Quotes on St Valentine's Day, Love and Romance
Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine! - Thomas Hood
I claim there ain't Another Saint
As great as Valentine. - Ogden Nash
A lovely heart-shaped box of chocolates was received on Valentine's Day by a coed from her newest date. On the enclosed card was the inscription, "To Helen - with all my allowance."
Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song. - Old Ballad
And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old. - Tennyson
Pickwick Papers
Never sign a Valentine with your own name. - Charles Dickens
Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions. - Woody Allen
Annie Hall (of masturbation)
Don't knock it. It's sex with someone you love. - Woody Allen
Let those love now, who never loved before;
Let those who always loved, now love the more. - Anonymous
To do him any wrong was to beget
A kindness from him for his heart was rich-
Of such fine mould that if you sowed therein
The seed of Hate, it blossomed Charity. - Tennyson
The course of true love never did run smooth. - William Shakespeare
No man at one time can be wise and love. - Robert Herrick
To be rich in admiration and free from envy; to rejoice greatly in the good of others; to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence or unkindness - these are the gifts of fortune which money cannot buy nothing and without which money can buy nothing. He who has such a treasury of riches, being happy and valiant himself, in his own nature, will enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate; and help the man to whom he lends a hand to enjoy it with him. - Robert Louis Stevenson
And on her lover's arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old. - Tennyson
Then, must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well; of one not easily jealous, but being wrong perplex'd in the extreme. - William Shakespeare
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd. - William Shakespeare
Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, - but not for love. - William Shakespeare
'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. - Tennyson
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine. - Ben Jonson
I am not one of those who do not beieve in love at first sight, but I believe in taking a second look. - H. Vincent
A man in love schemes more than a hundred lawyers.- Spain
We always return to our first loves. - America
The eyes have one language everywhere. - Romania
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other. - Eurpides
Love those who love you. - Voltaire
Love is poleasing but a various elime. - William Shenstone
You are always new.
The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest... - John Keats
If the heart of a man is depressed with cares.
The mist is dispelled when a woman appears. - John Gay
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs his mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All Love is sweet.
Given or returned.
Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. - Percy Bysshe Shelley
An old man in love is like a flower in winter. - Chinese proverb
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love. - George Gordon, Lord Byron
And all for love, and nothing for reward. - Edmund Spenser
Two human loves make one divine. - Elisabeth Barrett Browning
What of soul was left,
I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? - Robert Browning
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well? - Alexander Pope
God is Love - I dare say,
But what a mischievous devil Love is! - Samuel Butler
For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth. - William Shakespeare
Loving a woman who scorns you is like licking honey from a thorn. - Welsh proverb
Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. - Jonathon Swift
She is not fair to outward view
As many maidens be:
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me. - Hartley Coleridge
All, everything that I understand,
I understand only because I love. - Leo Tolstoy
Oh, they loved dearly:
their souls kissed,
they kissed with their eyes,
they were both but one single kiss. - Heinrich Heine
Western Wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again! - Anonymous, 16th Century
Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lend me leave to come unto my love? - Edmund Spenser
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever. - Robert Burns
A man in love mistakes a harelip for a dimple. - Japanese proverb
Love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit. - William Shakespeare
Love is enough:
though the world be awaning,
And the woods have no voice
but the voice of complaining. - William Morris
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. - Jerome K. Jerome
Who so loves believes the impossible. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind... - William Shakespeare
Love is swift of foot:
Love's a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far. - George Herbert
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. - Samuel Johnson
A new commandment I give unto you,
That ye love one another. - St John 13:34
Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better. - William Shakespeare
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise. - William Blake
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small:
Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all. - Isaac Watts
Lips only sing when they cannot kiss. - James Thomsom
Love is the life of every man. - Emanuel Swedenborg
Love lives in cottages as well as in court. - English proverb
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above:
For love is heaven and heaven is love. - Sir Walter Scott
Love then, and even later, was the whole oncern of everyone's life.
That is always the fate of leisured societies. - Napoleon Bonaparte
Friendship is love without his wings! - George Gordon, Lord Byron
Many waers cannot quench love neither can the floods drown it. - Song of Solomon
Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more. - Catullus
No there's nothing half so sweet in life
As love's young dream. - Thomas Moore
Love's but the frailty of the mind,
- When 'tis not with ambition joined. - William Congreve
There is no love like the first love. - Italian proverb
You cannot give a kiss without taking and cannot take without giving. - Anonymous
O, my Luve's like a red red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
O, my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune. - Robert Burns
There is no fear in love: but perfect love easteth out fear. - John, 4:18
You say, me-wards your affection's strong:
Pray love me little, so you love me long. - Robert Herrick
There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires. - Marcel Proust
For news of the heart ask the face. - Cambodian proverb
Tomorrow may be lovemwho never loved before, and may he who has loved love too. - Pervigilium Veneris
Doubt thou the stars are fire:
Doubt that the sun doth move:
Doubt truth to be a liar:
But never doubt I love. - William Shakespeare
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. - Song of Solomon, 1:2
Love and a cough cannot be hid. - George Herbert
A life without love is like a year without summer. - Swedish proverb
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Spice a dish with love and it pleases every palate. - Plautus
When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. - William Shakespeare
Tell me whom you love, and I'll tell you who you are. - African-American proverb
We love being in love, that's the truth on't. - W. M. Thackeray
True love's the gift which
God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven. - Sir Walter Scott
Freely we serve
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not: in this we stand or fall. - John Milton
Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own. - Emanuel Swdenborg
I hold it true, whate'er befall:
I feel it when I sorrow most:
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all. - Alfred. Lord Tennyson
She who has never loved has never lived. - John Gay
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done? - Matthew Arnold
Kisses are like grains of gold or silver found upon the ground, of no value themselves, but precious as showing that a mine is near. - Georges Villiers
There is no greater nor keener pleasure than that of bodily love - and none which is more rational. - Plato
Love can vanquish Death. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If I were pressed to say why I loved him,
I feel that my only reply could be:
'Because it was he, because it was I'. - Michel de Montaigne
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. - Victor Hugo
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight! - Christopher Marlowe
Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking. - Portuguese proverb
He who finds not love finds nothing. - Chilean proverb
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind:
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound. - William Shakespeare
Alas! the love of a women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing. - George Gordon, Lord Byron
All mankind love a lover. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
- Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862.
"Experience seems to convince us that only fools trust, that only fools believe and accept all things. If this true, then love is most foolish, for it is not founded on trust, belief and acceptance, it's not love."
- Leo Buscaglia
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
- H. L. Mencken 1880-1956.
"If thou remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved."
- William Shakespeare 1564-1616
from "As You Like It"
"Love works miracle every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy."
- Marguerite De Valois
"Romantic love 'happens'; it is not brought about; one falls in love. The person is obsessed with the loved one and is unable to concentrate on anything else. The person loses all desire to remain independent, and instead desires to merge and subsume... into the other."
- Margaret Horton
"Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part in the process."
- Henry Beyle Stendahl 1783-1842
"O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire."
- Robert Browning 1812-1889
"Love must be learned, and learned again; there is no end to it."
- Katherine Anne Porter 1890-1980
"Perfect love is rare indeed... To be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar, and the fortitude of the certain."
- Leo Buscaglia
"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing."
- Lorraine Hansberry 1930-1965
"Love and joy are twins, or born of each other."
- William Hazlitt 1778-1830
"O fair! O sweet! When I do look on thee,
In whom all joys so well agree,
Heart and sing in me,
Just accord all music make."
- Richard Sheridan 1751-1816
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."
- Helen Keller 1880-1968
"Love doesn't make the world go round.
Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
- Franklin P. Jones
"The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end."
- Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881
"You can remember the second and the third and the fourth time, but there's no time like the first. It's always there."
- Shelagh Delaney b. 1939
"Love is the irresistible desire to be desired irresistibly."
- Louis Ginsberg
"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."
- Rainer Maria Rilke 1875-1926
from "Letters to a Young Poet"
"To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another."
- G. W. Von Leibnitz 1646-1716
"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outwards together in the same direction."
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery 1900-1944
from "Airman's Odyssey
"Love is an egotism of two."
- Antoine De Salle
"Love is a game that two can play and win."
- Eva Gabor
"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition."
- Alexander Smith 1830-1867
from "Dreamthorp"
"Love is life...And if you miss love, you miss life."
- Leo Buscaglia
"Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears. Love lives the moment; it's neither lost in yesteryear nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is NOW!"
- Leo Buscaglia
"But to love is quite another thing: it is to will an object for itself, to rejoice in its beauty and goodness for themselves, and without respect to anything other than itself."
- Etienne Gilson 1884-1978
from The Gifford Lectures
"Love commands us to step out into nothingness - and bears us up."
- Pam Brown 1928
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."
- Frank Crane
"Any time that is not spent on love is wasted."
- Tasso 1544-1595
"Love is love's reward."
- John Dryden 1631-1700
"Phoebe: Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.
Silvus: It is to be all made of sighs and tears...
It is to be all made of faith and service...
It is to be all made of fantasy
All made of passion, and all made of wishes;
All adoration, duty and observance;
All humbleness, all patience, and impatience;
All purity, all trial, all obeisance."
- William Shakespeare 1564-1616
from "As You Like It"
"It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next."
- Oscar Wilde 1854-1900
"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its case,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
- William Blake 1757-1827
"Life's short and we never have enough time for the hearts of those who travel the way with us. O, be swift to love!
Make haste to be kind."
- Henri-Frederick Amiel 1821-1881
"The best portion of a good man's life: his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
- William Wordsworth 1770-1850
"Love is not 'blind' but visionary: it sees into the very heart of its object, and sees the 'real self' behind and in the midst of the frailties and shortcomings of the person."
- Andras Angyal
"As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joys clears and sharpens the vision."
