Poetry about love

Poetry about love.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
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A

• “Love,” Asa said, “is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.”
  “How so?”
  “Where it lands hasn’t got much to do with who deserves it.”
  • Daniel Abraham, The Meaning of Love, in George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (eds.) Rogues (2014), p. 397

• Mysterious love, uncertain treasure,
  Hast thou more of pain or pleasure!
  Endless torments dwell about thee:
  Yet who would live, and live without thee!
  • Joseph Addison, Rosamond (c. 1707), Act III, scene 2

• 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.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act III, scene 1

• When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
  (In spite of all the virtue we can boast),
  The woman that deliberates is lost.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act IV, scene 1

• 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.
  • Maya Angelou, Love's Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• 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.
  • Jon Anderson, in "Loved by the Sun", from movie Legend (1985)

• If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
  • Maya Angelou, Love's Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• Love costs all we are
  and will ever be.
  Yet it is only love
  which sets us free.
  • Maya Angelou, Love's Exquisite Freedom (2011)

• 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!
  • Matthew Arnold, "The Buried Life" (1852), st. 2

• 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.
  • Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1867), St. 4

• What love will make you do
  All the things that we accept
  Be the things that we regret
  • Ashanti, Foolish (January 29, 2002) from the April 2, 2002 album Ashanti

• 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

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.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• Could I love less, I should be happier now.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Garden and Bower by the Sea

• 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.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• Love spends his all, and still hath store.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene A Party and Entertainment

• The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Alcove and Garden

• Bright are the stars that shine
  Dark is the sky
  I know this love of mine
  Will never die
  And I love her
  • The Beatles, And I Love Her (1964)from the 1964 album A Hard Day's Night

• 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.
  • William Blake, The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1 in: Songs of Experience (1794)

• Man, you got to have love just to set it straight
  Take control of your mind and meditate
  Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all
  • The Black Eyed Peas, Where Is the Love? (2003)

• If you never know truth then you never know love.
  • The Black Eyed Peas, Where Is the Love? (2003)

• The mightiest love was granted him
  Love that does not expect to be loved.
  • Jorge Luis Borges, of Baruch Spinoza in "Baruch Spinoza", as translated in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989) by Yirmiyahu Yovel

• 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.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portugese, No. XIV

• 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.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IV

• But I love you, sir:
  And when a woman says she loves a man,
  The man must hear her, though he love her not.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book IX

• 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.
  • Robert Browning, A Death in the Desert (1864)

• Loveliest of lovely things are they,
  On earth, that soonest pass away.
  The rose that lives its little hour
  Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
  • William Cullen Bryant, A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson, st. 3 (1828)

• Every morning
  I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
  Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
  And pressing forward honor reality.

  We cannot avoid
  Using power,
  Cannot escape the compulsion
  To afflict the world,
  So let us, cautious in diction
  And mighty in contradiction,
  Love powerfully.

  • Martin Buber, in "Power and Love" (1926)

• We needed you
  To love us too.
  We wait for your move.
  • Kate Bush, The Dreaming (1982), All The Love

• 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.
  • Kate Bush, The Dreaming (1982), All The Love

• I needed you
  To love me too.
  I wait for your move.
  • Kate Bush, The Dreaming (1982), All The Love

• 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...
  • Kate Bush, The Dreaming (1982), All The Love

• Do you know what I really need?
  I need love love love love love, yeah!
  • Kate Bush, Hounds of Love (1985), Hounds of Love

• The light
  Begin to bleed,
  Begin to breathe,
  Begin to speak.
  D'you know what?
  I love you better now.
  • Kate Bush, Hounds of Love (1985), side two of the album called The Ninth Wave, song The Morning Fog

• We let it in
  We give it out
  And in the end
  What's it all about?
  It must be love.
  • Kate Bush, The Red Shoes (1993), And So Is Love

• We used to say
  "Ah Hell, we're young"
  But now we see that life is sad
  And so is love.
  • Kate Bush, The Red Shoes (1993), And So Is Love

• What am I singing?
  A song of seeds
  The food of love.
  Eat the music.
  • Kate Bush, The Red Shoes (1993), Eat the Music

• 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.

  • Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow (2011), Snowed In at Wheeler Street

• There's someone who's loved you forever but you don't know it.
  You might feel it and just not show it.
  • Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow (2011), Among Angels

• I love my
  Beloved, ooh,
  All and everywhere,
  Only the fools blew it.
  You and me
  Knew life itself is
  Breathing...
  • Kate Bush, Never for Ever (1980), Breathing

• Love in your hearts as idly burns
  As fire in antique Roman urns.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I

• Love is a boy by poets styl'd:
  Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I, line 843

• 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?
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part III (1678), Canto I

• 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.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 81

• The cold in clime are cold in blood,
  Their love can scarce deserve the name.
  • Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813), line 1,099

• 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.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), Stanza 2

• She knew she was by him beloved,—she knew
  For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
  Was darken'd with her shadow.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream (1816), Stanza 3

• Who loves, raves—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure
  Is bitterer still.
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 123

• 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!
  • Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 177

• 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.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 194

• Alas! the love of women! it is known
  To be a lovely and a fearful thing.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 199

• In her first passion woman loves her lover;
  In all the others, all she loves is love.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto III, Stanza 3. La Rochefoucauld. Maxims. No. 497

C

• 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
  • Sammy Cahn, I Fall in Love Too Easily (1944)

• 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.
  • Annie Clark (St. Vincent), in "All My Stars Aligned" on Marry Me (2007)

• 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!

  • Voltairine de Cleyre, "The Dirge of the Sea" (April 1891)

• 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.

• • Voltairine de Cleyre, And Thou Too (1888)

• 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.
  • Leonard Cohen, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Sisters of Mercy

• 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.
  • Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs (2001), You Have Loved Enough

• 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.

  • Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs (2001), "Love Itself"

• 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.
  • Cheryl Cole, Fight for This Love (2009)

• 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.
  • Cheryl Cole, Fight for This Love (2009)

• All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of Love,
  And feed his sacred flame.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love, st. 1 (1799)

• 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.

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Presence of Love (1807), lines 1-4

• And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
  How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Presence of Love (1807), lines 10-11

• 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!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Youth and Age, st. 2 (1823-1832)

• In many ways doth the full heart reveal
  The presence of the love it would conceal.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems Written in Later Life, motto (1826)

• To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
  Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge,Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), On taking Leave of ———— (1817)

• 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

• Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
  To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
  He prayeth well, who loveth well
  Both man and bird and beast.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817), Stanza 22

• 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.
  • Color Me Badd, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Forever Love (1992)

• Our love is principle, and has its root
  In reason, is judicious, manly, free.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book V, line 353

• 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.
  • Dinah Craik, Poems (1866), "Plighted"

• 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
  • The Corrs, Looking in the Eyes of Love from the In Blue (2004)

• 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
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #34

• 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
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #42

• Measureless our pure living complete love
  whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow
  • E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems (1940), Poem #50

• 'And liars kill their kind
  but' her,my 'love creates love only' our
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXII

• 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
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXIV

• True lovers in each happening of their hearts
  live longer than all which and every who;
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVI

• Yes is a pleasant country…
  love is a deeper season
  than reason
  • E. E. Cummings, 1 x 1 (1944), XXXVIII

• I feel that(false and true are merely to know)
  Love only has ever been, is, and will ever be, So
  • E. E. Cummings, XAIPE (1950), 33

• 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

  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #7

• Lovers alone wear sunlight
  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #91

• The whole truth…
  sings only —and all lovers are the song
  • E. E. Cummings, 95 poems (1958), poem #91

• 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)
  • E. E. Cummings, 73 poems (1963), poem#4

• The axis of the universe
  —love
  • E. E. Cummings, 73 poems (1963), poem#73

D

• 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.
  • Zooey Deschanel, She & Him : Volume One (2008), "I Thought I Saw Your Face Today"

• 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?
  • Zooey Deschanel, She & Him : Volume One (2008), "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."

• Lord Alfred Douglas from Two Loves (1894)

• 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.
  • John Dryden, Cymon and Iphigenia (1700), line 134

• Pains of love be sweeter far
  Than all other pleasures are.
  • John Dryden, Tyrannick Love (1669), Act IV, scene i

• My heart's so full of joy,
  That I shall do some wild extravagance
  Of love in public, and the foolish world,
  Which knows not tenderness, will think me mad.
  • John Dryden, All for Love (1678), Act II, scene i

E

• But is it what we love, or how we love,
  That makes true good?
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I

• 'Tis what I love determines how I love.
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I

• 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.
  • George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book III

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, Ash-Wednesday (1930)

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton (1935), (V)

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker (1940), (V)

• 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.
  • T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets,Little Gidding (1942), (IV)

F

• 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.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• Upon your shattered ruins where
  This vine will flourish still, as rare,
  As fresh, as fragrant as of old.
  Love will not crumble.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• 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.
  • Eleanor Farjeon, Pan-Worship and Other Poems (1908), Time And Love

• 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?
  • "Is Your Love Strong Enough?" by Bryan Ferry

• I love love
  I love being in love
  I don't care what it does to me
  • The Format, in "Inches and Failing"

• I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
  That myth is more potent than history.
  I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
  That hope always triumphs over experience —
  That laughter is the only cure for grief.
  And I believe that love is stronger than death.
  • Robert Fulghum, "Credo" at his official website; this may be partly influenced by remarks of Albert Einstein in "What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" The Saturday Evening Post (26 October 1929): I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

• 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.
  • Robert Fulghum, "Alice-Alice" in Third Wish (2006)

G

• 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.
  • Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), "Marigolds"

• 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.
  • Robert Graves, Country Sentiment (1920), "Advice To Lovers"

• 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.
  • Robert Graves, Country Sentiment (1920), "Advice To Lovers"

• How long will I love you?
  As long as stars are above you,
  And longer if I may
  • Ellie Goulding, How Long Will I Love You (10 November 2013) from the 2013 album Halcyon Days

• Che mai
  Non v'avere ò provate, ò possedute.

