quotations about love
Love is not at the mercy of time and it does not recognize death, they are strangers to each other.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Biologically speaking, love is the backbone of the social bonds that are critical for our survival and adaptation. These intimate bonds alter the brain's circuitry and tip the hormonal balance to shape our memories, emotions and ultimately our 'self.' In essence, every important relationship we have shapes our brain, which in turn shapes our very relationships. Lucky for us, there are many different types of love: maternal love, familial love, the kind we feel when we cuddle a pet, hug a tree, or even a special blanket. While love itself is characterized as an emotion like anger and sadness, there is also a strong biological desire -- sexual desire -- which drives all living species to populate our world.
CLAUDIA AGUIRRE
"Your Brain on Love", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016
When we consider the lofty character of love, and remember his wonderful helpfulness to man, it would seem that he could have no opposition in his work, nor enemies under the sun; yet there is a whole bunch of fellows who are constantly antagonizing love. Among them are anger, hatred, revenge, envy, and jealousy. Love will have no fellowship with these, and if any one of them is admitted into the heart love goes out.
NICIAS BALLARD COOKSEY
Helps to Happiness
Pleasure and pain at once register upon the lover, inasmuch as the desirability of the love object derives, in part, from its lack. To whom is it lacking? To the lover. If we follow the trajectory of eros we consistently find it tracing out this same route: it moves out from the lover toward the beloved, then ricochets back to the lover himself and the hole in him, unnoticed before. Who is the subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.
ANNE CARSON
Eros the Bittersweet
The world gets grimy and the love object is in stark relief from it's surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.
DANIEL HANDLER
Adverbs
He who loveth, knoweth the inner sun; he see'th Life's blaze.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is--Love, forgive us!--cinders, ashes, dust;
Love in a palace is perhaps at last
More grievous torment than a hermit's fast.
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
Love thy neighbor, but pull not down thy hedge.
GERMAN PROVERB
I don't love you any less, but I can't love you anymore.
LYLE LOVETT
"I Can't Love You Anymore", The Road to Ensenada
Love is never finished expressing itself.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos
To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Surfacing
Margaret Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Her works encompass a variety of themes including gender and identity, religion and myth, the power of language, climate change, and "power politics".
I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Sexing the Cherry
Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Nothing is so strange when one is in love ... as the complete indifference of other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Mon Coeur Mis a Nu
Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.
TANITH LEE
Metallic Love
Loving is like music. Some instruments can go up two octaves, some four, and some all the way from black thunder to sharp lightning. As some of them are susceptible only of melody, so some hearts can sing but one song of love, while others will fun in a full choral harmony.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Love is ownership. We own whom we love. The universe is God's because he loves.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Who strikes man with love -- God or the Devil?
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped