LOVE QUOTES XL

quotations about love

What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Powerbook


The problem with being passionately in love ... is that it deprives you of too much sleep.

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion

Tags: Dan Simmons


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 released from bond, and unburdened of its fetters, is love no longer.

THOMAS BURKE

A Love Lesson

Tags: Thomas Burke


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


Ah, my friends, Love, like a froward boy, with his hands full of sugar-plums, still cries for more.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


There are moments of passion and joy, but most of this love is enduring the long stretches of dealing with not-so-thrilling stuff because one has to do so and no one else will. Moreover, one cannot imagine doing otherwise. If that sounds like your marriage, congratulations.

ANDY SENIOR

"Love and the Single Factotum", Syncopated Times, September 26, 2018


Love is when you know you are right but you bite your tongue anyway. What greater love could you show for anyone than to swallow it, to deny yourself the supreme pleasure of proving that you are right by virtue of a long legalistic argument that proves your point? But sometimes you need to just leave it be. Let them be happy rather than you be right.

BRENDAN O'CONNOR

"Love is ...", The Independent, February 15, 2016


Love is always right.

RICHARD LAYMON

The Stake

Tags: Richard Laymon


Love is an experiment ... what happens next is always surprising.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


So being in love is like being hooked up to a perpetual dopamine drip, and you get a little hit every time you see the person or touch them or think about them?

SEAN ILLING

"This is what love does to your brain", Vox, April 23, 2018


Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was, what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela? There is none. I say in marriage an au dela is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The monosyllable which epitomizes the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes. Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal ... Thus love is possible, there is a delusion, an au dela.

GEORGE MOORE

Confessions of a Young Man

Tags: George Moore


I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.

NORMAN MAILER

Harlot's Ghost


For, without love, pleasure withers quickly, becomes a foul taste on the palate, and pleasure's inventions are soon exhausted.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: James Baldwin


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

Tags: James Baldwin


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


When there is love in the heart, there are rainbows in the eyes, which cover every black cloud with gorgeous hues.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


Love is to be the lodestar of our lives and, if blessed with the capacity to exercise it, we can aspire to imitate God.

SIMON MAY

Love: A History


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

Tags: Tanith Lee


Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Mon Coeur Mis a Nu

Tags: Charles Baudelaire