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Poetry about love

literary genre; poetry dealing with love

Poetry about love.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations · Anonymous · See also · External links

A

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  • Mysterious love, uncertain treasure,
    Hast thou more of pain or pleasure!
    Endless torments dwell about thee:
    Yet who would live, and live without thee!
  • When love's well-timed 'tis not a fault to love;
    The strong, the brave, the virtuous, and the wise,
    Sink in the soft captivity together.
  • When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
    (In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
    The woman that deliberates is lost.
  • We, unaccustomed to courage
    exiles from delight
    live coiled in shells of loneliness
    until love leaves its high holy temple
    and comes into our sight
    to liberate us into life.
  • Who sings of all of Love's eternity
    Who shines so bright
    In all the songs of Love's unending spells?
    Holy lightning strikes all that's evil
    Teaching us to love for goodness sake.
    Hear the music of Love Eternal
    Teaching us to reach for goodness sake.
  • If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
  • Love costs all we are
    and will ever be.
    Yet it is only love
    which sets us free.
  • Σχέτλι᾽ Ἔρως, μέγα πῆμα, μέγα στύγος ἀνθρώποισιν,
    ἐκ σέθεν οὐλόμεναί τ᾽ ἔριδες στοναχαί τε γόοι τε,
    ἄλγεά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσιν ἀπείρονα τετρήχασιν.
    • Unconscionable Love, bane and tormentor of mankind, parent of strife, fountain of tears, source of a thousand ills.
    • Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV, lines 445–447 (tr. E. V. Rieu)
  • Alas! is even love too weak
    To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
    Are even lovers powerless to reveal
    To one another what indeed they feel?
    I knew the mass of men conceal'd
    Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
    They would by other men be met
    With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
    I knew they lived and moved
    Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
    Of men, and alien to themselves — and yet
    The same heart beats in every human breast!
  • Ah, love, let us be true
    To one another! for the world, which seems
    To lie before us like a land of dreams,
    So various, so beautiful, so new,
    Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
    Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
    And we are here as on a darkling plain
    Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
    Where ignorant armies clash by night.
  • What love will make you do
    All the things that we accept
    Be the things that we regret
  • Hunger allows no choice
    To the citizen or the police;
    We must love one another or die.
    • W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939 (1939) Lines 78-88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.

B

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See also: Bible quotes about love
  • Ask not of me, love, what is love?
    Ask what is good of God above;
    Ask of the great sun what is light;
    Ask what is darkness of the night;
    Ask sin of what may be forgiven;
    Ask what is happiness of heaven;
    Ask what is folly of the crowd;
    Ask what is fashion of the shroud;
    Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss;
    Ask of thyself what beauty is.
  • Could I love less, I should be happier now.
  • I cannot love as I have loved,
    And yet I know not why;
    It is the one great woe of life
    To feel all feeling die.
  • Love spends his all, and still hath store.
  • The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
  • Love seeketh not itself to please,
    Nor for itself hath any care,
    But for another gives its ease,
    And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
  • The mightiest love was granted him
    Love that does not expect to be loved.
  • If thou must love me, let it be for nought
    Except for love's sake only. Do not say
    "I love her for her smile — her look — her way
    Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought
    That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
    A sense of pleasant ease on such a day" —
    For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
    Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought,
    May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
    Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, —
    A creature might forget to weep, who fbore
    Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
    But love me for love's sake, that evermore
    Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
  • I would not be a rose upon the wall
    A queen might stop at, near the palace-door,
    To say to a courtier, "Pluck that rose for me,
    It's prettier than the rest." O Romney Leigh!
    I'd rather far be trodden by his foot,
    Than lie in a great queen's bosom.
  • But I love you, sir:
    And when a woman says she loves a man,
    The man must hear her, though he love her not.
  • For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
    And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
  • Only tragedy allows the release
    Of love and grief never normally seen.
    I didn't want to let them see me weep,
    I didn't want to let them see me weak,
    But I know I have shown
    That I stand at the gates alone.
  • All the love, all the love,
    All the love we should have given.
    All the love, all the love,
    All the love you could have given.
    All the love...
  • Do you know what I really need?
    I need love love love love love, yeah!
  • The light
    Begin to bleed,
    Begin to breathe,
    Begin to speak.
    D'you know what?
    I love you better now.

  • Excuse me I'm sorry to bother you,
    But don't I know you?
    There's just something about you.
    Haven't we met before?

    We've been in love forever.

  • There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.
    You might feel it and just not show it.
  • I love my
    Beloved, ooh,
    All and everywhere,
    Only the fools blew it.
    You and me
    Knew life itself is
    Breathing...
  • Love in your hearts as idly burns
    As fire in antique Roman urns.
  • Love is a boy by poets styl'd:
    Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
  • What mad lover ever dy'd,
    To gain a soft and gentle bride?
    Or for a lady tender-hearted,
    In purling streams or hemp departed?
  • Oh Love! young Love! bound in thy rosy band,
    Let sage or cynic prattle as he will,
    These hours, and only these, redeem Life's years of ill.
  • The cold in clime are cold in blood,
    Their love can scarce deserve the name.
  • Why did she love him? Curious fool!—be still—
    Is human love the growth of human will?
    • Lord Byron, Lara, A Tale (1814), Canto II, Stanza 22
  • And to his eye
    There was but one beloved face on earth,
    And that was shining on him.
  • She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew
    For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
    Was darken'd with her shadow.
  • O! that the Desert were my dwelling place,
    With one fair Spirit for my minister,
    That I might all forget the human race,
    And, hating no one, love but only her!
  • Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
    'Tis woman's whole existence: man may range
    The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart,
    Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
    Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
    And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
    Men have all these resources, we but one,
    To love again, and be again undone.
  • Alas! the love of women! it is known
    To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
  • In her first passion woman loves her lover;
    In all the others, all she loves is love.

C

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  • I fall in love too easily
    I fall in love too fast
    I fall in love too terribly hard
    For love to ever last

    My heart should be well-schooled
    Cause I've been fooled in the past
    But still I fall in love so easily
    I fall in love too fast
  • Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver,
    É ferida que dói, e não se sente;
    É um contentamento descontente,
    É dor que desatina sem doer.
    É um não querer mais que bem querer;
    É um andar solitário entre a gente;
    É nunca contentar-se de contente;
    É um cuidar que ganha em se perder.
    É querer estar preso por vontade;
    É servir a quem vence, o vencedor;
    É ter com quem nos mata, lealdade.
    Mas como causar pode seu favor
    Nos corações humanos amizade,
    Se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?
    • Love is a fire that burns, but is never seen;
      a wound that hurts, but is never perceived;
      a pleasure that starts a pain that’s unrelieved;
      a pain that maddens without any pain; a serene
      desire for nothing, but wishing her only the best;
      a lonely passage through the crowd; the resentment
      of never being content with one’s contentment;
      a caring that gains only when losing; an obsessed
      desire to be bound, for love, in jail;
      a capitulation to the one you’ve conquered yourself;
      a devotion to your own assassin every single day.
      So how can Love conform, without fail,
      every captive human heart, if Love itself
      is so contradictory in every possible way?
    • Luís de Camões, Amor é fogo que arde sem se ver, translated by William Baer
  • What have I done? What horrid crime committed?
    To me the worst of crimes—outliv'd my liking.
    • Colley Cibber, Richard III (1700), Act III, scene 2; altered from Shakespeare
  • There are no signs,
    There are no stars aligned,
    No amulets no charms,
    To bring you back to my arms.
    There's just this human heart.
    That's built with this human fault.
    What was your question?
    Love is the answer.

  • Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
    Ye shall grow a part
    Of the laughing Sea;
    Of the moaning heart
    Of the glittered wave
    Of the sun-gleam's dart
    In the ocean-grave.

    Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
    For that I love
    Thy heart of stone!
    From the heights above
    To the depths below,
    Where dread things move,

    There is naught can show
    A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
    Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!

  • And sometimes when I am weary,
    When the path is thorny and Wild,
    I'll look back to the Eyes in the twilight,
    Back to the eyes that smiled.

    And pray that a wreath like a rainbow
    May slip from the beautiful past,
    And Crown me again with the sweet, strong love
    And keep me, and hold me fast.

  • When they lay down beside me I made my confession to them.
    They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
    If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,
    They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
  • I swept the marble chambers,
    But you sent me down below.
    You kept me from believing
    Until you let me know:
    That I am not the one who loves —
    It's love that chooses me.
    When hatred with his package comes,
    You forbid delivery.

  • The light came through the window,
    Straight from the sun above,
    And so inside my little room
    There plunged the rays of Love.

    In streams of light I clearly saw
    The dust you seldom see,
    Out of which the Nameless makes
    A Name for one like me.

  • Anything that's worth havin'
    Sure enough worth fighting for.
    Quittin's out of the question
    When it gets tough, gotta fight some more. ...
    We gotta fight, fight, fight, fight, fight for this love.
    If its woth having, it's worth fightin for.
  • Now everyday ain't gonna be no picnic
    Love ain't no walk in the park
    All you can do is make the best of it now
    Can't be afraid of the dark
    Just know that you're not in this thing alone
    There's always a place in me that you can call home.
  • All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
    All are but ministers of Love,
    And feed his sacred flame.

  • And in Life's noisiest hour,
    There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
    The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.

    You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.

