When I’m reading a book, there are few sentences that stick in my mind in their entirety, apart from those quotes about love. Because, whether we admit it or not, I think we’re all a little bit in love with the idea about being in love. Sometimes, the way these writers sum up the feeling is so perfect and so utterly in tune with the way we ourselves feel, that it’s almost as if they’re writing directly to us. And so, with this in mind, I decided to gather up a few of my favourites. Whilst I have the author of each quote, there are some where I’m completely not sure on their origin, so please comment if you know! I hope some of my favourite quotes about love resonate with you as much as they did with me.
1 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
To begin my collection of quotes about love, a sentence from one of the world’s greatest doomed love stories. Can you imagine someone looking at you like that? Like you're there, always, constant as - well, as the sun.
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2 Bob Marley
Never say musicians aren't authors, in their way. Bob Marley was a visionary in many ways, and say what you will, he knew quite a bit about how to treat a woman. You always deserve to be treated right.
3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
It's hard to imagine, in today's times, not allowing someone to express their admiration for you. But to know that someone adores you enough to be ardent about it, isn't that rather breathtaking?
4 Dr. Seuss
I think we've all felt that way, whether we're dealing with a breath-stealing crush or a comfortable, long-term love. Sometimes you enjoy the person you're with so much, not even fantasy gets better than your reality.
5 Antoine De Saint-Exupéry in Airman’s Odyssey: Night Flight / Wind Sand & Stars / Flight to Arras
However, it isn't all fairy book romance, not all the time. Love is whimsical but it is also practical, as we see here. Look solely at each other and you miss so much. Building a future together involves looking in the same direction - toward your future.
6 Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
You can feel the anguish of love through a quote like this. It almost hurts your heart to read it. Haven't you felt that way? It's far worse if someone you love dies, but haven't you felt that way when a lover has left you, at least for a while?
7 Agatha Christie
Don't be afraid to be silly in love, to show the world how you feel. If people think you look ridiculous and don't see that you're simply in love, that says more about them, don't you think?
8 F. Scott Fitzgerald
Remember, however, love is whimsical. It's sometimes dramatic and it can take on those fairytale connotations. And what a romantic wish to hear from someone you love. While you're together, you should always try to do as much as possible together.
9 Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
I'm sure we've all felt like this as well, that the person we're with is everything. Your partner completes you, and without that love, nothing would ever feel or look or be the same. That might be fatalistic in reality, but there are moments like that - when you're in love and momentarily wrecked by it.
10 The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
“Are you happiest and saddest right now that you’ve ever been?” That's how this passage begins. “Of course I am,” it continues. “Why?” Isn't 'why' always the question? “Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.” That is love, of course: one person's ability to make you both exuberant and miserable, though hopefully not in equal amounts.
11 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
John Green knows how to get you with his writing. I want to wrap this quote around me and fall asleep in it myself. Not all love is like that, but everyone needs to fall in love while they're falling asleep at least once, I think.
12 F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald clearly had a way with love as well, no doubt due in part to his feelings for mad, beautiful Zelda. Love is always the beginning and the end, whether it's romantic, platonic, or familial. It's everything, isn't it?
13 Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proux
Sometimes love hurts, sometimes it harms, sometimes it simply isn't healthy, for whatever reason. You want to quit it, you know you should walk away... but you simply can't.
14 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Love like this encompasses everything. It never stops, it simply keeps coming and coming like waves. And to be able to experience it so thoroughly every time you see your beloved? What a world.
15 Pablo Neruda
How long did it take you to forget your first love? Your last ex? The person you had such a desperate crush on in high school? Put in perspective, it can take so little time to fall in love, but it takes an eternity to forget.
16 Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
Isn't that what we all want? Someone to wait for us, to want us to come. It isn't perhaps always fair, but the feeling is there all the same. Just wait for me - always.
17 Winnie the Pooh by a.a. Milne
This always makes me think of those couples who have been married for fifty years or more, and die within a month, a week, even a day of each other. To know someone loves you so much they can't imagine even a day without you is just the kind of inspiration to give you butterflies.
18 Gaby Dunn
That's something to think about, isn't it? And I'm curious - is that a downside of love, that someone you used to love, who is now just a stranger, knows all your deepest secrets? Or is that a little like spreading yourself, your history, and your confessions, all throughout the world?
19 Divergent by Veronica Roth
You've felt this, haven't you? As an awkward teenager with braces and a shy side, as a free-spirited young woman in college, as a confident woman meeting your lover for the first time? There's nothing like that feeling, where everything is hot and cold and thrilling and terrifying, all at once.
20 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
And you've felt this too, haven't you? As if everything you are is all tied up and connected to someone else, as if your lover - your crush, your spouse, your hopeful ideal - could simply pull you to pieces. That connection is an extension of that heady combination, something thrilling and something terrifying, and it takes ultimate trust.
21 J. D. Salinger
"Holding the universe together." Nothing much, just that one simple act. When you see the one you love, or want to love, or will love someday, isn't that the thought you have? No matter how innocuous the task, it is of utmost importance - because it's the object of your love.
It’s wonderful, isn’t it? How you think that there’s no possible way a feeling as great and all-consuming as love can ever be summed up in a sentence or two. But then a writer does it perfectly, in a way you wouldn’t have imagined. Are there any quotes that sum up your feelings on love?
