Quotes to inspire and reflect

Love is / unworldly / and nothing / comes of it but love.

There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. Fie has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

Love has various lodgings; the same word does not always signify the same thing.

Love, like a sense of humor, is now claimed by everyone even though Love, like a sense of humor, is rather more rare than not, and to most of us poor muddlers unbearable at full strength.

Love’s gift cannot be given, / it waits to be accepted.

Love is an endless mystery, / for it has nothing else to explain it.

Love remains a secret even when spoken, / for only a lover truly "knows that he is loved.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.

Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

A woman holds dreadful power over a man who is in love with her but she should realize that the quality and force of his love is the index of his potential contempt and hatred.

Romance is a means to the end of selfcompletion, but love is an end in itself.

Love’s best habit is a soothing tongue.

All love is sweet, / Given or returned. Common as light is love, / And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

True love’s the gift which God has given / To man alone beneath the heaven.

Base men being in love have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them.

When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.

Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, / And men below, and saints above; / For love is heaven, and heaven is love.

Not to believe in love is a great sign of dulness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest on circumstantial evidence.

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love’s opposite.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward.

To be loved means to be consumed. To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry.

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.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

[Love is] the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him.

We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain—we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it. v

To love, that’s the point—what matters whom? / What does the bottle matter provided we can be drunk?

When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.

In love, tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us.

Alas! how light a cause may move / Dissension between hearts that love!

There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn’t lasting.

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

Prepare, / You lovers, to know Love a thing of moods: / Not like hard life, of laws.

The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who, on grounds of decorum and morality, avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.

He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

It takes two to make a love affair and a man’s meat is too often a woman’s poison.

That love for one, from which there doth not spring / Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

I his was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected—in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

There is no harvest for the heart alone; / The seed of love must be / Eternally / Resown.

If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi’s shoulder.

Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).