  Far worse it is
  To lose than never to have tasted bliss.

  • Giovanni Battista Guarini, Il pastor fido (1590)

• Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
  Love of feeling evokes the opposite
  Love of body depends only on type and polarity.
  • G. I. Gurdjieff, All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

H

• 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
  • Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding, I Need Your Love (2013) from the 2012 album 18 Months

• When I'm not near the girl I love,
  I love the girl I'm near.
  • Yip Harburg, "When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love" in Finian's Rainbow (1946)

• 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.
  • William Ernest Henley, Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XXI

• 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.
  • Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo, Book V - An End Unlike the Beginning, Ch. IV - A Heart Beneath A Stone

J

• 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
  • Tommy James, Eddie Gray and Mike Vale, Crystal Blue Persuasion (1969)

K

• 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.
  • John Keats, "When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)

• 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.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 1

• 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.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Bk. I, l. 789

• Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
  Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.
  • John Keats, Poems (1820), "Lamia", Pt. II, l. 1

• 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!
  • John Keats, Poems (1820), "Ode to Psyche", st. 5

• 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
  • Alicia Keys, The Thing About Love from the 2007 album As I Am

• 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
  • Alicia Keys, Wreckless Love from the 2007 album As I Am

• 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?
  • Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1120), Stanza IX. FitzGerald's Trans

• 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.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen

• The song within your heart could never rise
  Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory

• 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.
  • Joyce Kilmer, Main Street and Other Poems (1917), In Memory

• 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?
  • Carole King, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1961)

• I'd like to know that your love
  Is love I can be sure of,
  So tell me now and I won't ask again,
  Will you still love me tomorrow?
  • Carole King, Will You Love Me Tomorrow (1961)

• 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.
  • Carole King, Tapestry (1971), Beautiful

• If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
  Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.
  • Carole King, Tapestry (1971), Beautiful

• 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.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

• 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.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

• 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.
  • Rudyard Kipling, The Gypsy Trail (1892)

L

• You may find many a brighter one
  Than your own rose, but there are none
  So true to thee, Love.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (5th January 1822) 'Song - Are other eyes beguiling, 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.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon The London Literary Gazette (26th April 1823) 'Fragment'

• Love, thou hast hopes like summers, short and bright,
  Moments of ecstasy, and maddening dreams,
  Intense delicious throbs!
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (12th October 1822), 'The Basque Girl and Henri Quatre'

• I loved him too as woman loves —
  Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), Title poem

• Love is like the glass,
  That throws its own rich colour over all,
  And makes all beautiful.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), 'Roland's Tower'

• And Love is like the lightning in its might,
  Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
  Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea (1827)

• 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?
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Improvisatrice (1824), 'Love'

• 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.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (24th May 1823), 'Inez'

• 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.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834 (1833), 'The Zenana'

• 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.
  • Lucy Larcom, Poems (1869), Introductory poem

• 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.
  • D. H. Lawrence, Search for Love

• '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
  • John Legend, All of Me (12 August 2013) from the August 2013 album Love in the Future

• There's nothing you can do that can't be done
  Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
  Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
  It's easy.

  All you need is love.

  • John Lennon, in "All You Need Is Love" from Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

• 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.

  • John Lennon, in "Mind Games" on Mind Games (1973)

• 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.
  • Donna Lewis, I Love You Always Forever (1996) from the 1996 album Now in a Minute

• 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.
  • Donna Lewis, Without Love (1996) from the 1996 album Now in a Minute

• 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.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 109

• I love thee, as the good love heaven.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3, line 146

• Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
  It serves for food and raiment.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 5, line 52

• 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?
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Part III. Student's Tale. Emma and Eginhard, line 75

• What is love?
  Baby, don't hurt me.
  Don't hurt me, no more.
  • Nestor Alexander Haddaway, "What Is Love" (1993), written by Dieter Lünstedt and Karin Hartmann-Eisenblätter, The Album (May 1993), Germany: Coconut Records

• 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
  • Jeff Lynne, Last Train to London, Discovery (1979)

M

• 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
  • Madonna, Frozen (February 23, 1998) from the album Ray of Light (March 3, 1998)

