Woods"
American Primitive (1983)
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Dancing the Dream (1992), also used in his funeral invitation. Quoted in &quot;Dead stars and classic art will surround Michael Jackson&quot; in CNN.com/entertainment (3 July 2009) http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/michael.jackson.funeral/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

frequently attributed to Lennon, but entirely unsourced
Disputed

Source: Northanger Abbey

Source: The Alchemist

Jace to Clary, pg. 331
Variant: There is no pretending, I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Glass (2009)

Lord Darlington, Act II
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Source: War and Peace

Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902; quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972).

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

ii. America: The Pueblo Indians http://books.google.com/books?id=w6vUgN16x6EC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=Jung+Memories+Dreams+and+Reflections&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=LLxKUcD0NfSo4APh0oDABg&amp;ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false (Extract from an unpublished ms) (Random House Digital, 2011). <br class="br">Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963) <br class="br">Context: We always require an outside point to stand on, in order to apply the lever of criticism. This is especially so in psychology, where by the nature of the material we are much more subjectively involved than in any other science. How, for example, can we become conscious of national peculiarities if we have never had the opportunity to regard our own nation from outside? Regarding it from outside means regarding it from the standpoint of another nation. To do so, we must acquire sufficient knowledge of the foreign collective psyche, and in the course of this process of assimilation we encounter all those incompatibilities which constitute the national bias and the national peculiarity. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. I understand England only when I see where I, as a Swiss, do not fit in. I understand Europe, our greatest problem, only when I see where I as a European do not fit into the world. Through my acquaintance with many Americans, and my trips to and in America, I have obtained an enormous amount of insight into the European character; it has always seemed to me that there can be nothing more useful for a European than some time or another to look out at Europe from the top of a skyscraper. When I contemplated for the first time the European spectacle from the Sahara, surrounded by a civilization which has more or less the same relationship to ours as Roman antiquity has to modem times, I became aware of how completely, even in America, I was still caught up and imprisoned in the cultural consciousness of the white man. The desire then grew in me to carry the historical comparisons still farther by descending to a still lower cultural level.<br><br>On my next trip to the United States I went with a group of American friends to visit the Indians of New Mexico, the city-building Pueblos...

Variant: You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
Source: True Love (1998)

Source: Me: Stories of My Life

Estar en compañía no es estar con alguien, sino estar en alguien.
Voces (1943)

Lord Illingworth, Act III.
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Variant: Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Notebook

292
Table Talk (1569)

Source: The Wise Man's Fear (2011)
Context: We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.

Variant: I love her, and that's the beginning and end of everything.
Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

"Jubal Harshaw" in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "Uncut" edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: "Dr. Harshaw says that 'the word "love" designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.'"
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)

Source: No Exit

Variant: Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Source: Pride and Prejudice

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs, p. 251

Source: The Bell Jar

Source: My Sister's Keeper (2004)

"Nature Boy" (1948)
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved, just to love and be loved.
His assertion to Joe Romersa, of how his lyrics should be corrected, saying that "To be loved in return, is too much of a deal, and that has nothing to do with love."
Context: While we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."

Source: I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)

As quoted in Sheroes: Bold, Brash, and Absolutely Unabashed Superwomen from Susan B. Anthony to Xena (1998) by Varla Ventura, p. 150

Variant: You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Source: Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul

Variant: Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

Attributed to Irving as early as 1883. [Hit and miss : a story of real life, Angie Stewart, Manly, Chicago, J.L. Regan, 1883, i, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435018229575?urlappend=%3Bseq=7] However, it does not seem to appear in Irving's known works. Other citations from the same year leave the quotation unattributed. [Henry S. (ed.), Clubb, The Peacemaker and Court of Arbitration, Volume 1, Universal Peace Union, 1883, 125, Philadelphia, https://books.google.com/books?id=Uu84AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA125] [The Australian Women's Magazine and Domestic Journal, Vol. 2 No. 2 (May 1883), 1883, Melbourne, 435, https://books.google.com/books?id=mq0sAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA435]. A similar passage is found in a pseudonymous novel published two years earlier in 1881: "Julia knew that sacrifices to patience are not in vain. Although they often do not produce the happiness for which they are made, they will, always, flow back and soften and purify the heart of the one who makes them". [Illma, Or, Which was Wife?, Miss, M.L.A., Cornwell & Johnson, 1881, 239, New York, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435017658592?urlappend=%3Bseq=245]
Disputed

"The Meeting in a Dream"
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Variant: nobody hαs ever meαsured, not even poets, how much the heαrt cαn hold.

As quoted in The Power of Respect : Benefit from the Most Forgotten Element of Success (2009) by Deborah Norville, p. 65

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

Source: Jazz

Variant: Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 11

Unsourced in The Philosophy of Mark Twain: The Wit and Wisdom of a Literary Genius (2014) by David Graham
Disputed