She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

William Shakespeare, The Twelfth Night 

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme and to be melancholy. William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost

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, Hamlet

"Man's love is of man's life a part; It is woman's whole existence!" Lord Byron

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind. Théophile Gautier

If a snowflake was a kiss, I’d send you a blizzard.

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Plato

All the privilege I claim for my own sex…is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone. Jane Austen

Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.
William Blake

LOVE: a temporary insanity curable by marriage.

But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love,
The green fields below him, the blue sky above,
That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he-
‘ I love my Love, and my Love loves me!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Love is the answer. John Lennon

Love is my religion- I could die for that. John Keats



And sadly reflecting
That a lover forsaken
A new love may get,
But a neck when once broken
Can never be set
William Walsh

God is Love, I dare say.
But what a mischievous devil Love is.
Samuel Butler

I got a valentine from Jimmy
Jimmy
Tillie
Billie
Nicky
Mickey
Ricky
Dicky
Laura
Nora
Cora
Flora
Donnie
Ronnie
Lonnie
Connie
Eva even sent me two
But I didn’t get none from you.
Shel Silverstein

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. Benjamin Disraeli

Two people
She reads the paper
While he turns on TV,
She likes the mountains
While he craves the sea
He’d rather drive,
She’ll take the plane,
He waits for sunshine;
She walks in the rain.
He gulps down cold drinks,
She sips at hot;
He asks, “Why go?”
She asks, “Why not?”
In just about everything
They disagree
But they love one another
And the both love me.
Eve Merriam

Love exists…real love…not the kind that depends on who you are or how you look or whether or not you are kind to someone. This meeting – this sharing – this naked confrontation where two beings are, for an instant, together. Leslie Kenton

I love thee, though I told thee not,
Right easily and long,
Thou wert my joy in every spot,
My theme in every song.

John Clare


…the world was newly crowned
With flowers, when
First we met.

Thomas Hood

I think the time has come, it really has come for us to do a little courting. Have we ever had time to stand under trees and tell our love?
Wander with me 10 years – will you darling? Ten years in the sun. It’s not long – only 10 springs. Katherine Mansfield

When two souls, which have sought each other for however long in the throng, have finally found each other, when they have seen that they are matched, are in sympathy and compatible, in a word, that they are alike, there is then established for ever between them a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are, a union which begins on earth and continues for ever in heaven. This union is love, true love, such as in truth very few men can conceive of, that love which is a religion, which deifies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights. Victor Hugo



Love isn’t decent. Love is glorious and shameless. Elizabeth von Arnim

Submit to love faithfully and it gives a person joy. It intoxicates, it envelops, it isolates. It creates fragrance in the air, ardour from coldness, it beautifies everything around it. Leos Janacek

The madness of love is the greatest of heaven’s blessings. Plato

Yes, it was beginning in each
Yes, it threw waves across our lives
Yes, the pulses were becoming very strong
Yes, the beating became very delicate
Yes, the calling the arousal
Yes, the arriving the coming
Yes, there it was for both entire
Yes, we were looking at each other.
Muriel Rukeyser

[Love is] something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out. You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and know how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Annie Sullivan

The actual thing – inloveness- requires something like a spark leaping back and forth from one to the other becoming more intense every moment, love building up like voltage in a coil. Here there is no sound of one hand clapping…One who has never been in love might mistake either infatuation or a mixture of affection and sexual attraction for being in love. But when the “real thing” happens, there is no doubt. A man in the jungle at night, as someone said, may suppose a hyena’s growl to be a lion’s; but when he hears the lion’s growl, he knows damn’ well it’s a lion. So with the genuine inloveness. Sheldon Vanauken

I met in the street
A very poor young man
Who was in love.
His hat was old,
His coat worn,
His cloak
Was out at the elbows,
The water passed
Through his shoes-
And the stars through his soul
Victor Hugo

I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything as well. Devastation, balm, obsession, granting and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. …It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like the truth. Florida Scott-Maxwell

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions
May wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as
The north wind lays waste the garden.”
Kahlil Gibran

Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock. Across the barriers of time and the ultimate destiny, love persists, for the home of the beloved, absent or present, is always in the mind and heart. Absence does not diminish love. Mary Parrish

The need to surrender is one of the great paradoxes of love. Surrender may seem like giving up. Or giving in. But in reality we are strengthened when we actively choose to make ourselves vulnerable. We are empowered by sharing our deepest self with another person, offering him or her our heart, our soul, our life. Surrender is an act of free will. A sacred trust. Ellen Sue Stern

Here we are
Running with the weeds
Colors exaggerated
Pistils wild
Embarrassing the calm family flowers Oh
Here we are
Flourishing for the field
And the name of the place
Is Love
Lucille Clifton



A life without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth – with the fire dead, the laughter stilled, and the light extinguished. Frank P. Tebbetts

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. Bertrand Russell

I will bring you flowers
Every morning for your breakfast
And you will kiss me
With flowers in your mouth
And you will bring me flowers
Every morning when you wake
And look at me with flowers in your eyes
Heather Holden

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. Rumi

Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty humming along beneath our ignorance that insured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another. Robert James Waller

I told myself with a kind of wonder, this was what love was: this consecration, this curious uplifting, this sudden inexplicable joy, and this intolerable pain. Anon

But had a wist, before I kist,
That love had been sae ill to win,
I had lock’d my heart in a case o’ gowd,
And pinn’d it wi’ a siller pin.
Traditional ballad

If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt. Thomas Carlyle

Love, which had been long deluded,
Was with kisses sweet concluded.
Nicholas Breton

O love! O fire! Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro’
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A kiss, when all is said, what is it?
An oath that’s given closer than before;
A promise more precise; the sealing of
Confessions that till then were barely breathed;
A rosy dot placed on the I in loving;
A secret that’s confided to a mouth
And not to ears.
Edmond Rostand

Love is a many splendid thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!
from the movie Moulin Rouge

Other men said they have seen angels,
But I have seen thee
And thou art enough.
G. Moore

I love you - those three words have my life in them.
Alexandrea to Nicholas III

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion -
I have shudder'd at it.
I shudder no more.
I could be martyr'd for my religion
Love is my religion
And I could die for that.
I could die for you.
John Keats

I'd like to run away
From you,
But if you didn't come
And find me ...
I would die.
Shirley Bassey

When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.
Elizabeth Bowen

The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is to love and be loved in return.
From "Unforgettable with Love" by Natalie Cole

Soul meets soul on lover's lips.
Percy Bysshe Shelly

I have found men who didn't know how to kiss.
I've always found time to teach them.
Mae West

"It is better to wait for someone of our desire, rather than having what is available. It is still better to wait for someone we love, rather than satisfy ourselves with those around. It is still better to wait for the right person, because life is too short to be spent with a wrong choice. Because waiting has its glorious and mysterious purpose"


"When lovers are parted

Separated by the sea

The sun always rises and sets

Somewhere else

The wristwatch never tell the right time

Day becomes night and

Night becomes day

And the music of the heart

Just ceases to play"


"Love always seeks to help, not to hurt"

"Nobody is perfect until you fall in love with them"


"Don’t frown, you never know who’s falling in love with your smile"


"The sea of tears that I create
The hurricane occurring of the sighs
Due to you my one and only
I only see you in my eyes"


"When you first fall in love, it is because there seem to be many reasons to do so. Many years later, if you are still in love, then you’ve probably learnt to love despite many reasons not to do so."


"It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone… but it takes a lifetime to forget someone…"



A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, as an exclamation point. Mistinguett

"Love will pass by many times, but true love will stop to look"

"Ama me fideliter! Fidem meam noto: De corde totaliter Et ex mente tota, Sum presentialiter Absens in remota."
Lat: "Love me faithfully!/See how I am faithful:/With all my heart/And all my soul/I am with you/Though I am far away."