• 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)

• I am human and I need to be loved
  Just like everybody else does
  • Johnny Marr and Morrissey, How Soon Is Now?, Hatful of Hollow (1985)

• 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.
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "Sonnet XXX" from Fatal Interview (1931)

• 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.
  • Czesław Miłosz , Rescue (1945), "The World": Love (1943), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz

• Imparadis'd in one another's arms.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 50

• Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
  Of human offspring.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 750-751

• Freely we serve,
  Because we freely love, as in our will
  To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, lines 538-540

• So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
  I could endure, without him live no life.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 832

• 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.
  • John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), line 1,010

N

• 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?
  • Alfred Noyes, Unity, § I, Unity, § I

• 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.
  • Alfred Noyes, Unity, § I, Unity, § III

P

• 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.
  • Thomas Percy, "Love Will Find Out the Way" as published in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765); in its publshed form this is suspected to have been extensively written by Percy himself; it was later used by Pierre de Beaumarchais in Act III of The Marriage of Figaro (1778)

• 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.
  • Edgar Allan Poe, "To Frances S. Osgood" (1845)

• Through years of my prime
  I walked with a heart
  crazy about love.
  • Suman Pokhrel, The Tajmahal and my Love
    

• May the river of love always flow from its own lap
  • Suman Pokhrel, Song of Soul
    

• May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs
  • Suman Pokhrel, Song of Soul
    

• I wanted my heart to bloom
  and shelter a shadow of love
  • Suman Pokhrel, The Tajmahal and my Love
    

• Tonight, may I get so drunk in love that
  I do not see any dreams!
  • Suman Pokhrel, May I Not See Dreams
    

• How vast a memory has Love!
  • Alexander Pope, "Sappho to Phaon", line 52 (1712)

• 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.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 74

• Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 77

• Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
  And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 177

• Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
  'Tis true the hardest science to forget.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 189

• One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight;
  Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard (1717), line 273

R

• 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.
  • Kenneth Rexroth, In Defense of the Earth (1956)

• 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.
  • Kenneth Rexroth, She Is Away

• 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.
    • As quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley

• 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

S

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.
  • Friedrich Schiller, The Song of the Bell (1799)

• 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

• How could I think the brief years were enough
  To prove the reality of endless love?
• Delmore Schwartz, in "I am a Book I neither Wrote nor Read" in Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

• How long will I love you?
  As long as stars are above you
  And longer if I can
  • Mike Scott, How Long Will I Love You? from Room to Roam album (1990)

• How long will I want you?
  As long as you want me to
  And longer by far
  • Mike Scott, How Long Will I Love You? from Room to Roam album (1990)

• On a day — alack the day! —
  Love, whose month is ever May,
  Spied a blossom passing fair
  Playing in the wanton air
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, II. Not to be confused with The Sonnets; this poem is not a sonnet

• Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
  And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
  • William Shakespeare, Helena, A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Act I, scene i

• 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.
  • Sanu Sharma, An Untold Secret

• 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.
  • Sanu Sharma, May I Meet You Someday Like This

• 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.
  • Sanu Sharma, May I Meet You Someday Like This

• May I get melted on your embrace, and meld into your wholeness.
  • Sanu Sharma, May I Meet You Someday Like This

• 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.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Asia, Act II, sc. v, l. 39

• Familiar acts are beautiful through love.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, The Earth, Act IV, l. 403

• Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, The Moon, Act IV, l. 451

• 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.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 554–561

• 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.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821)

• Love's very pain is sweet,
  But its reward is in the world divine
  Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821), l. 595

• 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.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion (1821), l. 602

• I love Love — though he has wings,
  And like light can flee,
  But above all other things,
  Spirit, I love thee —
  Thou art love and life! Oh come,
  Make once more my heart thy home.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou (1821), stanza 8

• The problem is all inside your head, she said to me
  The answer is easy if you take it logically
  I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
  There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.
  • Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

• She said, why don't we both just sleep on it tonight
  And I believe, in the morning you'll begin to see the light
  And then she kissed me and I realized she probably was right
  There must be fifty ways to leave your lover, fifty ways to leave your lover
  • Paul Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (1975), 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

• 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.
  • Paul Simon, One-Trick Pony (1980), Late in the Evening

• And she said 'Losing love is like a window in your heart,
  Everybody sees you're blown apart,
  Everybody feels the wind blow.'
  • Paul Simon, Graceland (1986), Graceland

• Far above the golden clouds, the darkness vibrates.
  The earth is blue.
  And everything about it is a love song. Everything about it.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), Everything About It Is a Love Song

• 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.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), I Don't Believe

• 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.
  • Paul Simon, Surprise (2006), Outrageous

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (1866-89), "A Match"

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon (1865), Second chorus, lines 1-12

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (1866-89), "Rococo", lines 17-24

• 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.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• 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!
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• 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!
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• 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.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• 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.