  • And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
    How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
  • Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
    Friendship is a sheltering tree;
    Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
    Of friendship, love, and liberty,
    Ere I was old!
  • In many ways doth the full heart reveal
    The presence of the love it would conceal.
  • To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
    Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
  • I have heard of reasons manifold
    Why Love must needs be blind,
    But this the best of all I hold,—
    His eyes are in his mind.
    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation
  • Now here we are, The two of us,
    And nothing's gonna come between us again.
    Forever love, I feel you're with me,
    You're the sun that chases away the rain.
    I cherish all the love you bring,
    It's here forever and a day,
    I love you more than anything,
    I can't throw that away. My Love.
    [...]
    For the memory of you,
    For all the times we shared together,
    For all we've been through,
    Forever Love.
  • Our love is principle, and has its root
    In reason, is judicious, manly, free.
  • Mine to the core of the heart, my beauty!
    Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
    Love given willingly, full and free,
    Love for love's sake — as mine to thee.
    Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
    But Love, the master, goes in and out
    Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
    Just as he please — just as he please.
  • I was searching for an answer
    In a world so full of strangers
    But what I found was never really enough
    Now that I've found you
    I'm looking in the eyes of love (In the eyes of love)

    Baby you've been good to me
    Oh, so much more that you could know, yeah, yeah
    I never thought that I would find
    Someone who's so sweet and kind
    Like you...

    Please believe me when I say
    This time I won't run away
    I swear by all the heaven's stars above
    Now that I've found you
    I'm looking in the eyes of love

    Looking in the eyes of love...
    I can see forever, yeah...
    I can see you and me
    Walking in this world together

    Oh, my heart's found a hope...
    I've been dreaming of...
    Now that I've found you
    I'm looking in the eyes of love
  • and nothing quite so least as truth
    —i say though hate were why men breathe—
    because my father lived his soul
    love is the whole and more than all
  • Love is more thicker than forget
    …it is more sane and sunly
    and more it cannot die
    than all the sky which only
    is higher than the sky
  • Measureless our pure living complete love
    whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow
  • 'And liars kill their kind
    but' her,my 'love creates love only' our
  • Nothing false and possible is love
    (who's imagined, therefore limitless)
    love's to giving as to keeping's give; as yes is to if, love is to yes
  • True lovers in each happening of their hearts
    live longer than all which and every who;
  • Yes is a pleasant country…
    love is a deeper season
    than reason
  • I feel that(false and true are merely to know)
    Love only has ever been, is, and will ever be, So

  • No evil is
    so worse than worst you fall in hate with love

    —human one mortally immortal I
    can turn immense all time's because to why

  • The whole truth…
    sings only —and all lovers are the song
  • it's love by whom (my beautiful friend) the gift to live is without until:
    …love was and shall be this only truth (a dream of a deed, born not to die)
  • The axis of the universe
    —love

D

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  • I somehow see what's beautiful
    In things that are ephemeral
    I'm my only friend of mine
    And love is just a piece of time
    in the world
    in the world.
    And I couldn't help but fall in love again.
  • Old habits die hard when you got, when you got a sentimental heart
    Piece of the puzzle, you're my missing part
    Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart?
  • Love is not a feeling to pass away
    Like the balmy breath of a Summer's day.......
    Love is not a passion of earthly mould
    As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold
    • Charles Dickens, From Lucy's Song in The Poems and Verses of Charles Dickens, Chapman & Hall, London 1903
  • A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought with gold
    With the device of a great snake, whose breath
    Was a fiery flame: which when I did behold
    I fell a-weeping and I cried, "Sweet youth,
    Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
    These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
    What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
    Then straight the first did turn himself to me
    And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
    But I am Love, and I was wont to be
    Alone in this fair garden, till he came
    Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
    The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
    Then sighing said the other, "Have thy will,
    "I am the Love that dare not speak its name."
  • Love is a passion
    Which kindles honor into noble acts.
    • John Dryden, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392
  • Love taught him shame, and shame with love at strife
    Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.

E

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  • But is it what we love, or how we love,
    That makes true good?
  • 'Tis what I love determines how I love.
  • Women know no perfect love:
    Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
    Man clings because the being whom he loves
    Is weak and needs him.
  • Lady of silences
    Calm and distressed
    Torn and most whole
    Rose of memory
    Rose of forgetfulness
    Exhausted and life-giving
    Worried reposeful
    The single Rose
    Is now the Garden
    Where all loves end
    Terminate torment
    Of love unsatisfied
    The greater torment
    Of love satisfied
    End of the endless
    Journey to no end
    Conclusion of all that
    Is inconclusible
    Speech without word and
    Word of no speech
    Grace to the Mother
    For the Garden
    Where all love ends.
  • Can we only love
    Something created in our own imaginations?
    Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable?
    Then one is alone, and if one is alone
    Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
    And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
  • Desire itself is movement
    Not in itself desirable;
    Love is itself unmoving,
    Only the cause and end of movement,
    Timeless, and undesiring
    Except in the aspect of time
    Caught in the form of limitation
    Between un-being and being.
  • Love is most nearly itself
    When here and now cease to matter.
    Old men ought to be explorers
    Here or there does not matter
    We must be still and still moving
    Into another intensity
    For a further union, a deeper communion
    Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
    The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
    Of the petrel and the porpoise.
  • Who then devised the torment? Love.
    Love is the unfamiliar Name
    Behind the hands that wove
    The intolerable shirt of flame
    Which human power cannot remove.
    We only live, only suspire
    Consumed by either fire or fire.

F

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  • Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
    For Love, the vine that round your base
    Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
    And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
    Without the asking on your cold
    Unsmiling and unfrowning face.
  • Upon your shattered ruins where
    This vine will flourish still, as rare,
    As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
    Love will not crumble.
  • Dropt tears have hastened your decay
    And brought you one step nigher death;
    And you have heard, unthrilled, unmoved,
    The music of Love's golden breath
    And seen the light in eyes that loved.
    You think you hold the core and kernel
    Of all the world beneath your crust,
    Old dial? But when you lie in dust,
    This vine will bloom, strong, green, and proved.
    Love is eternal.
  • Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
    Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
    For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
    The tender alcoves built by love at night.
    • Philip José Farmer, "In Common" in Starlanes #14 (April 1954); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • One thing is sure, O comrades, that the love
    That fights to keep us rooted in the earth,
    But also urges us to dare the stars,
    This irresistible, this ancient power
    Wedged in the soul, unshakable, is the light
    That burns our roots and leaves us free for Space.
    • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • The way is open, comrades, free as Space
    Alone is free. The only gold is love,
    A coin that we have minted from the light
    Of others who have cared for us on Earth
    And who have deposited in us the power
    That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
    • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth.
    We hope to breed a race of men whose power
    Dwells in hearts as open as all Space
    Itself, who ask for nothing but the light
    That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars
    Above will be below when man has Love.
    • Philip José Farmer, Sestina of the Space Rocket (1953), first published in Startling Stories (February 1953); re-published in Pearls From Peoria (2006)
  • Just one step at a time
    And closer to destiny
    I knew at a glance
    There'd always be a chance for me
    With someone I could live for
    Nowhere I would rather be.
    Is your love strong enough
    Like a rock in the sea?
    Am I asking too much?
    Is your love strong enough?
  • I love love
    I love being in love
    I don't care what it does to me
  • Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
    Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
    Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
    Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
    Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.

G

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  • Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t'aime davantage,
    Aujourd'hui plus qu'hier et bien moins que demain.
    • For, you see, each day I love you more,
      Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
    • Rosemonde Gérard, "L'éternelle chanson", IX, Les Pipeaux; in P. Dupré, Encyclopédie des Citations (1959), p. 176
  • Love is a universal migraine.
    A bright stain on the vision
    Blotting out reason.
    • Robert Graves, "Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961)
  • New beginnings and new shoots
    Spring again from hidden roots
    Pull or stab or cut or burn,
    Love must ever yet return.
  • Lovers to-day and for all time
    Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
    Love is not kindly nor yet grim
    But does to you as you to him.
  • Then all you lovers have good heed
    Vex not young Love in word or deed:
    Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
    He will not pardon nor forget.

H

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  • I need your love
    I need your time
    When everything's wrong
    You make it right
    I feel so high
    I come alive
    I need to be free with you tonight
    I need your love
  • When I'm not near the girl I love,
    I love the girl I'm near.
  • Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.
    Love, which is lust, is the Call from the Gloom.
    Love, which is lust, is the Main of Desire.
    Love, which is lust, is the Centric Fire.
    So man and woman will keep their trust,
    Till the very Springs of the Sea run dust.
    Yea, each with the other will lose and win,
    Till the very Sides of the Grave fall in.
    For the strife of Love's the abysmal strife,
    And the word of Love is the Word of Life.
    And they that go with the Word unsaid,
    Though they seem of the living, are damned and dead.
  • You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
    Love! A dark and starry transfiguration is mingled with that torment. There is ecstacy in the agony.

J

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  • Better get ready gonna see the light
    Love, love is the answer and that's all right
    So don't you give up now so easy to find
    Just look to your soul and open your mind

K

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  • When I have fears that I may cease to be
    Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
    Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
    Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
    When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
    And think that I may never live to trace
    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
    And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
    That I shall never look upon thee more,
    Never have relish in the faery power
    Of unreflecting love! — then on the shore
    Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
    Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
  • A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
    Its loveliness increases; it will never
    Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
    A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
    Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
  • Ghosts of melodious prophesyings rave
    Round every spot where trod Apollo's foot;
    Bronze clarions awake, and faintly bruit,
    Where long ago a giant battle was;
    And, from the turf, a lullaby doth pass
    In every place where infant Orpheus slept.
    Feel we these things? — that moment have we stept
    Into a sort of oneness, and our state
    Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
    Richer entanglements, enthralments far
    More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
    To the chief intensity: the crown of these
    Is made of love and friendship, and sits high
    Upon the forehead of humanity.
  • Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
    Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.
  • And there shall be for thee all soft delight
    That shadowy thought can win,
    A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
    To let the warm Love in!
  • Love will come find you
    Just to remind you
    Of who you are
    [...] See that's the thing about love
    [...] Then life
    It will embrace you
    Totally amaze you
    So you don't give up
  • Baby lets go have that wreckless love, that crazy love
    That off the wall, wont stop till I get enough kind of love
    I need that love

    So baby lets go have that wreckless love, that crazy love
    That I dont really care we can have it anywhere kind of love
    That wreckless love
  • Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
    To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
    Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
    Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?
  • For, once he thrilled with high romance
    And tuned to love his eager voice.
    Like any cavalier of France
    He wooed the maiden of his choice.
    And now deep in his weary heart
    Are sacred flames that whitely burn.
    He has of Heaven's grace a part
    Who loves, who is beloved in turn.
  • The song within your heart could never rise
    Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
  • Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
    Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
    It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
    It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
  • Tonight You're mine completely,
    You give your love so sweetly
    Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
    But will you love me tomorrow?
  • You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
    And show the world all the love in your heart
    The people gonna treat you better,
    You're gonna find, yes you will,
    That you're beautiful as you feel.
  • If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
    Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.
  • The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
    Light of my tents, be fleet—
    Morning awaits at the end of the world,
    And the world is all at our feet.
  • The white moth to the closing vine,
    The bee to the open clover,
    And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
    Ever the wide world over.
  • The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky
    The deer to the wholesome wold;
    And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,
    As it was in the days of old.

L

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  • You may find many a brighter one
    Than your own rose, but there are none
    So true to thee, Love.
  • Do any thing but love ; or if thou lovest
    And art a Woman, hide thy love from him
    Who thou dost worship ; never let him know
    How dear he is ; flit like a bird before him, —
    Lead him from tree to tree, from flower to flower ;
    But be not won, or thou wilt, like that bird,
    When caught and caged, be left to pine neglected,
    And perish in forgetfulness.
  • Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
    Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
    Intense delicious throbs!
  • I loved him too as woman loves —
    Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn.
  • Love is like the glass,
    That throws its own rich colour over all,
    And makes all beautiful.
  • And Love is like the lightning in its might,
    Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
    Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.
  • And this is Love! Oh! why should woman love;
    Wasting her dearest feelings, till health, hope,
    Happiness, are but things of which henceforth
    She'll only know the name?
  • What was our parting ?—one wild kiss,
    How wild I may not say,
    One long and breathless clasp, and then
    As life were past away.
    • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (29th March 1823), 'Song - What was our parting ?—one wild kiss'
  • Love is a pearl of purest hue,
    But stormy waves are round it;
    And dearly may a woman rue,
    The hour that she found it.
  • Ah! never is that cherished face
    Banished from its accustomed place—
    It shines upon my weariest night
    It leads me on in thickest fight:
    All that seems most opposed to be
    Is yet associate with thee—
    Together life and thee depart,
    Dream—idol—treasure of my heart.
  • These blossoms, gathered in familiar paths,
    With dear companions now passed out of sight,
    Shall not be laid upon their graves. They live,
    Since love is deathless. Pleasure now nor pride
    Is theirs in mortal wise, but hallowing thoughts
    Will meet the offering, of so little worth,
    Wanting the benison death has made divine.
  • Those that go searching for love
    only make manifest their own lovelessness,
    and the loveless never find love,
    only the loving find love,
    and they never have to seek for it.
  • 'Cause all of me
    Loves all of you
    Love your curves and all your edges
    All your perfect imperfections
    Give your all to me
    I'll give my all to you
    You're my end and my beginning

  • We all been playing those mind games forever
    Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil.
    Doing the mind guerrilla,
    Some call it magic — the search for the grail.

    Love is the answer and you know that for sure.
    Love is a flower, you got to let it — you got to let it grow.

  • Say you'll love, love me forever
    Never stop, not for whatever
    Near and far and always and
    Everywhere and everything.
    I love you, always forever
    Near and far, close and together
    Everywhere, I will be with you
    Everything, I will do for you
    I love you, always forever
    Near and far, close and together
    Everywhere, I will be with you
    Everything, I will do for you.
  • Without love I mean nothing to you
    Without love broken in two
    Without love give me some value some worth
    Without love no life left on earth.
  • The power of love is a curious thing
    Make a one man weep, make another man sing
    Change a hawk to a little white dove
    More than a feeling that's the power of love
    Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
    Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream
    Make a bad one good make a wrong one right
    Power of love that keeps you home at night
    • Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)
  • You don't need money, don't take fame
    Don't need no credit card to ride this train
    It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes
    But it might just save your life
    That's the power of love
    • Huey Lewis and the News, The Power of Love (1985)
  • Ah, how skillful grows the hand
    That obeyeth Love's command!
    It is the heart, and not the brain,
    That to the highest doth attain,
    And he who followeth Love's behest
    Far excelleth all the rest!
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Building of the Ship" in Voices of the Night: The Seaside and the Fireside; and Other Poems (1846), p. 34
  • That was the first sound in the song of love!
    Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound.
    Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings
    Of that mysterious instrument, the soul,
    And play the prelude of our fate. We hear
    The voice prophetic, and are not alone.
  • Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
    It serves for food and raiment.
  • How can I tell the signals and the signs
    By which one heart another heart divines?
    How can I tell the many thousand ways
    By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
  • What is love?
    Baby, don't hurt me.
    Don't hurt me, no more.
  • Underneath a starry sky
    Time was still but hours must really have rushed by
    I didn't realize
    But love was in your eyes
    I really should have gone
    But love went on and on

M

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  • Now there's no point in placing the blame
    And you should know I'd suffer the same
    If I lose you my heart will be broken

    Love is a bird... she needs to fly
    Let all the hurt inside of you die
    You're frozen when your heart's not open

    If I could melt your heart
    We'd never be apart
    Give yourself to me
    You hold the key
  • 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, "Outwitted", from The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913)
  • Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
    Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
    Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
    And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
    Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
    Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
    Yet many a man is making friends with death
    Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
  • Love means to look at yourself
    The way one looks at distant things
    For you are only one thing among many.
    And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
    Without knowing it, from various ills —
    A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
  • Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
    Of human offspring.
  • Freely we serve,
    Because we freely love, as in our will
    To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
  • So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
    I could endure, without him live no life.
  • It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
    Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
    That woman's love can win, or long inherit;
    But what it is, hard is to say,
    Harder to hit.

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  • Love works magic.
    It is the final purpose
    Of the world story,
    The Amen of the universe.
    • Novalis, Blüthenstaub-Fragmente (1798)

  • We have come by curious ways
    To the Light that holds the days;
    We have sought in haunts of fear
    For that all-enfolding sphere:
    And lo! it was not far, but near.

    We have found, O foolish-fond,
    The shore that has no shore beyond.

    Deep in every heart it lies
    With its untranscended skies;
    For what heaven should bend above
    Hearts that own the heaven of love?

    • Alfred Noyes, The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan, Epilogue
  • Your dreamers may dream it
    The shadow of a dream,
    Your sages may deem it
    A bubble on the stream;
    Yet our kingdom draweth nigher
    With each dawn and every day,
    Through the earthquake and the fire
    "Love will find out the way."
    • Alfred Noyes, Drake, an English Epic (1908), Song, Book VIII, p. 146
  • Heart of my heart, the world is young;
    Love lies hidden in every rose!
    Every song that the skylark sung
    Once, we thought, must come to a close:
    Now we know the spirit of song,
    Song that is merged in the chant of the whole,
    Hand in hand as we wander along,
    What should we doubt of the years that roll?
  • Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
    One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,
    One in many, O broken and blind,
    One as the waves are at one with the sea!
    Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
    Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
    One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
    One, still one, while the world grows old.

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  • Over the mountains,
    And over the waves,
    Over the fountains,
    And under the graves;
    Over the floods that are deepest,
    Which do Neptune obey;
    Over the rocks that are steepest,
    Love will find out the way.
  • O amor é que é essencial.
    O sexo é só um acidente.
    • It's love that is inescapable.
      Sex is the merest accident.
    • Fernando Pessoa, Poem (5 April 1935), reported in Poesias inéditas (1930-1935), p. 192
    • Variant translation:
      Love is essential. Sex, a mere accident.
  • Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good.
    • Petrarch, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 392
  • Years of love have been forgot
    In the hatred of a minute.
    • Edgar Allan Poe, To M——— (1829), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
    From its present pathway part not!
    Being everything which now thou art,
    Be nothing which thou art not.
    So with the world thy gentle ways,
    Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
    Shall be an endless theme of praise,
    And love — a simple duty.
  • How vast a memory has Love!
  • Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
    And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
    • Alexander Pope, "The Wife of Bath her Prologue, from Chaucer" (c.1704, published 1713), line 369
  • Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
  • Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
  • Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
    And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
  • Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
    'Tis true the hardest science to forget.
  • One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight;
    Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.

R

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  • The holiness of the real
    Is always there, accessible
    In total immanence. The nodes
    Of transcendence coagulate
    In you, the experiencer,
    And in the other, the lover.
  • Now I know surely and forever,
    However much I have blotted our
    Waking love, its memory is still
    there. And I know the web, the net,
    The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
    One brief instant it was not blind, nor
    Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
    Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
    I who am lost and damned with words,
    Whose words are a business and an art,
    I have no words. These words, this poem, this
    Is all confusion and ignorance.
    But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
    My heart beat one free beat and sent
    Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
  • I can't compete with a memory
    How can I fight with someone that I can't see?
    There's two of us but it feels like three
    I wish her ghost would just let us be
    Boy you're everything I ever wanted
    But I got to let you go 'cause this love is
    Haunted.
    • Rihanna Haunted, Good Girl Gone Bad
  • Love is the ark appointed for the righteous,
    Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
    Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
    Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.
    • Rumi, The Masnavi, Book IV, Story II, as translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) by Edward Henry Whinfield
    • Variant: Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
      Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
  • Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
    • Rumi as quoted in Path for Greatness : Spiritualty at Work (2000) by Linda J. Ferguson, p. 51
  • What is the body? That shadow of a shadow
    of your love, that somehow contains
    the entire universe.
    • Rumi, "Where are we?" in Ch. 2 : Bewilderment
  • Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded.
    Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
    Let the lover be.
    • Rumi, The Essential Rumi (1995), Ch. 4 : Spring Giddiness, p. 46
  • Gamble everything for love,
    if you are a true human being.
    • Rumi, The Essential Rumi (1995), "On Gambling" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 193
  • Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune:
    every success depends upon focusing the heart.
    • Rumi, Jewels of Remembrance : A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance : Containing 365 Selections from the Wisdom of Rumi (1996) Translated by Camille and Kabir Helminski, III, 2302-5
  • Love rests on no foundation.
    It is an endless ocean,
    with no beginning or end.
    • Rumi, Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva
  • This is a gathering of Lovers.
    In this gathering
    there is no high, no low,
    no smart, no ignorant,
    no special assembly,
    no grand discourse,
    no proper schooling required.
    There is no master,
    no disciple.
    This gathering is more like a drunken party,
    full of tricksters, fools,
    mad men and mad women.
    This is a gathering of Lovers.
    • Rumi, Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva
  • Love said to me,
    there is nothing that is not me.
    Be silent.
    • Rumi, Hush Don't Say Anything to God : Passionate Poems of Rumi (1999) as translated by Shahram Shiva

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See also: William Shakespeare quotes about love
  • O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
    The golden time of first love!
    The eye sees the open heaven,
    The heart is intoxicated with bliss;
    O that the beautiful time of young love
    Could remain green forever.
  • Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
    Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Tabulae Votivae (Votive Tablets) (1796), "The Key"; tr. Edgar Alfred Bowring, The Poems of Schiller, Complete (1851)
    • Variant translation:
      If you want to know yourself,
      Just look how others do it;
      If you want to understand others,
      Look into your own heart
  • On a day — alack the day! —
    Love, whose month is ever May,
    Spied a blossom passing fair
    Playing in the wanton air
  • My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
    My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
    The more I have.
    • Shakespeare, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 1
  • Expressing not to you; but
    with you, I've bound my love
    unseen from anywhere.
  • May I never tire of expressing myself
    may I find contentment in listening to you
    may there be no constraints of time
    and may we be bound together as a single knot
    you, time, and I.
  • May I grasp you and drift into a deep slumber
    may there be no haste to wake up
    may there be no fear of missing a moment.
  • May I get melted on your embrace, and meld into your wholeness.
  • Yet all love is sweet
    Given or returned. Common as light is love,
    And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
    * * * * *
    They who inspire it most are fortunate,
    As I am now: but those who feel it most
    Are happier still after long sufferings
    As I shall soon become.
  • This is the day, which down the void abysm
    At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism
    And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
    Love, from its awful throne of patient power
    In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
    Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
    And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
    And folds over the world its healing wings.
  • True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
    That to divide is not to take away.
    Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
    Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
    Imagination! which from earth and sky,
    And from the depths of human phantasy,
    As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
    The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
    Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
    Of its reverberated lightning.
  • And bid them love each other and be blest:
    And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
    And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.
  • First thing I remember when you came into my life
    I said I wanna get that girl, no matter what I do
    Well I guess I've been in love before and once or twice have been on the floor
    But I've never loved no-one the way that I love you.
  • And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart,
    Everybody sees you're blown apart,
    Everybody feels the wind blow.'
  • Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates.
    The earth is blue.
    And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it.
  • Maybe the heart is part of the mist.
    And that's all that there is or could ever exist.
    Maybe and maybe and maybe some more.
    Maybe's the exit that I'm looking for.
  • Take me. I'm an ordinary player in the key of C.
    And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity.
    Who's gonna love you when you're looks are gone?
    God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.
  • When I saw you, I was afraid of meeting you.
    When I met you, I was afraid of kissing you.
    When I kissed you, I was afraid to love you.
    Now that I love you, I'm afraid of losing you.
    • Silard Somorjay, in "The Voice Of Love" on The Streets of Beijing movie soundtrack, Video Art Beijing
  • If love were what the rose is,
    And I were like the leaf,
    Our lives would grow together
    In sad or singing weather,
    Blown fields or flowerful closes,
    Green pasture or gray grief;
    If love were what the rose is,
    And I were like the leaf.
  • Before the beginning of years
    There came to the making of man
    Time with a gift of tears,
    Grief with a glass that ran,
    Pleasure with pain for leaven,
    Summer with flowers that fell,
    Remembrance fallen from heaven,
    And Madness risen from hell,
    Strength without hands to smite,
    Love that endures for a breath;
    Night, the shadow of light,
    And Life, the shadow of death.
  • Time found our tired love sleeping,
    And kissed away his breath;
    But what should we do weeping,
    Though light love sleep to death?
    We have drained his lips at leisure,
    Till there's not left to drain
    A single sob of pleasure,
    A single pulse of pain.

  • Before our lives divide for ever,
    While time is with us and hands are free,
    (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
    Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
    I will say no word that a man might say
    Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
    For this could never have been; and never,
    Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

    Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
    To think of things that are well outworn?
    Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
    The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
    Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
    Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
    Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
    But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

  • In the change of years, in the coil of things,
    In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
    We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
    Covered with love as a covering tree,
    We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
    Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
    Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
    O love, my love, had you loved but me!
  • The loves and hours of the life of a man,
    They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
    Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
    Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
    Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
    Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
    I lose what I long for, save what I can,
    My love, my love, and no love for me!

  • I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
    You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
    But none shall triumph a whole life through:
    For death is one, and the fates are three.
    At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
    There are worse things waiting for men than death;
    Death could not sever my soul and you,
    As these have severed your soul from me.

    You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
    Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
    But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
    Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
    Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
    Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
    And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
    The gate is strait; I shall not be there.

  • The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
    The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
    The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
    The music burning at heart like wine,
    An armed archangel whose hands raise up
    All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
    Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
    These things are over, and no more mine.

    These were a part of the playing I heard
    Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
    Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
    Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
    Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
    Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
    Now time has done with his one sweet word,
    The wine and leaven of lovely life.

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  • There has fallen a splendid tear
    From the passion-flower at the gate.
    She is coming, my dove, my dear;
    She is coming, my life, my fate;
    The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
    And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
    The larkspur listens, "I hear; I hear;"
    And the lily whispers, "I wait."
  • She is coming, my own, my sweet;
    Were it ever so airy a tread,
    My heart would hear her and beat,
    Were it earth in an earthly bed;
    My dust would hear her and beat,
    Had I lain for a century dead;
    Would start and tremble under her feet,
    And blossom in purple and red.
  • Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
    Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
  • You, methinks you think you love me well;
    For me, I love you somewhat; rest: and Love
    Should have some rest and pleasure in himself,
    Not ever be too curious for a boon,
    Too prurient for a proof against the grain
    Of him ye say ye love: but Fame with men,
    Being but ampler means to serve mankind,
    Should have small rest or pleasure in herself,
    But work as vassal to the larger love,
    That dwarfs the petty love of one to one.

  • Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
    And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
    I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

    Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
    Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
    O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
    …
    I fain would follow love, if that could be;
    I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
    Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

  • "Free love, so bound, were freëst," said the King.
    "Let love be free; free love is for the best:
    And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
    What should be best, if not so pure a love
    Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
    She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
    Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know."
  • Lady, for indeed
    I loved you and I deemed you beautiful,
    I cannot brook to see your beauty marred
    Through evil spite: and if ye love me not,
    I cannot bear to dream you so forsworn:
    I had liefer ye were worthy of my love,
    Than to be loved again of you — farewell;
    And though ye kill my hope, not yet my love,
    Vex not yourself: ye will not see me more.
  • We love but while we may;
    And therefore is my love so large for thee,
    Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
  • Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
  • Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.
  • Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope,
    And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath
    In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales.
    They said that Love would die when Hope was gone.
    And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope;
    At last she sought out Memory, and they trod
    The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope,
    And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.
  • Love will conquer at the last.

  • Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;
    And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
    I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

    Love, art thou sweet? then bitter death must be:
    Love, thou art bitter; sweet is death to me.
    O Love, if death be sweeter, let me die.
    …
    I fain would follow love, if that could be;
    I needs must follow death, who calls for me;
    Call and I follow, I follow! let me die.

