LOVE QUOTES

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Charles M. Schulz (1922 - 2000), Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends. And there's an evolutionary imperative why we don't give a crap about anybody else. If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function.
David Foster, House M.D., TB or Not TB, 2005

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott, How to Live with Another Person, 1974

Couples are jigsaw puzzles that hang together by touching in just enough points. They're never total fits or misfits.
Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing, 2011

There's a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, First Snow, 1993
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), Not So Deep as a Well (1937), "Comment"

One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love.
Elizabeth Aston, The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, 2005
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, O Magazine, February 2004


When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2005

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
Jean Anouilh (1910 - 1987)

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau

Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Altered Egos, 1993

What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love, and why do we become jerks when we do? We've all been there-- you want something, to possess it. By possessing something you lose it. You finally win the girl of your dreams, the first thing you do is change her. The little things she does with her hair, the way she wears her clothes or the way she chews her gum. Pretty soon what you like, what you changed, what you don't like, blends together like a watercolor in the rain.
Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Dateline: Cicely, 1992

True love brings up everything - you're allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.
Jennifer Aniston, O Magazine, February 2004

'Light fuse and get away' may work for a Roman candle, but not so much for the wrath of a woman scorned.
Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content webcomic, #678, 08-02-06

A good relationship is like fireworks: loud, explosive, and liable to maim you if you hold on too long.
Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content, 11-14-08
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
John Barrymore (1882 - 1942)

When you're a teenager and you're in love, it's obvious to everyone but you and the person you're in love with.
John Scalzi, Old Man's War, 2005

'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.
John Sheffield
Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's not any gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?
Josh Brand and John Falsey, Northern Exposure, The Pilot, 1990

How we treasure (and admire) the people who acknowledge us!
Julie Morgenstern, O Magazine, Belatedly Yours, January 2004

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde

Passion is seldom the end of any story, for it cannot long endure if it is not soon supplemented with true affection and mutual respect.
Kathryn L. Nelson, Pemberley Manor, 2006

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
Lynda Barry
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
M. Scott Peck, O Magazine, February 2004

To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.
Madonna (1958 - ), O Magazine, January 2004

Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.
Margaret Cho, weblog, 01-15-04

Think about a woman. Doesn't know you're thinking about her. Doesn't care you're thinking about her. Makes you think about her even more.
Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman, Northern Exposure, The Bumpy Road to Love, 1991

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening (1954 - ), "Life in Hell"

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
Michael Masser and Linda Creed
I always like a good math solution to any love problem.
Michael Patrick King, Sex and the City, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, 1999



The perversity of the human spirit is such that when a young lady longs for one specific partner, every other partner counts for nothing.
Monica Fairview, Darcy Cousins, 2010

When a person is uncertain in love, there is nothing easier than for him to put one and one together and to make three out of them.
Monica Fairview, Darcy Cousins, 2010

Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face.
National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
She hadn't chosen him over all the others. The truth was that she hadn't even thought about anyone else.
Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers
The love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.
Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers: A Novel
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich (1886 - 1965), O Magazine, February 2004

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), Address on The Method of Nature, 1841

Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 12-09-05

You can't show love to someone at the expense of someone else who loves you.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive, 01-19-10

You make me understand how wonderful it is for little lizards when they find that one special rock that's perfect for sunning themselves on. You make me lizard-happy.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive, 02-23-10

I believe love is primarily a choice and only sometimes a feeling. If you want to feel love, choose to love and be patient.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, December 16, 2002

I don’t think anyone can DO anything that would make him worthy of love. Love is a gift and cannot be earned. It can only be given.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 20, 2003

You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, October 20, 2003
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That the unfinished business between us. Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.
Sara Zarr, Sweehearts, 2008

Maybe kissing is sort of like nature's coffee.
Scott Westerfeld, Midnighters: Blue Noon, 2005

We don't always get to choose what we love.
Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days, 2006

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)

Some relationships start with fights... But, usually only in romantic comedies. Life's not the movies.
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
Toni Morrison (1931 - ), Beloved

Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Chef Aid, 1998

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Moon and Sixpence

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915


There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915