Quotes about romance

Algernon, Act I.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Context: I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

“The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Seminaked men!” Jacky trilled.
“With swords,” Kat purred. “It is a romance novel!”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Source: Warrior Rising

Men

“All romances end at marriage.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Marriage

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Books, World, Fear

“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Truth, History, Reading

“Romance is the sweetening of the soul
With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Source: The Lion and the Jewel

Soul, Heart

“Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Love

“The images, the language, of pornography, and romance are alike; monotonous and mechanically seductive, quickly leading to despair.”

Alice Munro book The Moons of Jupiter

Source: The Moons of Jupiter

Despair

“A woman with romance in her life lived as grandly as a queen, because her heart was treasured.”

Nora Roberts book Bed of Roses

Source: Bed of Roses

Life, Heart

“A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance novel covers? The”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Jace to Clary, pg. 204
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)

Drawing

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Romantic, Wedding

“As long as the women I’m romancing are happy with me doing it then I’ll carry on.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with David Light

Women, Happiness

“The very fact that religions are not content to stand on their own feet, but insist on crippling or warping the flexible minds of children in their favour, forms a sufficient proof that there is no truth in them. If there were any truth in religion, it would be even more acceptable to a mature mind than to an infant mind—yet no mature mind ever accepts religion unless it has been crippled in infancy. … The whole basis of religion is a symbolic emotionalism which modern knowledge has rendered meaningless & even unhealthy. Today we know that the cosmos is simply a flux of purposeless rearrangement amidst which man is a wholly negligible incident or accident. There is no reason why it should be otherwise, or why we should wish it otherwise. All the florid romancing about man's "dignity", "immortality", &c. &c. is simply egotistical delusions plus primitive ignorance. So, too, are the infantile concepts of "sin" or cosmic "right" & "wrong". Actually, organic life on our planet is simply a momentary spark of no importance or meaning whatsoever. Man matters to nobody except himself. Nor are his "noble" imaginative concepts any proof of the objective reality of the things they visualise. Psychologists understand how these concepts are built up out of fragments of experience, instinct, & misapprehension. Man is essentially a machine of a very complex sort, as La Mettrie recognised nearly 2 centuries ago. He arises through certain typical chemical & physical reactions, & his members gradually break down into their constituent parts & vanish from existence. The idea of personal "immortality" is merely the dream of a child or savage. However, there is nothing anti-ethical or anti-social in such a realistic view of things. Although meaning nothing in the cosmos as a whole, mankind obviously means a good deal to itself. Therefore it must be regulated by customs which shall ensure, for its own benefit, the full development of its various accidental potentialities. It has a fortuitous jumble of reactions, some of which it instinctively seeks to heighten & prolong, & some of which it instinctively seeks to shorten or lessen. Also, we see that certain courses of action tend to increase its radius of comprehension & degree of specialised organisation (things usually promoting the wished-for reactions, & in general removing the species from a clod-like, unorganised state), while other courses of action tend to exert an opposite effect. Now since man means nothing to the cosmos, it is plan that his only logical goal (a goal whose sole reference is to himself) is simply the achievement of a reasonable equilibrium which shall enhance his likelihood of experiencing the sort of reactions he wishes, & which shall help along his natural impulse to increase his differentiation from unorganised force & matter. This goal can be reached only through teaching individual men how best to keep out of each other's way, & how best to reconcile the various conflicting instincts which a haphazard cosmic drift has placed within the breast of the same person. Here, then, is a practical & imperative system of ethics, resting on the firmest possible foundation & being essentially that taught by Epicurus & Lucretius. It has no need of supernatualism, & indeed has nothing to do with it.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (2 May 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 240-241
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Men, Children, Truth

“People who are emotionally adapt — who know and manage their feelings well, and who read and deal effectively with other people's feelings — are at an advantage in any domain in life, whether in romance and intimate relationships or picking up the unspoken rules that govern success in organizational politics.”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1995), p. 36

Life, People, Feeling, Reading

“Saddle the Hippogriffs, ye Muses nine,
And straight we'll ride to the land of old Romance.”

Christoph Martin Wieland book Oberon

Noch einmahl sattelt mir den Hippogryfen, ihr Musen,<br>Zum Ritt ins alte romantische Land! <br class="br">Oberon, Song 1, st. 1 (1780) http://www.archive.org/stream/oberon02187gut/7ober10.txt; translation from Frederick Metcalfe History of German Literature (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1858) p. 109.

“The mouthpiece of the half-inarticulate, all-suggesting music that is at once the very soul and the inseparable garment of romance.”

Walther von der Vogelweide (1170–1230) Middle High German lyric poet

George Saintsbury The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1923) p. 258.
Praise

Music, Soul

“Look, you're small-town. I've had over 50 jobs, maybe a hundred. I've never stayed anywhere long. What I am trying to say is, there is a certain game played in offices all over America. The people are bored, they don't know what to do, so they play the office-romance game. Most of the time it means nothing but the passing of time. Sometimes they do manage to work off a screw or two on the side. But even then, it is just an offhand pasttime, like bowling or t. v. or a New Year's Eve party. You've got to understand that it doesn't mean anything and then you won't get hurt. Do you understand what I mean?”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Post Office (1971)

People, Game, Understanding, Time

“Lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance —
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Helas! http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/wilde/helas.html, l. 12-14 (1881)

Soul

“How strange a vehicle it is, coming down unchanged from times of old romance, and so characteristically black, the way no other thing is black except a coffin — a vehicle evoking lawless adventures in the plashing stillness of night, and still more strongly evoking death itself, the bier, the dark obsequies, the last silent journey!”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 3, as translated by David Luke

Death, Way, Time, Night

“Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.
Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Act I http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Women+have+become+too+brilliant+Nothing+spoils+a+romance+so+much+as+a+sense+of+humour+in+the+woman%22+%22or+the+want+of+it+in+the+man%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage <br class="br">A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Women, Sense

“"What is this romance?" she mused.
"Ah, that’s the question. I’ve never come across a definition that satisfied me, though there are some very good ones"—he glanced in the direction of his books.
"It’s not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps—it’s ignorance," she hazarded.
"Some authorities say it’s a question of distance—romance in literature, that is—"
"Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be—" she hesitated.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Night and Day (1919)

People, Books, Art, Literature

“I want your love and I want your revenge
You and me could write a bad romance”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Bad Romance, written by Lady Gaga and RedOne
Song lyrics, The Fame Monster (2009)

Love, Revenge

“It started out as a light romance, but he became demanding and possessive.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

On her relationship with Roman Polanski, as quoted in Cameron Docherty, Interview: Nastassja Kinski - Still a daddy's girl, The Independent, September 26, 1997

Light

“Agitprop
sticks
in my teeth too,
and I'd rather
compose
romances for you –
more profit in it
and more charm.
But I
subdued
myself,
setting my heel
on the throat
of my own song.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

"At the Top of My Voice" (1929-30); translation from Patricia Blake (ed.) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) pp. 223-5

“Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), Ch. 2
Context: Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.

Life

“Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Table-Talk (1857)
Context: Round about what is, lies a whole mysterious world of might be, — a psychological romance of possibilities and things that do not happen. By going out a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend at a corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some great occasion of good, or avoid some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution to the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence".

World

“I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Love, Making love

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm <br class="br">Following the Equator (1897)

God, Religion, History, Country

“[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (2 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 104

“Romance requires trust—and the deeper the trust, the deeper the possibility for romance.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 271

“Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

Time

“Chuckling to herself, Nancy said aloud, "Romance and detective work won't mix tonight!”

Carolyn Keene book The Bungalow Mystery

Source: The Bungalow Mystery

“Roses! I swear you men have all your romance from the same worn book. Flowers are a good thing, a sweet thing to give a lady. But it is always roses, always red, and always perfect hothouse blooms when they can come by them.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Men, Books, Flowers, Perfection

“It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Friendship, Thinking

“Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Romantic, Age, Past, Dead

“You say one more thing that sounds like it's ripped from the pages of a really bad gothic romance and I'm out of here, are we clear?" - Valkyrie Cain”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Death Bringer

“That's what came from having romance in your soul. You believe in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”

Dorothy Koomson book My Best Friend's Girl

Source: My Best Friend's Girl

Love, Soul, Perfection

“Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Love, Life, Marriage, Time

“Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Love, Problem

“Prayer adds an element of surprise to your life that is more fun than a surprise party or surprise gift or surprise romance. In fact, prayer turns life into a party, into a gift, into a romance.”

Mark Batterson (1969) American pastor and writer

Source: Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge

Life

“And your life,' Katie said to Christy, 'is turning into a rather predictable romance. Girl meets boy. Boy is a dork for four years. Girl blossoms into a gorgeous woman. Boy finds his brain. Girl turns into starry-eyed mush head.”

Robin Jones Gunn (1955) American writer

Source: In Your Dreams

Life, Girl, Boy

“To everyone who loves a long-secret romance, revealed at last.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

Love, Secret

“This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Life, Peace, Solitude, Night

“Oh God. valentine's Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is (the) entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Look at (the) royal family. Look at Mum and Dad.”

Helen Fielding book Bridget Jones's Diary

Source: Bridget Jones's Diary

God, People, Stupidity, World

“This was the Great Romance. To love at any cost.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: Black: The Birth of Evil

Love

“I’m an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 135, “Taglios: The Mad Season” (p. 747)

Time

“She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversations in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Variant: But she also sensed it wasn't enough. She wanted something else, something different, something more. Passion and romance, perhaps, or maybe quiet conversation in candlelit rooms, or perhaps something as simple as not being second.
Source: The Notebook

Passion

“And medecine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.”

Tom Schulman (1950) American film director, screenwriter

Source: Dead Poets Society

Love, Life, Law, Beauty

“WORTH IT and perfect are different things. No one’s perfect, yet in romance, everyone becomes WORTH IT. And that’s the trick.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Perfection

“Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Friendship

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the Romance of the unusual.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Heart Touching, Life, Idea

“A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Romantic, Hope

“It's just me throwing myself at you,
romance as usual, us times us,

not lust but moxibustion,
a substance burning close

to the body as possible
without risk of immolation.”

Alice Fulton (1952) American poet

Time

“I loved him, but love isn't enough. All the fairy tales, the romance novels, the soap operas; they're all lies. Love does not conquer all.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Lunatic Cafe

Source: The Lunatic Cafe

Love

“French is the language that turns dirt into romance.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Time (October 6, 1986)

“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

War, Reality, Happiness

“To become a happy person have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child’s heart, and spiritual simplicity.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Soul, Heart, Personality, Happiness

“Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Marriage, People

“And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is
romance
and big things
and real dreams
that never go smash.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Dreams, Way

“When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish… Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Way, Thinking

“It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Variant: It's b******* to think of friendship and romance being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variatons of the same desire to be close.
Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Friendship, Thinking

“Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Stupidity, Sex, Confidence