“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin
Valentine's Day quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of romantic, love, for her, for him.
Best valentine's day quotes
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well
Variant: Love all, trust a few.
Source: All's Well That Ends Well
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)
“You will always love, and you will always be loved.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Variant: The only remedy for love is to love more.
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: And remember, the truth that once was spoken: To love another person is to see the face of God.
Source: Les Misérables
“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Valentine's Day quotes
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Variant: You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
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.
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”
William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet
Source: Romeo and Juliet
“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist
Source: The Alchemist
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author
Variant: Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.
Source: Love and Living
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.
“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 128
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.”
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
The character "Rose Walker" in The Sandman #65
Context: Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.
“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“Love is the greatest refreshment in life”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“To love is to will the good of the other.”
Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica
II-II, q. 26, art. 6
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)
“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra
Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Love has always passed me by
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
frequently attributed to Lennon, but entirely unsourced
Disputed
“No matter where you go, there you are”
Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach
Source: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes
Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer
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)
“Without love, there's nothing without love.”
Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician
Without Love
Music, Slippery When Wet (1986)
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. ”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American cartoonist
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Variant: Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt thou the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love
Source: Hamlet
“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“I love her and that's the beginning of everything…”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
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
“For it is in giving that we receive.”
Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land
"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)
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
Lord Goring, Act III
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)
“The giving of love is an education in itself.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“You never lose by loving, you lose by holding back.”
Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist
Variant: You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Source: Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul
“Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Anonymous advertising copywriter for Menards chain of hardware stores (2000), according to Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/20/be-yourself <br class="br">Misattributed
“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Variant: The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.
Source: The Mind on Fire: A Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent
“Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Variant: nobody hαs ever meαsured, not even poets, how much the heαrt cαn hold.
“Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!”
"Fra Lippo Lippi, line 54.
Men and Women (1855)
Variant: Without love, our earth is a tomb
“True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.”
Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author
“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
As quoted in a review of A Swinger of Birches (1957) by Sydney Cox in Vermont History, Vol. 25 (1957), p. 355
1950s
“The art of love… is largely the art of persistence.”
Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore
Source: Kafka on the Shore
“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”
Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist
15 April 1978.
Saturday Review
“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”
Arthur Conan Doyle book The White Company
The White Company (1891)
“The important thing is to be nothing.”
Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
“Because I loved myself, I was loved.”
Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic
Becoming Light: Poems New and Selected (1991)
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Marriage
“If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.”
Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales
"Princess Diana: 10 most inspiring quotes from the 'people's princess'", Hello Magazine, Daily News (1 July 2015)
“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”
Source: Oedipus at Colonus, Line 1616–18
“To live is to not know that one is living”
Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet
Diary (20 April, 1930), quoted in Afinado desconcerto (2002), p. 262
Context: Sometimes I start looking at the mirror and examining myself, feature by feature: eyes, mouth, shape of the forehead, eyelids curve, the face line... And this vulgar and hideous-looking, grotesque and miserable amalgam, would it know how to do verses? Oh, no! There is something else … but what? After all, why think? To live is to not know that one is living... Why don't I forget that I am living... to live?
“These are images of what love is about.”
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer
"How Happiness Happpens", p. 61
Awareness (1992)
Context: Is it possible for the rose to say, "I will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad?" Or is it possible for the lamp to say, "I will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people"? Or can a tree say, "I'll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad"? These are images of what love is about.
“I am not, I will not be.
I have not, I will not have.”
Nagarjuna (150–250) Indian philosopher
That frightens all the childish
And extinguishes fear in the wise.
§ 26
Major attributed works, Ratnāvalī (Precious Garland)
“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator
“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist
“Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
Karl Menninger (1893–1990) American psychiatrist
Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat
Time Is
Undated
Source: Time Is...
Too slow for those who wait,
Too swift for those who fear,
Too long for those who grieve,
Too short for those who rejoice,
But for those who love,
Time is Eternity. (Music and Other Poems, 1904)
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
Rohinton Mistry book Family Matters
Source: Family Matters
“If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?”
Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer
Contributions of Jane Wagner
Source: Many Moons
“There is no instinct like that of the heart.”
George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement
“My best friend is one who brings out the best in me”
Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist
Actually due to Harris Weinstock: "My best friend is the man who can bring out of me my best, and your best friend is the one who tends to bring out the best in you" (May 1914) Attributed to Henry Ford as early as 1948.
Misattributed
“You are my sun,
my moon, and
all my stars.”
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
Variant: Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.”
André Breton (1896–1966) French writer
Source: Mad Love
“All my life my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.” andre breton”
André Breton (1896–1966) French writer
Variant: All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name.
Source: Mad Love
“The future for me is already a thing of the past.”
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Bye and Bye
Source: Bob Dylan - Love and Theft: Piano/Vocal/Guitar
“When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.”
Elizabeth Bowen book A World of Love
Source: A World of Love