  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Triumph of Time

• Our way is where God knows
  And Love knows where:
  We are in Love’s hand to-day.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Love at Sea

T

• 'Tis better to have loved and lost,
  Than never to have loved at all.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part XXVII, Stanza 4

• For love reflects the thing beloved.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LII

• Love's too precious to be lost,
  A little grain shall not be spilt.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LXV

• 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."
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 10

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Maud; A Monodrama (1855), Part XXII, Stanza 11

• Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
  Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Merlin and Vivien

• 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.

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1000

• "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."
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Lancelot and Elaine, line 1370

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Pelleas and Ettarre

• We love but while we may;
  And therefore is my love so large for thee,
  Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament

• I will love thee to the death,
  And out beyond into the dream to come.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter The Last Tournament

• My doom is, I love thee still.
  Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1856–1885), chapter Guinevere

• Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover's Tale (1879), line 466

• Where love could walk with banish'd Hope no more.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover's Tale (1879), line 813

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lover's Tale (1879), line 815

• Love will conquer at the last.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 280

• Who are wise in love
  Love most, say least
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• Yet is there one true line, the pearl of pearls:
  Man dreams of Fame while woman wakes to love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• In a wink the false love turns to hate.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Merlin and Vivien

• 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.

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1000

• "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."
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Lancelot and Elaine, Line 1370

• We love but while we may;
  And therefore is my love so large for thee,
  Seeing it is not bounded save by love.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), The Last Tournament

• I will love thee to the death,
  And out beyond into the dream to come.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), The Last Tournament

• My doom is, I love thee still.
  Let no man dream but that I love thee still.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Guinevere

• 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."

  • Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859-1865), Guinevere

• 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.
  • CXXVI
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Parts I-CXXXI, CXXVI

• 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
  • The Troggs, Love Is All Around (1967)

• There's no beginning
  There be no end
  Cause on my love
  You can depend
  • The Troggs, Love Is All Around (1967)

• 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.
  • Pete Townshend, in "Let My Love Open the Door" on Empty Glass (1980)

• For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams,
  And their best promise constantly redeems.
  • Henry Theodore Tuckerman, "Sonnet XXII", in Poems (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), p. 168

• 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
  • Tina Turner, I Don't Wanna Lose You, (November 18, 1989) from the album Foreign Affair (September 13, 1989)

• 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
  • Tina Turner, What's Love Got to Do with It, (June 4, 1984[) from the album Private Dancer (May 29, 1984)

• 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.
  • Shania Twain, From This Moment On, (1998) from the 1997 album Come On Over

• 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.
  • Shania Twain, You're Still the One, (1998) from the 1997 album Come On Over

• 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)
  • Shania Twain, Forever and for Always, (2003) from the 2003 album Up!

U

• 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
  • U2, One (6 March 1992) from the 1990 album Achtung Baby

• Love lifts us up where we belong
  Where the eagles cry
  On a mountain high

  Love lifts us up where we belong
  Far from the world we know
  Up where the clear winds blow

  • "Up Where We Belong", song performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)

V

• 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.
  • Henry van Dyke, Love and Light

• 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.
    • Virgil, Georgics (29 BC), III, 244

• 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

• Love,—the shining goal
  Of every human soul.
  • Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff, Eris: A Dramatic Allegory (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1914), p. 19

• Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
  We should agree as angels do above.
  • Edmund Waller, in "Of Divine Love" (c. 1686)

• 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?
  • Warpaint, Love Is To Die, Warpaint (2014)

• 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.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow Bound, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

• Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet,
  Those who love each other shall become invincible...
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, DRUM-TAPS, Over the Carnage Rose Prophetic a Voice (1860; 1867)

• * 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.
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, The Mystic Trumpeter

• 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.
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, The Mystic Trumpeter

• Dearest comrades, all is over and long gone, But love is not over...
  • Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass, SONGS OF PARTING, Ashes of Soldiers

• There is no language that love does not speak.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox from Love's Language Poems of Progress 1913 edition

• 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.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Pleasure (1900), Optimism

• 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.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), The Way (1913)

• 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.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Give

• All love that has not friendship for its base,
  Is like a mansion built upon the sand.
  • Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1913), Love

• 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.
  • Oscar Wilde, Ballad of Reading Goal (1898)

• 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.
  • Larry E. Williams, in Let Your Love Flow (1976)

• Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking.
  Loving might be a mistake, but it's worth making.
  • Lee Ann Womack, I Hope You Dance (2000)

• True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
  Whose veil is unremoved
  Till heart with heart in concord beats,
  And the lover is beloved.
  • William Wordsworth, To ____ . (Let other Bards of Angels sing), st. 3 (1824)

• 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.
  • William Wordsworth, Lines (1795)

Y

• A pity beyond all telling
  Is hid in the heart of love.
  • William Butler Yeats, "The Pity of Love" in The Rose (1893)

• 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.
  • John Paul Young, in Love Is in the Air (1977) (Performance in 1978)

• 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.
  • John Paul Young, in "Love Is in the Air" (1977)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

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.

  • Vittorio Alfieri, Polinice, II. 4

• 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.
  • Edwin Arnold, Somewhere There Waiteth

• 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.
  • Thomas Lovell Beddoes, How Many Times

• 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.
  • William Blake, Couplets and Fragments, IV

• 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.
  • Bloomfield, Glee, Stanza 1

• 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."
  • Nicholas Breton, Phillida and Corydon

• 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.
  • Rupert Brooke, Retrospect

• For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
  I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Insufficiency

• Behold me! I am worthy
  Of thy loving, for I love thee!
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lady Geraldine's Courtship, Stanza 79

• 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.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet XXI

• 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.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Unless

• I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds
  All the world's loves in its unworldliness.
  • Robert Browning, Blot on the 'Scutcheon, Act II, scene 1

• Never the time and the place
  And the loved one all together.
  • Robert Browning, Never the Time and the Place

• 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.
  • Robert Browning, One Word More, Stanza XVII

• 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!
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Lady of Lyons, Act V, scene 2, line 23

• Love thou, and if thy love be deep as mine,
  Thou wilt not laugh at poets.
  • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu (1839), Act I, scene 1, line 177

• No matter what you do, if your heart is ever true,
  And his heart was true to Poll.
  • F. C. Burnand, 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!
  • Robert Burns, Bonny Lesley

• The wisest man the warl' e'er saw,
  He dearly loved the lasses, O.
  • Robert Burns, Green Grow the Rashes

• 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.
  • Robert Burns, 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.
  • Robert Burns, Red, Red Rose

• What is life, when wanting love?
  Night without a morning;
  Love's the cloudless summer sun,
  Nature gay adorning.
  • Robert Burns, Thine am I, my Faithful Fair

• When things were as fine as could possibly be
  I thought 'twas the spring; but alas it was she.
  • John Byrom, A Pastoral

• 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.
  • Thomas Campbell, Caroline, Part I

• My love lies bleeding.
  • Thomas Campbell, O'Connor's Child, Stanza 5

• 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.
  • Thomas Carew, Disdain Returned

• Then fly betimes, for only they
  Conquer love, that run away.
  • Thomas Carew, Song, Conquest by Flight

• 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.
  • Henry Carey, Sally 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.
  • Thomas Carlyle, Adieu

• 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.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXX. 3

• Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.

  It is difficult at once to relinquish a long-cherished love.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXXVI. 13

• 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.

  • Catullus, Carmina, LXXXV

• Vivamus, mea Lesbia atque amemus.

  My Lesbia, let us live and love.

  • Catullus, Carmina, V. 1

• 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.
  • George Chapman, All Fools, Act I, scene 1, line 98

• 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.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (c. 1797-1801, published 1816), Part II

• All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of Love,
  And feed his sacred flame.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love, Stanza 1

• 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.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, To a Lady, Stanza 2

• 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.
  • Hugh Conway, 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)

• Heaven's great artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Flaming Heart, line 56

• Love's great artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Prayer, line 18

• Mighty Love's artillery.
  • Richard Crashaw, Wounds of the Lord Jesus, line 2

• And I, what is my crime I cannot tell,
  Vnless it be a crime to haue lou'd too well.
  • Richard Crashaw, Alexias

• 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?
  • Sydney Dobell, Sonnet, To a Friend in Bereavement

• 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.
  • John Dryden, All for Love, Act II, scene 1

• How happy the lover,
  How easy his chain,
  How pleasing his pain,
  How sweet to discover
  He sighs not in vain.
  • John Dryden, King Arthur, IV. 1. Song

• 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.
  • John Dryden, Tyrannic Love, Act IV, scene 1

• I'm sitting on the stile. Mary,
  Where we sat side by side.
  • Lady Dufferin, Lament of the Irish Emigrant

• 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.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cupido

• A ruddy drop of manly blood
  The surging sea outweighs;
  The world uncertain comes and goes,
  The lover rooted stays.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series. Epigraph to Friendship

• All mankind love a lover.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Of Love

• Her very frowns are fairer far
  Than smiles of other maidens are.
  • Hartley Coleridge, Song, She is not Fair

• Poor love is lost in men's capacious minds,
  In ours, it fills up all the room it finds.
  • John Crowne, Thyestes

• 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.
  • R. W. Gilder, The New Day, Part III. Song XV

• Love, Love, my Love.
  The best things are the truest!
  When the earth lies shadowy dark below
  Oh, then the heavens are bluest!
  • R. W. Gilder, The New Day, Part IV. Song I

• 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.
  • R. W. Gilder, Song

• 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.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso, II. 3. 76

• 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.