  • "Free love, so bound, were freëst," said the King.
    "Let love be free; free love is for the best:
    And, after heaven, on our dull side of death,
    What should be best, if not so pure a love
    Clothed in so pure a loveliness? yet thee
    She failed to bind, though being, as I think,
    Unbound as yet, and gentle, as I know."
  • We love but while we may;
    And therefore is my love so large for thee,
    Seeing it is not bounded save by love.

  • Here her hand
    Grasped, made her vail her eyes: she looked and saw
    The novice, weeping, suppliant, and said to her,
    "Yea, little maid, for am I not forgiven?"
    Then glancing up beheld the holy nuns
    All round her, weeping; and her heart was loosed
    Within her, and she wept with these and said,

    "Ye know me then, that wicked one, who broke
    The vast design and purpose of the King.
    O shut me round with narrowing nunnery-walls,
    Meek maidens, from the voices crying 'shame.'

    I must not scorn myself: he loves me still.
    Let no one dream but that he loves me still."

  • Love is and was my Lord and King,
    And in his presence I attend
    To hear the tidings of my friend,
    Which every hour his couriers bring.
  • I feel it in my fingers
    I feel it in my toes
    Love is all around me
    And so the feeling grows

    It is written on the wind
    Thats everywhere I go
    So if you really love me
    Come on and let it show
  • When people keep repeating
    That you'll never fall in love
    When everybody keeps retreating
    But you can't seem to get enough
    Let my love open the door
    Let my love open the door
    Let my love open the door
    To your heart.
  • For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams,
    And their best promise constantly redeems.
  • I don't wanna lose you
    I don't even wanna say goodbye
    I just wanna hold on
    To this true love, true love
    I don't wanna lose you
    And I always wanna feel this way
    Cause everytime I'm with you I feel true love, true love
  • Oh what's love got to do, got to do with it
    What's love but a second hand emotion
    What's love got to do, got to do with it
    Who needs a heart
    When a heart can be broken
  • I just sware
    That I'll always be there
    I'd give anything and everything
    And I will always care
    Through weekness and strength
    Happiness and sorrow
    For better or for worse
    I will love you
    With every beat of my heart.
  • When I first saw you, I saw love
    And the first time you touched me, I felt love
    And after all this time,
    You're still the one I love.
    [...]
    (You're still the one)
    You're still the one I run to
    The one that I belong to
    You're still the one I want for life
    (You're still the one)
    You're still the one that I love
    The only one I dream of
    You're still the one I kiss good night.
  • In your eyes
    (I can still see the look of the one)
    I can still see the look
    Of the one who really loves me
    (II can still feel the way that you want)

    The one who wouldn't put anything
    Else in the world above me
    (I can still see your love for me)
    I can still see your love for me in your eyes
    (I still see the love)

U

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  • You say love is a temple, love a higher law
    Love is a temple, love the higher law
    You ask me to enter but then you make me crawl
    And I can't be holdin' on to what you got
    When all you got is hurt

V

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  • There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light,
    And every kind of love makes a glory in the night.
    There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest,
    But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.
  • Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori.
    • Love conquers all and we must yield to Love.
    • Virgil, Eclogues (37 BC), Book X, line 69.
    • Variant translation: "Love conquers all; let us, too, yield to love."
  • Quis fallere possit amantem?
    • Who can deceive a lover?
    • Virgil, Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 296. Variant: "Who could deceive a lover?"
  • Improbe Amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
    • All-powerful Love! what changes canst thou cause
      In human hearts, subjected to thy laws!
    • Virgil, Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, line 412 (as translated by John Dryden); referring to the unwise actions undertaken by Dido, actuated by amorous passion.
    • Variant translation: Oh wretched love! to what do you not impel the human breast?
  • Amor omnibus idem.
    • Love is lord of all, and is in all the same.
  • Qui que tu sois, voici ton maître;
    Il l'est—le fut—ou le doit être.
    Whoe'er thou art, thy master see;
    He was—or is—or is to be.
    • Voltaire, Works, II, p. 765 (Ed. 1837). Used as an inscription for a statue of Cupid

W

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  • Love,—the shining goal
    Of every human soul.
  • Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
    We should agree as angels do above.
  • Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
    That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
    For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
    Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
    So all we know of what they do above,
    Is that they happy are, and that they love.
    Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
    Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
    Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
    But with our nobler part invades the sky.
    • Edmund Waller, Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)
  • Love is to die, love is to not die,
    Love is to dance, love is to dance.
    Love is to die,
    Why don't you not die?
    Why don't you dance?
    Why don't you dance and dance?
  • The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.
    Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.
    This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.
    • Simone Weil, Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
  • Life is ever lord of Death
    And Love can never lose its own.
  • Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
    Those who love each other shall become invincible...
  • * Blow again trumpeter! and for thy theme,
    Take now the enclosing theme of all, the solvent and the setting,
    Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and the pang,
    The heart of man and woman all for love,
    No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.
  • Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, that mocks time and space,
    Love, that is day and night — love, that is sun and moon and stars,
    Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume,
    No other words but words of love, no other thought but love.
  • Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over...
  • There is no language that love does not speak.
  • I find a rapture linked with each despair,
    Well worth the price of anguish. I detect
    More good than evil in humanity.
    Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes,
    And men grow better as the world grows old.
  • Between the finite and the infinite
    The missing link of Love has left a void.
    Supply the link, and earth with Heaven will join
    In one continued chain of endless life.
  • Give of thy love, nor wait to know the worth
    Of what thou lovest; and ask no returning.
    And wheresoe'er thy pathway leads on earth,
    There thou shalt find the lamp of love-light burning.
  • All love that has not friendship for its base,
    Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
  • Some kill their love when they are young,
    And some when they are old;
    Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
    Some with the hands of Gold.
  • Just let your love flow like a mountain stream
    And let your love grow with the smallest of dreams
    And let your love show and you'll know what I mean
    It's the season
    Let your love fly like a bird on a wing
    And let your love bind you to all livin' things
    And let your love shine and you'll know what I mean
    That's the reason.
  • True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
    Whose veil is unremoved
    Till heart with heart in concord beats,
    And the lover is beloved.
  • If Thou be one whose heart the holy forms
    Of young imagination have kept pure
    Stranger! henceforth be warned; and know that pride,
    Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
    Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
    For any living thing, hath faculties
    Which he has never used; that thought with him
    Is in its infancy. The man whose eye
    Is ever on himself doth look on one,
    The least of Nature's works, one who might move
    The wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds
    Unlawful, ever. O be wiser, thou !
    Instructed that true knowledge leads to love;
    True dignity abides with him alone
    Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
    Can still suspect, and still revere himself,
    In lowliness of heart.

