Romantic Love

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

No, there’s nothing half so sweet in life

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,

If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: ‘Because it was he; because it was me.’

The evening star,

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Where both deliberate, the love is slight;

Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Le commencement et le déclin de l’amour se font sentir par l’embarras où l’on est de se trouver seuls.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

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

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

Love is a universal migraine.

All that matters is love and work.

And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls.

I am two fools, I know,

This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.