Quotes to inspire and reflect

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.

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.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

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.

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.

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

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

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

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).

The word “love” bridges for us those chasms of momentary indifference and boredom which gape from time to time between even the most ardent lovers.

As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.

When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.

Love is the true price of love.

When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

What is first love worth, except to prepare for a second? / What does second love bring? Only regret for the first.

They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.

Words have no language which can utter the secrets of love; and beyond the limits of expression is the expounding of desire.

’Tis much to gain universal admiration; more, universal love.

Love is a universal migraine, / A bright stain on the vision, / Blotting out reason.

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an object intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

Even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Love makes use of the worst traps. The least noble. The rarest. It exploits coincidence.

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.

Love. The black hook. The spear singing through the mind.

No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love.

He that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?

Love compels cruelty / To those who do not understand love.

Without outward declarations, who can conclude an inward love?

Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, / When no man dies for love, but on the stage.

Being got it [love] is a treasure sweet, / Which to defend, is harder than to get: / And ought not be profaned on either part, / For though 'tis got by chance, tis kept by art.

Love is a growing, or full constant light; / And his first minute, after noon, is night.

Love is done when Love’s begun, / Sages say, / But have Sages known?

Behold this little Bane—/The Boon of all alive— / As common as it is unknown / The name of it is Love.

Love alone / is the true seed of every merit in you, / and of all acts for which you must atone.

No man may be so cursed by priest or pope / but what the Eternal Love may still return / while any thread of green lives on in hope.

If there’s delight in love, 'tis when I see / That heart which others bleed for, bleed for me.

Words are the weak support of cold indifference; love has no language to be heard.

To love a thing means wanting it to live.

Love is the admiration and cherishing of the amiable qualities of the beloved person, upon the condition of yourself being the object of their action.