Y

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  • A pity beyond all telling
    Is hid in the heart of love.
  • Love is in the air
    Everywhere I look around
    Love is in the air
    Every sight and every sound
    And I don't know if I'm being foolish
    Don't know if I'm being wise
    But it's something that I must believe in
    And it's there when I look in your eyes.
  • Love is in the air
    In the whisper of the trees
    Love is in the air
    In the thunder of the sea
    And I don't know if I'm just dreaming
    Don't know if I feel sane
    But it's something that I must believe in
    And it's there when you call out my name.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 464-84.
  • Che amar chi t'odia, ell'è impossibil cosa.
    For 'tis impossible
    Hate to return with love.
  • Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
    For one lone soul another lonely soul,
    Each choosing each through all the weary hours,
    And meeting strangely at one sudden goal,
    Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers,
    Into one beautiful and perfect whole;
    And life's long night is ended, and the way
    Lies open onward to eternal day.
  • Ma vie a son secret, mon âme a son mystére:
    Un amour éternel en un moment concu.
    La mal est sans remède, aussi j'ai dû le taire,
    Et elle qui l'a fait n'en a jamais rien su.
    One sweet, sad secret holds my heart in thrall;
    A mighty love within my breast has grown,
    Unseen, unspoken, and of no one known;
    And of my sweet, who gave it, least of all.
    • Félix Arvers, Sonnet. Translation by Joseph Knight. In The Athenæum, Jan. 13, 1906. Arvers in Mes Heures Perdues, says that the sonnet was "mite de l'italien"
  • How many times do I love, again?
    Tell me how many beads there are
    In a silver chain
    Of evening rain
    Unravelled from the trembling main
    And threading the eye of a yellow star:—
    So many times do I love again.
  • Mein Herz ich will dich fragen,
    Was ist denn Liebe, sag?
    "Zwei Seelen und ein Gedanke,
    Zwei Herzen und ein Schlag."
    • My heart I fain would ask thee
      What then is Love? say on.
      "Two souls and one thought only
      Two hearts that throb as one."
    • Von Münch Bellinghausen (Friedrich Halm)—Der Sohn der Wildniss, Act II. Translation by W. H. Charlton. (Commended by author). Popular translation. of the play is by Marie Lovell—Ingomar the Barbarian. Two souls with but a single thought, / Two hearts that beat as one
  • To Chloe's breast young Cupid slily stole,
    But he crept in at Myra's pocket-hole.
  • Love in a shower safe shelter took,
    In a rosy bower beside a brook,
    And winked and nodded with conscious pride
    To his votaries drenched on the other side.
    Come hither, sweet maids, there's a bridge below,
    The toll-keeper, Hymen, will let you through.
    Come over the stream to me.
  • Much ado there was, God wot;
    He woold love, and she woold not,
    She sayd, "Never man was trewe;"
    He sayes, "None was false to you."
  • In your arms was still delight,
    Quiet as a street at night;
    And thoughts of you, I do remember,
    Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
    Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
  • For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
    I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
  • Who can fear
    Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll—
    Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
    Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
    The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
    To love me also in silence, with thy soul.
  • Unless you can feel when the song is done
    No other is sweet in its rhythm;
    Unless you can feel when left by one
    That all men else go with him.
  • I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds
    All the world's loves in its unworldliness.
  • Never the time and the place
    And the loved one all together.
  • God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
    Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
    One to show a woman when he loves her.
  • Love has no thought of self!
    Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold
    The loathsome prostitution of a hand
    Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things
    To bless the thing it loves!
  • Love thou, and if thy love be deep as mine,
    Thou wilt not laugh at poets.
  • No matter what you do, if your heart is ever true,
    And his heart was true to Poll.
  • To see her is to love her,
    And love but her forever;
    For nature made her what she is,
    And never made anither!
  • The wisest man the warl' e'er saw,
    He dearly loved the lasses, O.
  • The golden hours on angel wings
    Flew o'er me and my dearie,
    For dear to me as light and life
    Was my sweet Highland Mary.
  • Oh my luve's like a red, red rose,
    That's newly sprung in June;
    Oh my luve's like the melodie
    That's sweetly played in tune.
  • What is life, when wanting love?
    Night without a morning;
    Love's the cloudless summer sun,
    Nature gay adorning.
  • When things were as fine as could possibly be
    I thought 'twas the spring; but alas it was she.
  • I'll bid the hyacinth to blow,
    I'll teach my grotto green to be;
    And sing my true love, all below
    The holly bower and myrtle tree.
  • He that loves a rosy cheek,
    Or a coral lip admires,
    Or from star-like eyes doth seek
    Fuel to maintain his fires,
    As Old Time makes these decay,
    So his flames must waste away.
  • Then fly betimes, for only they
    Conquer love, that run away.
  • Of all the girls that are so smart
    There's none like pretty Sally;
    She is the darling of my heart,
    And lives in our alley.
  • Let Time and Chance combine, combine!
    Let Time and Chance combine!
    The fairest love from heaven above,
    That love of yours was mine,
    My Dear!
    That love of yours was mine.
  • Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
    In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
    What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water.
  • Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.
    It is difficult at once to relinquish a long-cherished love.
  • Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
    Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.
    I hate and I love. Why do I do so you perhaps ask.
    I cannot say; but I feel it to be so, and I am tormented accordingly.
  • Vivamus, mea Lesbia atque amemus.
    My Lesbia, let us live and love.
  • It's love, it's love that makes the world go round.
    • Popular French song in Chansons Nationales et Populaires de France, Volume II, p. 180 (c. 1821)
  • I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun,
    Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
  • Alas! they had been friends in youth;
    But whispering tongues can poison truth,
    And constancy lives in realms above;
    And life is thorny, and youth is vain;
    And to be wroth with one we love
    Doth work like madness in the brain.
  • All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
    Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
    All are but ministers of Love,
    And feed his sacred flame.
  • I have heard of reasons manifold
    Why love must needs be blind,
    But this is the best of all I hold—
    His eyes are in his mind.
  • I know not when the day shall be,
    I know not when our eyes may meet;
    What welcome you may give to me,
    Or will your words be sad or sweet,
    It may not be 'till years have passed,
    'Till eyes are dim and tresses gray;
    The world is wide, but, love, at last,
    Our hands, our hearts, must meet some day.
  • A mighty pain to love it is,
    And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;
    But, of all pains, the greatest pain
    Is to love, but love in vain.
    • Abraham Cowley, Translation of Anacreontic Odes, VII. Gold. (Anacreon's authorship doubted)
  • And I, what is my crime I cannot tell,
    Vnless it be a crime to haue lou'd too well.
  • He who, being bold
    For life to come, is false to the past sweet
    Of mortal life, hath killed the world above.
    For why to live again if not to meet?
    And why to meet if not to meet in love?
    And why in love if not in that dear love of old?
  • Give, you gods,
    Give to your boy, your Cæsar,
    The rattle of a globe to play withal,
    This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off;
    I'll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.
  • How happy the lover,
    How easy his chain,
    How pleasing his pain,
    How sweet to discover
    He sighs not in vain.
  • Fool, not to know that love endures no tie,
    And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.
    • John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book II, line 75. Amphitron, Act I, scene 2
  • Pains of love be sweeter far
    Than all other pleasures are.
  • I'm sitting on the stile. Mary,
    Where we sat side by side.
  • Oh, tell me whence Love cometh!
    Love comes uncall'd, unsent.
    Oh, tell me where Love goeth!
    That was not Love that went.
    • Burden of a Woman. Found in J. W. Ebsworth's Roxburghe Ballads
  • The solid, solid universe
    Is pervious to Love;
    With bandaged eyes he never errs,
    Around, below, above.
    His blinding light
    He flingeth white
    On God's and Satan's brood,
    And reconciles
    By mystic wiles
    The evil and the good.
  • A ruddy drop of manly blood
    The surging sea outweighs;
    The world uncertain comes and goes,
    The lover rooted stays.
  • Her very frowns are fairer far
    Than smiles of other maidens are.
  • Poor love is lost in men's capacious minds,
    In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.
  • Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
    Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
    It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
    • John Ford, The Lover's Melancholy (licensed 24 November 1628; printed 1629), Act III, scene 3, line 105
  • Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
    'Tis friendship, and 'tis something more.
    Each other every wish they give;
    Not to know love is not to live.
    • John Gay, Plutus, Cupid and Time, line 135
  • I love her doubling and anguish;
    I love the love she withholds,
    I love my love that loveth her,
    And anew her being moulds.
  • Love, Love, my Love.
    The best things are the truest!
    When the earth lies shadowy dark below
    Oh, then the heavens are bluest!
  • Not from the whole wide world I chose thee,
    Sweetheart, light of the land and the sea!
    The wide, wide world could not inclose thee,
    For thou art the whole wide world to me.
  • I seek for one as fair and gay,
    But find none to remind me,
    How blest the hours pass'd away
    With the girl I left behind me.
    • The Girl I Left Behind Me (1759)
  • In einem Augenblick gewährt die Liebe
    Was Mühe kaum in langer Zeit erreicht.
    Love grants in a moment
    What toil can hardly achieve in an age.
  • Man liebt an dem Mädchen was es ist,
    Und an dem Jüngling was er ankündigt.
    Girls we love for what they are;
    Young men for what they promise to be.
  • Thus let me hold thee to my heart,
    And every care resign:
    And we shall never, never part,
    My life—my all that's mine!
  • Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see,
    Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shalt be.
  • Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
    Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
  • O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
    The bloom of young Desire and purple light of love.
  • Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
    Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love.
    • Robert Greene, Alcida. Verses Written under a Carving of Cupid Blowing Bladders in the Air
  • Greensleeves was all my joy,
    Greensleeves was my delight,
    Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
    And who but Lady Greensleeves?
    • A new Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Greensleeves, to the new tune of "Greensleeves", from "A Handful of Pleasant Deities" (1584)
  • The chemist of love
    Will this perishing mould,
    Were it made out of mire,
    Transmute into gold.
  • Du bist wie eine Blume, so hold, so schön und rein;
    Ich shau' dich an und Wehmut schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.
    Oh fair, oh sweet and holy as dew at morning tide,
    I gaze on thee, and yearnings, sad in my bosom hide.
  • Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
    Doch bleibt sie immer neu.
    It is an ancient story
    Yet is it ever new.
  • And once again we plighted our troth,
    And titter'd, caress'd, kiss'd so dearly.
  • Alas! for love, if thou art all,
    And nought beyond, O earth.
  • You say to me-wards your affection's strong;
    Pray love me little, so you love me long.
  • 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.
    • Ascribed to Robert Herrick in the Scottish Student's Song-Book. Found on back of leaf 53 of Popish Kingdome or reigne of Antichrist, in Latin verse by Thomas Naogeorgus, and Englished by Barnabe Googe. Printed 1570. See Notes and Queries. S. IX. X. 427. Lines from Elizabethan Song-books. Bullen, p. 31. Reprinted from Thomas Ford's Music of Sundry Kinds. (1607)
  • Bid me to live, and I will live
    Thy Protestant to be:
    Or bid me love, and I will give
    A loving heart to thee,
    A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
    A heart as sound and free
    As in the whole world thou canst find,
    That heart I'll give to thee.
  • Let never man be bold enough to say,
    Thus, and no farther shall my passion stray:
    The first crime, past, compels us into more,
    And guilt grows fate, that was but choice, before.
  • O, love, love, love!
    Love is like a dizziness;
    It winna let a poor body
    Gang about his biziness!
    • Hogg, Love is like a Dizziness, line 9
  • Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
    Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
    But never a cable that holds so fast
    Through all the battles of wave and blast.
  • Who love too much, hate in the like extreme.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XV, line 79. Pope's translation
  • For love deceives the best of woman kind.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XV, line 463. Pope's translation
  • What's our baggage? Only vows,
    Happiness, and all our care,
    And the flower that sweetly shows
    Nestling lightly in your hair.
  • If you become a Nun, dear,
    The bishop Love will be;
    The Cupids every one, dear!
    Will chant—'We trust in thee!'
  • From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love
    To long for, pureness to desire, a mount
    Of consecration it were good to scale.
    • Jean Ingelow, A Parson's Letter to a Young Poet, Part II, line 55
  • But great loves, to the last, have pulses red;
    All great loves that have ever died dropped dead.
  • When love is at its best, one loves
    So much that he cannot forget.
  • Love's like the flies, and, drawing-room or garret, goes all over a house.
  • Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
    Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
  • When late I attempted your pity to move,
    Why seemed you so deaf to my prayers?
    Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love
    But—why did you kick me downstairs?
    • J. P. Kemble, Panel, Act I, scene 1. Quoted from Asylum for Fugitive Pieces, Volume I, p. 15. (1785) where it appeared anonymously. Kemble is credited with its authorship. The Panel is adapted from Bickerstaff's 'Tis Well 'Tis No Worse, but these lines are not therein. It may also be found in Annual Register. Appendix. (1783) P. 201
  • What's this dull town to me?
    Robin's not near—
    He whom I wished to see,
    Wished for to hear;
    Where's all the joy and mirth
    Made life a heaven on earth?
    O! they're all fled with thee,
    Robin Adair.
  • The hawk unto the open sky,
    The red deer to the wold;
    The Romany lass for the Romany lad,
    As in the days of old.
    • Given in the N. Y. Times Review of Books as a previously written poem by F. C. Weatherby. Not found
  • Sing, for faith and hope are high—
    None so true as you and I—
    Sing the Lovers' Litany:
    "Love like ours can never die!"
  • By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
    There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
    For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
    "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!"
  • If Love were jester at the court of Death,
    And Death the king of all, still would I pray,
    "For me the motley and the bauble, yea,
    Though all be vanity, as the Preacher saith,
    The mirth of love be mine for one brief breath!"


  • Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens
    On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.
    O tyrant love, when held by you,
    We may to prudence bid adieu.
  • Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
    Ever made by the Hand above—
    A woman's heart, and a woman's life,
    And a woman's wonderful love?
    • Mary T. Lathrop, A Woman's Answer to a Man's Question. Erroneously credited to Mrs. Browning
  • I love a lassie, a bonnie, bonnie lassie,
    She's as pure as the lily in the dell.
    She's as sweet as the heather,
    The bonnie, bloomin' heather,
    Mary, ma Scotch Blue-bell.
    • Harry Lauder and Gerald Grafton. I Love a Lassie
  • Et c'est dans la première flamme
    Qu'est tout le nectar du baiser.
    And in that first flame
    Is all the nectar of the kiss.
    • Lebrun, Mes Souvenirs, ou les Deux Rives de la Seine
  • Love leads to present rapture,—then to pain;
    But all through Love in time is healed again.
  • A warrior so bold, and a virgin so bright,
    Conversed as they sat on the green.
    They gazed on each other with tender delight,
    Alonzo the Brave was the name of the knight—
    The maiden's the Fair Imogene.
    • M. G. Lewis—Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene. First appeared in his novel Ambrosio the Monk. Found in his Tales of Wonder, Volume III, p. 63. Lewis's copy of his poem is in the British Museum
  • Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
    To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
    As in a foundering ship.
  • Does not all the blood within me
    Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
    As the springs to meet the sunshine.
  • I do not love thee less for what is done,
    And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
    Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
    My love will have a sense of pity in it,
    Making it less a worship than before.
  • So they grew, and they grew, to the church steeple tops
    And they couldn't grow up any higher;
    So they twin'd themselves into a true lover's knot,
    For all lovers true to admire.
    • Lord Lovel. Old Ballad. History found in Professor Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II. 204. Also in The New Comic Minstrel. Pub. by John Cameron, Glasgow. The original version seems to be as given there
  • Under floods that are deepest,
    Which Neptune obey,
    Over rocks that are steepest,
    Love will find out the way.
  • Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
    That from the nunnery
    Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
    To war and arms I fly.
    . . . . . .
    Yet this inconstancy is such
    As you too shall adore:—
    I could not love thee, dear, so much,
    Loved I not honour more.
    • Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, on going to the Wars. Given erroneously to Montrose by Scott
  • True love is but a humble, low born thing,
    And hath its food served up in earthenware;
    It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
    Through the every-dayness of this workday world.
  • Not as all other women are
    Is she that to my soul is dear;
    Her glorious fancies come from far,
    Beneath the silver evening star,
    And yet her heart is ever near.
  • Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang,
    Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.
    • He who loves not wine, woman, and song,
      Remains a fool his whole life long.
    • Attributed to Luther by Uhland in Die Geisterkelter. Found in Luther's Tischreden. Proverbs at end. Credited to J. H. Voss by Redlich, Die poetischen Beiträge zum Waudsbecker Bothen, Hamburg, 1871, p. 67
  • But thou, through good and evil, praise and blame,
    Wilt not thou love me for myself alone?
    Yes, thou wilt love me with exceeding love,
    And I will tenfold all that love repay;
    Still smiling, though the tender may reprove,
    Still faithful, though the trusted may betray.
  • This lass so neat, with smile so sweet,
    Has won my right good will,
    I'd crowns resign to call her mine,
    Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.
    • Ascribed to Leonard McNally, who married Miss I'Anson, one of the claimants for the "Lass," by Sir Joseph Barrington in Sketches of His Own Times, Volume II, p. 47. Also credited to William Upton. It appeared in Public Advertiser, Aug. 3, 1789. "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" erroneously said to have been a sweetheart of King George III
  • When Madelon comes out to serve us drinks,
    We always know she's coming by her song.
    And every man he tells his little tale,
    And Madelon, she listens all day long.
    Our Madelon is never too severe—
    A kiss or two is nothing much to her—
    She laughs us up to love and life and God—
    Madelon, Madelon, Madelon.
    • La Madelon, song of the French Soldiers in the Great War
  • Come live with me, and be my love,
    And we will all the pleasures prove,
    That valleys, groves, or hills, or fields,
    Or woods and steepy mountains, yield.
  • I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
    But why I cannot tell;
    But this I know full well,
    I do not love thee, Dr. Fell.
    • Paraphrase of Martial by Tom Brown, as given in his Works, ed. by Drake. (1760). Answer to Dean John Fell, of Oxford, IV. 100
  • Je ne vous aime pas, Hylas;
    Je n'en saurois dire la cause;
    Je sais seulement une chose.
    C'est que je ne vous aime pas.
    • Paraphrase of Martial by Robert Rabutin (De Bussy)—Epigram 32, Book I
  • I love thee not, Nell
    But why I can't tell.
    • Paraphrase of Martial in Thomas Forde's Virtus Rediviva
  • Love is a flame to burn out human wills,
    Love is a flame to set the will on fire,
    Love is a flame to cheat men into mire.
  • Great men,
    Till they have gained their ends, are giants in
    Their promises, but, those obtained, weak pigmies
    In their performance. And it is a maxim
    Allowed among them, so they may deceive,
    They may swear anything; for the queen of love,
    As they hold constantly, does never punish,
    But smile, at lovers' perjuries.
  • 'Tis well to be merry and wise,
    'Tis well to be honest and true;
    'Tis well to be off with the old love,
    Before you are on with the new.
    • As used by Charles Maturin, for the motto to "Bertram," produced at Drury Lane, 1816
  • It is good to be merry and wise,
    It is good to be honest and true,
    It is best to be off with the old love,
    Before you are on with the new.
    • Published in "Songs of England and Scotland." London, 1835, Volume II, p. 73
  • I loved you ere I knew you; know you now,
    And having known you, love you better still.
  • Love is all in fire, and yet is ever freezing;
    Love is much in winning, yet is more in leesing:
    Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;
    Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
    Love does doat in liking, and is mad in loathing;
    Love indeed is anything, yet indeed is nothing.
  • I never heard
    Of any true affection but 'twas nipped.
  • He who for love hath undergone
    The worst that can befall,
    Is happier thousandfold than one
    Who never loved at all.
  • Yes, loving is a painful thrill,
    And not to love more painful still;
    But oh, it is the worst of pain,
    To love and not be lov'd again.
  • No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
    But as truly loves on to the close,
    As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
    The same look which she turn'd when he rose.
    • Thomas Moore, Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms, Stanza 2
  • I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
    I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
  • A boat at midnight sent alone
    To drift upon the moonless sea,
    A lute, whose leading chord is gone,
    A wounded bird, that hath but one
    Imperfect wing to soar upon,
    Are like what I am, without thee.
  • But there's nothing half so sweet in life
    As love's young dream.
  • "Tell me, what's Love;" said Youth, one day,
    To drooping Age, who crost his way.—
    "It is a sunny hour of play;
    For which repentance dear doth pay;
    Repentance! Repentance!
    And this is Love, as wise men say."
  • I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
    I've bourne a weary lot;
    But in my wanderings far or near
    Ye never were forgot.
    The fount that first burst frae this heart
    Still travels on its way
    And channels deeper as it rins
    The luve o' life's young day.
  • Duty's a slave that keeps the keys,
    But Love, the master goes in and out
    Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
    Just as he please—just as he please.
  • Res est soliciti plena timoris amor.
    Love is a thing full of anxious fears.
    • Ovid, Heroides, I. 12
  • Quicquid Amor jussit non est contemnere tutum.
    Regnat, et in dominos jus habet ille deos.
    It is not safe to despise what Love commands. He reigns supreme, and rules the mighty gods.
    • Ovid, Heroides, IV. 11
  • Hei mihi! quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.
    Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 523
  • Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur,
    Majestas et amor.
    Majesty and love do not well agree, nor do they live together.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, II. 846
  • Credula res amor est.
    Love is a credulous thing.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII. 826. Heroides, VI. 21
  • Qui finem quæris amoris,
    (Cedit amor rebus) res age; tutus eris.
    If thou wishest to put an end to love, attend to business (love yields to employment); then thou wilt be safe.
    • Ovid, Remedia Amoris, CXLIII
  • Let those love now who never lov'd before,
    Let those who always loved now love the more.
    • Thomas Parnell—Translation of the Pervigilium Veneris. Ancient poem. Author unknown. Ascribed to Catullus. See also Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III, Section II. Memb. 5. 5
  • The moods of love are like the wind,
    And none knows whence or why they rise.
  • What thing is love?—for (well I wot) love is a thing.
    It is a prick, it is a sting.
    It is a pretty, pretty thing;
    It is a fire, it is a coal,
    Whose flame creeps in at every hole!
  • Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep,
    Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.
  • Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
    To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
    To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
    Is there no bright reversion in the sky
    For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
  • Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
    Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
  • Ye gods, annihilate but space and time,
    And make two lovers happy.
    • Alexander Pope, Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chapter XI