- Helen Keller 1880-1968
"You've been in love; you know what it's like. It's a sense of delight, not just in the person you love, but in all people, in yourself, in life. Suddenly you see beauty, excitement everywhere. You're not afraid to express your love: passionately, gently, in words, or in silence. And you feel strong, generous, fully alive."
- George Weinberg
"We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end."
- Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881
"...and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
- Thornton Wilder 1897-1976
"In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people."
- Judy Garland 1922-1969
"One Word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love."
- Sophocles 496-405 BC
"Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need."
- Margaret Mead 1901-1978
"Love is the only thing that holds the dark at bay."
- Pam Brown 1928
"Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young."
- Sir Arthur Wing Pinero 1855-1934
"Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."
- John Donne 1573-1631
"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."
- Henry Van Dyke 1852-1933
"Love is like quicksilver in the hand.
Leave the fingers open and it says.
Clutch it, and it darts away."
- Dorothy Parker 1893-1967
"...Love is always open arms. With arms open you allow love to come and go as it wills, freely, for it'll do so anyway. If you close your arms about love you'll find you are left only holding yourself."
- Leo Buscaglia
"Him that I love, I wish to be Free -
Even from me."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1906
"Love is greater than illusion, and as strong as death."
- Alberto Casella
from "Death Takes A Holiday"
"'Tis love that makes me bold and resolute,
Love that can find a way where path there's none,
Of all the gods the most invincible."
- Euripides 480-406 BC
from "Hippolytus"
"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."
- Solomon's Song
"Love from one being to another can only be that two solitudes come nearer, recognize and protect and comfort each other."
- Han Suyin
"For love is but the heart's immortal thirst
To be completely known and all forgiven."
- Henry Van Dyke 1852-1933
from "Collected Poems"
"Love is to understand, at last, the suffering of another."
- Pam Brown 1928
"So often when we say 'I love you' we say it with a huge 'I' and a small 'you'."
- Anthony Russian Orthodox Archbishop of England
"The game that is subject to the greatest penalties is love."
- O. A. Battista
"Even as love crowns you shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning."
- Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931
"Love is the sickness in which recovery is loss."
- Pam Brown 1928
"One makes mistakes, that is life. But it is never quite a mistake to have loved."
- Romain Rolland 1866-1944
from "Summer"
"In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything and two minus one equals nothing."
- Mignon McLaughlin
"Take love when love is given,
But never think to find it
A sure escape from sorrow
Or a complete repose."
- Sara Teasdale 1884-1933
in "Day's Ending"
"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings."
- Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880
Love is life's end (an end, but never ending)
All joys, all sweets, all happiness awarding;
Love is life's wealth (ne'er spent, but ever spending),
More rich by giving, taking by discarding;
Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding:
Then from thy wretched heart fond care remove;
Ah, should thou live but once love's sweets to prove,
Thou wilt not love to live unless thou live to love.
- Anonymous
from "Brittains Ida", 1628
"Love is the only satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
- Erich Fromm 1900-1980
"Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right-royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts: but with it, earth is heaven and we are gods."
- R. G. Ingersoll 1833-1899
"Loving can make plain people beautiful."
- Linda Clark
"Love makes a subtle man out of a crude one, it gives eloquence to the mute, it gives courage the cowardly and makes the idle quick and sharp."
- Juan Ruiz
from "El Amor"
"When love is not madness, it is not love."
- Pedro Calderon De La Marca
from "El Mayor Monstruo Los Celos"
"Why did she love him? Curious fool - be still -
Is human love the growth of human will?"
- Lord Byron 1788-1824
"Try to reason about love and you will lose your reason."
- French Proverb
"Love is a grave mental disease."
- Plato 427-347 BC
"It is overdoing the thing to die of love."
- French Proverb
"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age."
- Jeanne Moreau 1929
"The gratification of the senses soon becomes a very small part of that profound and complicated sentiment which we call Love. Love, on the contrary, is a universal thirst for a communion, not merely of the senses, but of our whole nature, intellectual, imaginative and sensitive. He who finds his antitype, enjoys a love perfect and enduring; time cannot change it, distance cannot remove it; the sympathy is complete."
- Benjamin Disraeli 1804-1881
from "Henrietta Temple"
"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself."
- Jean Anouilh 1910-1987
"The pleasure of love is in loving, and one is happier in the passion one feels than in the passion one arouses in another."
- Duc De La Rochefoucauld 1613-1680
"The love we give away is the only love we keep."
- Elbert Hubbard 1856-1915
from "The Notebook"
"The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love."
- Helen Hayes 1900
"Youth's for an hour
Beauty's a flower
But love is the jewel that wins the world."
- Moira O'Neill
from "Songs of the Glens of Antrim"
Love, as told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold.
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
- Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837-1909
'Tis that delightsome transport we can feel
Which painters cannot paint, nor words reveal,
Nor any art we know of can conceal."
- Thomas Paine 1737-1809
"I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart."
- Alice Walker 1944
"Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving."
- Kahlil Gibran 1883-1931
"Two things cannot alter,
Since Time was, nor today:
The flowing of water;
And Love's strange, sweet way."
- Japanese Lyric