We are each of us angels with only one wing. And we can fly only by embracing each other. Luciano de Crescenzo

You never lose by loving, you always lose by holding back. Barbara de Angelis

If you would be loved, love and be lovable. Benjamin franklin

When it comes down to it, we all just want to be loved. J. yellin

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold. Zelda Fitzgerald

To live in the hearts of those we leave behind is not to die. Thomas Campbell

Love has no thought of self. Love sacrifices all things to bless the thing it loves. Bulwer lytton

Love is a great power which passes all understanding, and against which our will can do nothing. Strindberg

Love bears all things, gives up all things and of faith, hope and love, Sir, love is the greatest. Strindberg

I want not only to be loved but to be told that I am loved. George Eliot

Love is not getting but giving, not a wild dream of pleasure, and a madness of desire, love is not that. It is goodness and honour and peace and pure living-yes, love is that and it is the best thing that lives longest. Henry van dyke

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us and that no one will love in the same way as us. Johann w. von Goethe

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved. Victor Hugo

What’s the earth with all its art, verse, music worth compared with love found, gained and kept. Robert Browning

That best portion of a good man’s life is his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. William Wordsworth

Love is the poetry of the senses. Honoré de Balzac

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own joy. Robert A. Heinlein

Love is of all passions, the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously, the head, the heart and the senses. Voltaire

Love puts the fun in together, the sad in apart, the hope in tomorrow, the joy in a heart. Anon

Will you love me in December as you do in May,
Will you love in the good old fashioned way?
When my hair has all turned gray,
Will you kiss me then and say,
That you love me in December as you do in May?
James J Walker

Love is as strong as death, jealousy is as cruel as the grave.
Song of Solomon

The best proof of love is trust. Joyce Brothers

Love is-two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. Von Munch Bellinghausen

Serene will be our days and bright, and happy will our nature be, when love is an unerring light, and joy its own security. William Wordsworth

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. William Congreve

She lived unknown,

and a few could know,

when Lucy ceased to be,

but she is in her grave, and

Oh, the difference to me.

William Wordsworth

There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind,
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.
Googe

To see her is to love her,
And love her but for ever,
For nature made her what she is,
And ne’er made another.

Burns

There’s nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream.
Thomas Moore

If love was what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,

Our lives would grow together,
In sad or singing weather.

Swinburne

Whom we love best, to them we can say least. John Ray

Love reckons hours for months, and days for years, and every little absence is an age. John Dryden

Pains of love be sweeter far, than all other pleasures are.

John Dryden

He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel a thing to flout,
But Love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in. Edwin Markham

Love and a cough cannot be hid. George Herbert

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. Johnson

When falling in love some lose their head others lose their heart. Johann W von Goethe

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Love is the salt of life, a higher taste it gives to pleasure and then makes it last. Buckingham

I hold it true,what'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

Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love. Rockfeller

The mind has a hundred eyes and the heart but one, yet the light of the whole life dies when the love is done. Anon

Many waters cannot quench love. Neither can the floods drown it. Song of Solomon

The heart has no language, it speaks to the heart. Mahatma Gandhi

Love is space and time measured by the heart. Carlo Menotti

Love never claims, it ever gives. Love never suffers never resents, never revenges itself. Mahatma Gandhi

Love is not flame meeting flame, but a spirit calling to spirit. Radhakrishnan

Some love lasts a lifetime. True love lasts forever.

Love, that reason of all unreasonable actions. John Dryden

Love conquers all, let us too yield to love. Virgil

Absence is to love what wind is to fire, it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. De-Bussy-Rabutin

A word that comes from the heart is certain to reach other hearts. Anon

Life is a flavour of which love is honey. Victor Hugo

Like a tear or a smile, a poem is but a picture of what is taking place within. Tagore (Reminiscences)

I have so little to give my dear,
So little of silver and gold.
But I can give you a gift my dear,
That couldn’t be bought or sold.
My friendship if you find it sweet,
My smile of greeting when we meet.

My tears to comfort you in pain,
My hand to hold in joy or sorrow.
My love to-day, my love tomorrow.
Halt Fulman

Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly.
Never met, or never parted,
We had ne’er been broken hearted.
Burns

The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of. Charles H Perelman

He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
William Blake

Soon or late, love is its own avenger. Byron

Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is a fairy land. Kingsley

"The sound of a kiss is not so loud as a cannon, But its echo lasts a great deal longer!" Unknown

"Love is something eternal, The aspect may change, But not the essence." Vincent Van Gogh

Love is a pearl of purest hue,
But stormy waves are round it,
And dearly may a woman rue,
The hour that first she found it.