  • O Love! for Sylvia let me gain the prize,
    And make my tongue victorious as her eyes.
  • Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
    And can be bought with nothing but with self.
  • If all the world and love were young,
    And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
    These pretty pleasures might me move
    To live with thee, and be thy love.
  • As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
    And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
    So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy design
    I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
  • The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
    Are as a string of pearls to me;
    I count them over, every one apart,
    My rosary, my rosary.
  • Oh! she was good as she was fair.
    None—none on earth above her!
    As pure in thought as angels are,
    To know her was to love her.
  • Trust thou thy Love: if she be proud, is she not sweet?
    Trust thou thy love: if she be mute, is she not pure?
    Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet—
    Fail, Sun and Breath!—yet, for thy peace, she shall endure.
  • Ah, to that far distant strand
    Bridge there was not to convey,
    Not a bark was near at hand,
    Yet true love soon found the way.
  • O dass sie ewig grünen bliebe,
    Die schöne Zeit der jungen Liebe.
    O that it might remain eternally green,
    The beautiful time of youthful love.
  • Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
    Ich habe gelebt und geliebt.
    I have enjoyed earthly happiness,
    I have lived and loved.
  • Mortals, while through the world you go,
    Hope may succor and faith befriend,
    Yet happy your hearts if you can but know,
    Love awaits at the journey's end!
  • In peace, Love tunes the shepherd's reed;
    In war, he mounts the warrior's steed;
    In halls, in gay attire is seen;
    In hamlets, dances on the green.
    Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
    And men below, and saints above;
    For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 2
  • Her blue eyes sought the west afar,
    For lovers love the western star.
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto III, Stanza 24
  • Where shall the lover rest,
    Whom the fates sever
    From his true maiden's breast,
    Parted for ever?
    Where, through groves deep and high,
    Sounds the far billow,
    Where early violets die,
    Under the willow.
  • Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
    Within his bending sickle's compass come;
    Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
    But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
    If this be error and upon me prov'd,
    I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
  • My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
    By just exchange, one for the other given;
    I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
    There never was a better bargain driven.
  • Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
    I bow before thine altar, Love!
  • And when my own Mark Antony
    Against young Cæsar strove,
    And Rome's whole world was set in arms,
    The cause was,—all for love.
  • They sin who tell us Love can die:
    With life all other passions fly,
    All others are but vanity,
    In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
    Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.
  • To be wise and eke to love,
    Is granted scarce to gods above.
  • Sweetheart, when you walk my way,
    Be it dark or be it day;
    Dreary winter, fairy May,
    I shall know and greet you.
    For each day of grief or grace
    Brings you nearer my embrace;
    Love hath fashioned your dear face,
    I shall know you when I meet you.
  • I who all the Winter through,
    Cherished other loves than you
    And kept hands with hoary policy in marriage-bed and pew;
    Now I know the false and true,
    For the earnest sun looks through,
    And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
  • And my heart springs up anew,
    Bright and confident and true,
    And the old love comes to meet me, in the dawning and the dew.
  • Just like Love is yonder rose,
    Heavenly fragrance round it throws,
    Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose,
    And in the midst of briars it blows
    Just like Love.
  • Why so pale and wan, fond lover,
    Prithee, why so pale?
    Will, when looking well can't move her,
    Looking ill prevail?
    Prithee, why so pale?
  • In all I wish, how happy should I be,
    Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
    So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
    And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
  • Love, as is told by the seers of old,
    Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
    Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
    Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
  • If love were what the rose is,
    And I were like the leaf,
    Our lives would grow together
    In sad or singing weather.
  • O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
    That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
    My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
    Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
    Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
  • Love laid his sleepless head
    On a thorny rose bed:
    And his eyes with tears were red,
    And pale his lips as the dead.
  • I that have love and no more
    Give you but love of you, sweet;
    He that hath more, let him give;
    He that hath wings, let him soar;
    Mine is the heart at your feet
    Here, that must love you to live.
  • When gloaming treads the heels of day
    And birds sit cowering on the spray,
    Along the flowery hedge I stray,
    To meet mine ain dear somebody.
  • I love thee, I love but thee,
    With a love that shall not die
    Till the sun grows cold,
    And the stars are old,
    And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
  • And on her lover's arm she leant,
    And round her waist she felt it fold,
    And far across the hills they went
    In that new world which is the old.
  • I loved you, and my love had no return,
    And therefore my true love has been my death.
  • Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
    I am shamed through all my nature to have lov'd so slight a thing.
  • Love is hurt with jar and fret;
    Love is made a vague regret.
  • Werther had a love for Charlotte,
    Such as words could never utter;
    Would you know how first he met her?
    She was cutting bread and butter.
  • Like to a wind-blown sapling grow I from
    The cliff, Sweet, of your skyward-jetting soul,—
    Shook by all gusts that sweep it, overcome
    By all its clouds incumbent; O be true
    To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
    For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole
    Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot
    Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through,
    Dry down and perish to the foodless root.
  • Why should we kill the best of passions, love?
    It aids the hero, bids ambition rise
    To nobler heights, inspires immortal deeds,
    Even softens brutes, and adds a grace to virtue.
  • O, what are you waiting for here? young man!
    What are you looking for over the bridge?—
    A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons
    Is soon to come dancing over the bridge.
  • Nec jurare time; Veneris perjuria venti
    Irrita per terras et freta summa ferunt,
    Gratia magna Jovi; vetuit pater ipse valere,
    Jurasset cupide quicquid ineptus amor.
    Fear not to swear; the winds carry the perjuries of lovers without effect over land and sea, thanks to Jupiter. The father of the gods himself has denied effect to what foolish lovers in their eagerness have sworn.
  • Perjuria ridet amantium Jupiter et ventos irrita ferre jubet.
    At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs and throws them idly to the winds.
  • At first, she loved nought else but flowers,
    And then—she only loved the rose;
    And then—herself alone; and then—
    She knew not what, but now—she knows.
  • The warrior for the True, the Right,
    Fights in Love's name;
    The love that lures thee from that fight
    Lures thee to shame:
    That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves
    The spirit free,—
    That love, or none, is fit for one
    Man-shaped like thee.
  • To love is to believe, to hope, to know;
    'Tis an essay, a taste of Heaven below!
  • Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
    We should agree as angels do above.
  • And the King with his golden sceptre,
    The Pope with Saint Peter's key,
    Can never unlock the one little heart
    That is opened only to me.
    For I am the Lord of a Realm,
    And I am Pope of a See;
    Indeed I'm supreme in the kingdom
    That is sitting, just now, on my knee.
  • O, rank is good, and gold is fair,
    And high and low mate ill;
    But love has never known a law
    Beyond its own sweet will!
  • "I'm sorry that I spell'd the word;
    I hate to go above you,
    Because"—the brown eyes lower fell,—
    "Because, you see, I love you!"
  • Your love in a cottage is hungry,
    Your vine is a nest for flies—
    Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
    And simplicity talks of pies!
    You lie down to your shady slumber
    And wake with a bug in your ear,
    And your damsel that walks in the morning
    Is shod like a mountaineer.
  • He loves not well whose love is bold!
    I would not have thee come too nigh.
    The sun's gold would not seem pure gold
    Unless the sun were in the sky:
    To take him thence and chain him near
    Would make his beauty disappear.
  • For mightier far
    Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway
    Of magic potent over sun and star,
    Is love, though oft to agony distrest,
    And though his favourite be feeble woman's breast.
  • O dearer far than light and life are dear.
  • While all the future, for thy purer soul,
    With "sober certainties" of love is blest.
  • Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.
    • Sir Thomas Wyatt, Songs and Sonnets, A Renouncing of Love.
    • With every act of love we move a little closer to immortality, whereas every act of hate brings us nearer to death. Recueil de Caprices

Anonymous

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  • Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden
    zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.
    Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende,
    es drückten deine schönen Hände
    mir die getreuen Augen zu!
    • With you by my side I go with joy
      to death and to my rest.
      How delightful would be my end
      were your beautiful hands to shut
      my faithful eyes.

See also

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