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahrheit und Dichtung, III. 14

• 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!
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Hermit, Stanza 39

• Whoe'er thou art, thy Lord and master see,
  Thou wast my Slave, thou art, or thou shalt be.
  • George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne, Inscription for a Figure representing the God of Love. See Genuine Works. (1732) I. 129. Version of a Greek couplet from the Greek Anthology

• Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes,
  Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
  • Thomas Gray, The Bard, I. 3, line 12

• O'er her warm cheek, and rising bosom, move
  The bloom of young Desire and purple light of love.
  • Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy. I. 3, line 16

• 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.
  • Hafiz, Divan

• 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.

  • Heinrich Heine, Du bist wie eine Blume

• Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
  Doch bleibt sie immer neu.

  It is an ancient story
  Yet is it ever new.

  • Heinrich Heine, Lyrisches Intermezzo, 39

• And once again we plighted our troth,
  And titter'd, caress'd, kiss'd so dearly.
  • Heinrich Heine, Youthful Sorrows. No. 57, Stanza 2

• Alas! for love, if thou art all,
  And nought beyond, O earth.
  • Felicia Hemans, The Graves of a Household

• Open your heart and take us in,
  Love—love and me.
  • William Ernest Henley, Rhymes and Rhythms, V

• You say to me-wards your affection's strong;
  Pray love me little, so you love me long.
  • Robert Herrick, Love me Little, 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.
  • Robert Herrick, To Anthea, who may command him anything, No. 268

• 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.
  • Aaron Hill, Athelwold, Act V, scene The Garden

• 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.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Songs of Many Seasons, Dorothy, II, Stanza 7

• 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.
  • Victor Hugo, Eviradnus, XI

• If you become a Nun, dear,
  The bishop Love will be;
  The Cupids every one, dear!
  Will chant—'We trust in thee!'
  • Leigh Hunt, The Nun

• 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.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Dropped Dead

• Love has a tide!
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Tides

• When love is at its best, one loves
  So much that he cannot forget.
  • Helen Hunt Jackson, Two Truths

• Love's like the flies, and, drawing-room or garret, goes all over a house.
  • Douglas Jerrold, Jerrold's Wit, Love

• Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
  Is—Love, forgive us!—cinders, ashes, dust.
  • John Keats, Lamia, Part II

• 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.
  • Caroline Keppel, 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!"
  • Rudyard Kipling, Lovers Litany

• 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!"
  • Rudyard Kipling, 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!"
  • Frederic L. Knowles, If Love were Jester at the Court of Death

• 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.

  • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, IV. 1

• 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.
  • Charles Godfrey Leland, Sweet Marjoram

• 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.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part III, line 7

• Like Dian's kiss, unask'd, unsought,
  Love gives itself, but is not bought.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1818), Stanza 4

• Does not all the blood within me
  Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
  As the springs to meet the sunshine.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Wedding Feast, line 153

• 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.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Masque of Pandora, Part VIII. In the Garden, line 39

• 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.
  • Love will find out the way. Ballad in Percy's Reliques

• 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.
  • James Russell Lowell, Love, line 1

• 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.
  • James Russell Lowell, My Love, Stanza 1

• 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

• None without hope e'er lov'd the brightest fair:
  But Love can hope where Reason would despair.
  • George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton, Epigram

• 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.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, Lines Written July 30, 1847

• 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.
  • Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love, Stanza 1

• 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.
  • John Masefield, Widow in the Bye Street, Part II

• 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.
  • Philip Massinger, Great Duke of Florence, Act II, scene 3

• '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.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Vanini

• 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.
  • Thomas Middleton, Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act II, scene 2

• I never heard
  Of any true affection but 'twas nipped.
  • Thomas Middleton, Blurt, Master Constable (c. 1601), Act III, scene 2

• He who for love hath undergone
  The worst that can befall,
  Is happier thousandfold than one
  Who never loved at all.
  • Monckton Milnes, To Myrzha, On Returning

• 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.
  • Thomas Moore, Anacreontic, Ode 29

• 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.
  • Thomas Moore, Come, Rest in This Bosom, Stanza 2

• 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.
  • Thomas Moore, Loves of the Angels, Second Angel's Story

• But there's nothing half so sweet in life
  As love's young dream.
  • Thomas Moore, Love's Young Dream, Stanza 1

• "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."
  • Thomas Moore, Youth and Age

• 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.
  • William Motherwell, Jeanie Morrison

• 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.
  • Dinah Craik, Plighted

• 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.
  • Coventry Patmore, The Angel in the House, Sarum Plain

• 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!
  • George Peele, Miscellaneous Poems, The Hunting of Cupid

• Ah! what avails it me the flocks to keep,
  Who lost my heart while I preserv'd my sheep.
  • Alexander Pope, Autumn, line 79

• 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?
  • Alexander Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady

• Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
  Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
  • Alexander Pope, Epistle to Eloisa, last line

• 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.
  • Alexander Pope, Spring, line 49

• Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
  And can be bought with nothing but with self.
  • Sir Walter Raleigh, Love the Only Price of Love

• 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.
  • Sir Walter Raleigh, The Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd

• 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.
  • James Whitcomb Riley, 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.
  • Robert Cameron Rogers, 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.
  • Samuel Rogers, Jacqueline, Part I, line 68

• 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.
  • John Ruskin, Trust Thou Thy Love

• 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.
  • Friedrich Schiller, Hero and Leander. Bowring's translation

• 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.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Lied von der Glocke

• Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
  Ich habe gelebt und geliebt.

  I have enjoyed earthly happiness,
  I have lived and loved.

  • Friedrich Schiller, Piccolomini, III. 7. 9

• 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!
  • Clinton Scollard, The Journey's End—Envoy

• 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.
  • Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto III, Stanza 10

• 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.
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI

• 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.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, My True Love Hath my Heart

• Thy fatal shafts unerring move;
  I bow before thine altar, Love!
  • Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random, Chapter XL, Stanza 1

• 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.
  • Robert Southey, All for Love, Part II, Stanza 26

• 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.
  • Robert Southey, Curse of Kehama. Mount Meru, Stanza 10

• To be wise and eke to love,
  Is granted scarce to gods above.
  • Edmund Spenser, Shepheard's Calendar, March

• 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.
  • Frank L. Stanton, Greeting

• 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.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, poem written 1876

• 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.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, poem written 1876

• 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.
  • Viscount Strangford, Just like Love, Translation of Poems of Camoens

• 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?
  • Sir John Suckling, Song, Stanza 1

• 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.
  • Jonathan Swift, To Love

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Song

• If love were what the rose is,
  And I were like the leaf,
  Our lives would grow together
  In sad or singing weather.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Match

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Complaint of Lisa

• Love laid his sleepless head
  On a thorny rose bed:
  And his eyes with tears were red,
  And pale his lips as the dead.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Love Laid his Sleepless Head

• 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.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Oblation

• 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.
  • Robert Tannahill, Love's Fear

• 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!
  • Bayard Taylor, Bedouin Song

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Day Dream, The Departure. I

• I loved you, and my love had no return,
  And therefore my true love has been my death.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, line 1,298

• 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.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835, published 1842), Stanza 74

• Love is hurt with jar and fret;
  Love is made a vague regret.
  • Alfred Tennyson, The Miller's Daughter, Stanza 28

• 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.
  • William Makepeace Thackeray, The Sorrows of Werther

• 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.
  • Francis Thompson, Manus Animam Pinxit

• 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.
  • James Thomson, Sophonisba, Act V, scene 2

• 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.
  • James Thomson, Waiting

• 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.

  • Tibullus, Carmina, I, 4, 21

• Perjuria ridet amantium Jupiter et ventos irrita ferre jubet.

  At lovers' perjuries Jove laughs and throws them idly to the winds.

  • Tibullus, Carmina, III, 6, 49

• 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.
  • Ridgely Torrence, House of a Hundred Lights

• 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.
  • Aubrey Thomas de Vere, Miscellaneous Poems, Song

• To love is to believe, to hope, to know;
  'Tis an essay, a taste of Heaven below!
  • Edmund Waller, Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 17

• Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
  We should agree as angels do above.
  • Edmund Waller, Divine Poems, Divine Love, Canto III, line 25

• 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.
  • C. H. Webb, The King and the Pope

• 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!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Amy Wentworth, Stanza 18

• "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!"
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, In School-Days, Stanza 4

• 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.
  • Nathaniel Parker Willis, Low in a Cottage, Stanza 3

• 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.
  • William Winter, Love's Queen

• 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.
  • William Wordsworth, Laodamia, Stanza 15

• O dearer far than light and life are dear.
  • William Wordsworth, Poems Founded on the Affections, No. XIX. To. ——, VII. 114

• While all the future, for thy purer soul,
  With "sober certainties" of love is blest.
  • William Wordsworth, Poems Founded on the Affections, VII. 115. (Knight's ed.)

• 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

• 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.
    • "Bist du bei Mir," aria of unknown origin transcribed in a notebook of Anna Magdalena Bach (1725), BWV508

See also

Wikipedia

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Category:Love poems

• Agape
• Bible quotes about love
• Religious views on love
• Kama