Love, Romantic & Tragic...
“The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.”
--Oscar Wilde“HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,/ Enwrought with golden and silver light,/ The blue and the dim and the dark cloths /Of night and light and the half-light,/ I would spread the cloths under your feet:/ But I, being poor, have only my dreams;/ I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
--W.B. Yeats, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven“Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.”
--Song of Solomon 8:7“The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.”
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald“To love is to take delight in the happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another’s happiness one’s own.”
–Gottfried Liebnitz“Him that I love, I wish to be
Free—
Even from me.”
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh“Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”
–Khalil Ghibran, The Prophet“Love is the wisdom of the fool, and the folly of the wise.”
–Samuel Johnson“Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self. It is an experience of sharing, of communing, which permits the full unfolding of one’s inner activity.”
–Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.”
–Khalil Ghibran, The Prophet“Love is like pi—natural, irrational, and very important.” –Lisa Hoffman
“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’”
–Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving"He felt, you would have thought, that a thing so delicate, so exquisite, so precious, was not made for such hands as his. At times he looked as though he dared not touch her even with his breath. Then, all at once he would clasp her closely in his arms, against his angular bosom, as his treasure, as his all, as the mother of that girl would herself have done." -Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it.. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.”
-Erica Jong"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung, and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be
broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
-C.S. Lewis“Nunc scio quit sit amor.”
(trans. “Now I know what love is.”)
--Virgil“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved—loved for ourselves, or rather, in spite of ourselves.” –Victor Hugo
“Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows.”
--Marlene Dietrich“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery“To the dear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break… I am ever tender and true.”
–Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
--Herbert Kretzmer, (libretto) Les Miserables“Sigh no more ladies, sigh no more. Men were deceivers ever. One foot on sea and one on shore. To one thing constant never. But sigh no more and let them go. And be you blythe and bonny, converting all your sighs of woe into ‘hey, nonny nonny’!”
--Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing“Love is friendship set on fire.”
- French Proverb“A life without love is like a year without summer.”
--Swedish proverb“I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.”
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride“You are all light and I am a shadow.”
--Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Begerac“Still of a winter’s night they say when the wind is in the trees, and the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, when the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, a highwayman comes riding, riding, riding, a highwayman comes riding up to the old inn door.”
--Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments./ Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds/ nor bends with the remover to remove. /No! It is an ever fix’ed mark /that looks upon tempests and is not shaken….”
--Shakespeare, Sonnet 116“She turned and looked at him. For a few seconds they gazed at each other's eyes, and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly became possible, inevitable, and very near...”
- Leo Tolsoy, War and Peace"I never thought of taking the place of your lost love nor would I wish to, for if ever you choose to keep me in your heart, I want that place to be called as my own."
– Pau"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
-- H.L. Mencken"Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun."
-- Matt Groening, Life in Hell“And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.”
--Victor Hugo, Les Miserables“Why was I not made of stone like these?”
--Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris