quotations about love
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow.
ST. AUGUSTINE
On the Mystical Body of Christ
Love thy neighbor, but pull not down thy hedge.
GERMAN PROVERB
Love Bertrand, love his dog.
FRENCH PROVERB
Love knows no law.
PORTUGUESE PROVERB
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our perplexity when alone.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Jean de La Bruyère (16 August 1645 - 11 May 1696) was a French philosopher and moralist noted for his satire. His Caractères, which appeared in 1688, captures the psychological, social, and moral profile of French society of his time.
Constancy in love ... is only inconstancy confined to one object.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Let us suppose the loved one is as madly impelled toward the lover. In a few days, in an hour, nay, in an instant -- for there is such a thing as love at first sight -- this man and woman, two unrelated individuals, who may never have seen each other before, conceive a passion, greater, intenser than all other affections, friendships, and social relations. So great, so intense is it, that the world could crumble to star-dust so long as their souls rushed together. If necessary, they would break all ties, forsake all friends, abandon all blood kin, run away from all moral responsibilities. There can be no discussion.... We see it every day, for love is the most perfectly selfish thing in the universe.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air -- you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all-consuming, a physical pain. Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. It is the point before consummation of it that fascinates: what separates you from love, the obstacles that stand in its way. It is usually at those points that love is everything.
JOJO MOYES
"What is love -- can it really be defined and explained?", The Guardian, February 12, 2016
True love, selfless love, does not wither as beauty fades or life becomes difficult. If anything, its roots grow deeper and its branches spread farther with each shared experience.
EDITOR
"Music and the Spoken Word: What love is", Deseret News, April 2, 2016
Love's the big hint life can't stop dropping, the biggest beguilement of all.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Our love is simply about us being together, hand in hand, for the small, daily joys in the world around us.
LINDSAY DETWILER
"True Love Is Built In The Simple Moments", Huffington Post, October 22, 2017
"God is love" became inverted into "love is God", so that it is now the West's undeclared religion--and perhaps its only generally accepted religion.
SIMON MAY
Love: A History
Our love, too, proceeding from ourselves and returning to us, would suffice to make our life blessed, and would stand in need of no extraneous enjoyment.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Any love is enveloping and potentially dangerous; after all, you are putting your heart into someone else's hands and with that an incredible power to cause pain of various kinds (and vice versa). That's a given. But there is an additional absolutism about first love, when you have nothing to compare it with. You don't know anything, yet you feel you know everything -- this can be calamitous.
JULIAN BARNES
interview, The Guardian, January 29, 2018
He who knows Love becomes Love, and he knows
All beings are himself, twin-born of Love.
ELSA BARKER
He Who Knows Love
When does love cease? When one begins to love anew.
LAURA ESQUIVEL
The Law of Love
If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
THICH NHAT HANH
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"O Do Not Love Too Long", In the Seven Woods
To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering Something Beautiful for God.
MOTHER TERESA
A Gift for God