Quotes to inspire and reflect

Love, whether sexual, parental, or fraternal, is essentially sacrificial, and prompts a man to give his life for his friends.

Not to believe in love is a great sign of dulness. There are some people so indirect and lumbering that they think all real affection must rest on circumstantial evidence.

To be loved means to be consumed. To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

There is a warning love sends and the cost of it is never written till long afterward.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry.

[Love is] the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better part in him.

There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain—we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it. v

We never, then, love a person, but only qualities.

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.

Alas! how light a cause may move / Dissension between hearts that love!

To love, that’s the point—what matters whom? / What does the bottle matter provided we can be drunk?

There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn’t lasting.

In love, tis no other than frantic desire for that which flies from us.

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.

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.

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.

It takes two to make a love affair and a man’s meat is too often a woman’s poison.

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.

He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

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.

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

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

Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.

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).

If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi’s shoulder.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

There is more pleasure in loving than in being beloved.

Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.

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

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

He that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves.