Love Quotes Romantic ♥♥

True Love Quotes

2010-12-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

True love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and sanctifies the existence.
-Henri Frédéric Amiel

True love is like a sigh from the heart; it teaches in a moment everything one ought to say.
-Thomas Corneille

There is no hate that can lie alongside love in a true heart.
-Charles Reade

Love which economizes is never true love.
-Honoré de Balzac

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe’s conceit.
-Honoré de Balzac

True love can fear no one.
-Seneca

True love doesn't have a happy ending; true love doesn't have an ending.
-Anonymous

True joy doth need no song to praise it, silence for love's delight is best.
-Emanuel Geibel

True hearts that share one love, one life, will always know true joy.
-Jason Blake

True love is not selfish. In time it accustoms itself to anything which secures happiness for its object.
-Susan Coolidge

I’ll just tell her she isn’t and never will be a true sailor’s true love until she takes a voyage with her husband.
-Peter B. Kyne

You believed you loved me, but I doubted my love, and I know now that no true love for you exists.
-Mark Rutherford

True love does not paralyze, but doubles the high qualities of man.
-Georg Moritz Ebers

The Positive Power of Love

2010-07-13T20:01:00.000-07:00

If you are seeking someone to love you, you will go through life
disappointed. Love begins with loving yourself first. Unless you first love
yourself, you will not be able to find it in another. Only when you
generate love and radiate it forth until it embraces everything and
everyone, will love be yours in return.

But remember, you cannot give your love to another person. You can
only be loving. Being loving means learning to love your mind, thoughts,
body, life and the God-power within you. Learn to love objects like trees,
flowers, animals, sunshine and everything you see, touch and taste.

-------

The idea that we cannot possibly love another until we have first learned
to love ourselves may, on the surface, appear to be a very self-centered
philosophy. But it isn’t if we realize that we are connected to every other
person on the planet. In the same way that our heads are joined to our
shoulders, our hands to our arms, our feet to our ankles, each person is
an extension of everyone else. An infection in one part of the human
body means that the entire body is affected, to hurt another person
mentally, physically or emotionally means that we are hurting ourselves.

-------

Remain calm and love regardless of the circumstance. Love is not a
placid state but a conquering force. If someone does something to you
that may seem unjust or unfair, learn to forgive that person, for
forgiveness is part of love. Mentally note that the situation has come into
your life as a lesson. The way you meet the experience will determine
whether or not you understand the meaning of love. If you do, you will
be able to forgive knowing that everything will work out for the good of
all concerned. To pass ‘love lessons’ victoriously is to reach new
dimensions of success, prosperity, peace and fulfillment.

Dr. Robert Anthony: The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self Confidence

The Mastery of Love Quotes

2010-04-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

We can talk about love and write a thousand books about it, but love will be completely different for each of us because we have to experience love. Love is not about concepts; love is about action. Love in action can only produce happiness. Fear in action can only produce suffering.

The only way to master love is to practice love. You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.

Miguel Ruiz: The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

Nietzsche Love Quote

2010-03-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover - his rare and exceptional traits: to that extent it conceals his unusual character.

Die Liebe bringt die hohen und verborgenen Eigenschaften eines Liebenden ans Licht, sein Seltenes, Ausnahmsweises: insofern tuscht sie leicht über das, was die Regel an ihm ist.

-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Paul Verlaine Poem: En Sourdine

2010-03-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

Paul Verlaine: En Sourdine

Tranquil in the twilight dense
By the spreading branches made
Let us breathe the influence
Of the silence and the shade.

Let your heart melt into mine
And your soul reach out to me
'Mid the languors of the pine
And the sighing arbute-tree.

Close your eyes, your hands let be
Folded on your slumbering heart,
From whose hold all treachery
Drive forever, and all art.

Let us with the hour accord!
Let us let the gentle wind,
Rippling in the sunburnt sward,
Bring us to a patient mind!

And when Night across the air
Shall her solemn shadow fling,
Touching voice of our despair,
Long the nightingale shall sing.

Calmes dans le demi-jour
Que les branches hautes font,
Pénétrons bien notre amour
De ce silence profond.

Fondons nos âmes, nos cœurs
Et nos sens extasiés,
Parmi les vagues langueurs
Des pins et des arbousiers.

Ferme tes yeux à demi,
Croise tes bras sur ton sein,
Et de ton coeur endormi
Chasse à jamais tout dessein.

Laissons-nous persuader
Au souffle berceur et doux,
Qui vient à tes pieds rider
Les ondes de gazon roux.

Et quand, solennel, le soir
Des chênes noirs tombera,
Voix de notre désespoir,
Le rossignol chantera.

Paul Verlaine: En Sourdine

One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition

Brideshead Revisited Quotes

2010-02-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

--

I could tell him, too, that to know and love one other, human being is the root of all wisdom. But I felt no need for these sophistries as I sat before my cousin, saw him, freed from his inconclusive struggle with Pindar, in his dark grey suit, his white tie, his scholar's gown; heard his grave tones and, all the time, savoured the gillyflowers in full bloom under my windows.

--

He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it, for I was no longer part of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our little talks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was only dimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot.

--

Julia used to say, 'Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him.'
That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. 'There's something chemical between them' was used to explain the over-mastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend.

--

This was the creature, neither child nor woman, that drove me through the dusk that summer evening, untroubled by love, taken aback by the power of her own beauty, hesitating on the cool edge of life one who had suddenly found herself armed, unawares; the heroine of a fairy story turning over in her hands the magic ring; she had only to stroke it with her fingertips and whisper the charmed word, for the earth to open at her feet and belch forth her titanic servant, the fawning monster who would bring her whatever she asked, but bring it, perhaps, in unwelcome shape.

--

From being agreeable, he became indispensable to her; from having been proud of him in public she became a little ashamed, but by that time, between Christmas and Easter, he had become indispensable. And then, without in the least expecting it, she suddenly found herself in love.

--

For six weeks they remained at arm's length, kissing when they met and parted, sitting meantime at a distance, talking of what they would do and where they would live and of Rex's chances of an under-secretaryship. Julia was content, deep in love, living in the future. Then, just before the end of the session, she learned that Rex had been staying the weekend with a stockbroker at Sunningdale, when he said he was at his constituency, and that Mrs Champion had been there, too.

--

'I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles.'
'No, I'm afraid not.'
'D'you want to change?'
'It's the only evidence of life.'
'But you might change so that you didn't love me any more.'
'There is that risk.'
'Charles, you haven't stopped loving me.'
'You said yourself I hadn't changed.'
'Well, I'm beginning to think you have. I haven't.'
'No,' I said, 'no; I can see that.'
'Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?'
'Not the least.'
'You didn't wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else in the meantime?'
'No. Have you?'
'You know I haven't. Have you?'
'No. I'm not in love.'
My wife seemed content with this answer. She had married me six years ago at the
time of my first exhibition, and had done much since then to push our interests.

--

She looked up slowly from her chocolate and, her splendid, serious eyes in mine, said: 'Don't you know? I'll tell you about it sometimes I've been a mug. I thought I was in love with someone, but it didn't turn out that way.' And my mind went back ten years to the evening at Brideshead, when that lovely, spidery child of nineteen, as though brought in for an hour from the nursery and nettled by lack of attention from the grownups, had said: 'I'm causing anxiety, too, you know,' and I had thought at the time, though scarcely, it now seemed to me, in long trousers myself, 'How important these girls make themselves with their love affairs.' Now it was different; there was nothing but humility and friendly candour in the way she spoke. I wished I could respond to her confidence, give some token of acceptance, but there was nothing in my last, flat, eventful years that I could share with her.

--

She was not yet thirty, but was approaching the zenith of her loveliness, all her rich promise abundantly fulfilled. She had lost that fashionable, spidery look; the head that I used to think quattrocento, which had sat a little oddly on her, was now part of herself and not at all Florentine; not connected in any way with painting or the arts or with anything except herself, so that it would be idle to itemize and dissect her beauty, which was her own essence, and could only be known in her and by her authority and in the love I was soon to have for her.

--

I knew what she meant, and in that moment felt as though I had shaken off some of the dust and grit of ten dry years; then and always, however she spoke to me, in half sentences, single words, stock phrases of contemporary jargon, in scarcely perceptible movements of eyes or lips or hands, however inexpressible her thought, however quick and far it had glanced from the matter in hand, however deep it had plunged, as it often did, straight from the surface to the depths, I knew; even that day when I still stood on the extreme verge of love, I knew what she meant.

--

But later that night when she went to bed and I followed her to her door, she stopped me.
'No, Charles, not yet. Perhaps never. I don't know. I don't know if I want love.' Then something, some surviving ghost from those dead ten years - for one cannot die, even for a little, without some loss made me say, 'Love? I'm not asking for love.' 'Oh yes, Charles, you are,' she said, and putting up her hand gently stroked my cheek; then shut her door.

--

I took you out to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.'

--

Julia wore the embroidered Chinese robe which she often used when we were dining alone at Brideshead; it was a robe whose weight and stiff folds stressed her repose; her neck rose exquisitely from the plain gold circle at her throat; her hands lay still among the dragons in her lap. It was thus that I had rejoiced to see her nights without number, and that night, watching her as she sat between the firelight and the shaded lamp, unable to look away for love of her beauty, I suddenly thought, 'When else have I seen her like this? Why am I reminded of another moment of vision?' And it came back to me that this was how she had sat in the liner, before the storm; this was how she had looked, and I realized that she had regained what I thought she had lost for ever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, 'Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?'

Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (1945)

Brideshead Revisited (25th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Love Quotes for Valentine's Day

2010-02-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

It is time to sprinkle some romantic love dust over the person you love. Good love quotes are the best bits of the best romantic minds, suitable for you to spread around this Valentine’s Day. I was surprised how difficult it was to find suitable Valentine quotes. So many love quotes are too general, philosophical, and even sarcastic to go well with Valentine's Day. You don't want your loved one to wonder about the meaning of some word in Valentine quote. I hope these romantic love quotes will help you to convey your caring feeling to your love. Happy Valentine’s Day!

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand different versions.
-La Rochefoucald

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.
-St. Augustine

My love most true has made me yours. -Juan del Encina

At one glance I love you with a thousand hearts. -Mihri Hatun

Let your love be like the misty rain, coming softly, but flooding the river.
-Madagascan Proverb

I humbly do beseech you of your pardon for too much loving you.
-Shakespeare (Iago in Othello)

Your beauty’s form was shaped by God Himself, so are my feelings merely human love?
-Amir Khusrau

Any time that is not spent on love is wasted. -Torquato Tasso

Youth’s for an hour, beauty’s a flower, but love is the jewel that wins the world.
-Moira O’Neill

What’s the earth with all its art, verse, music, worth – compared with love found, gained, and kept?
-Robert Browning

Stay, little Valentine, stay,
Each day is Valentine's day.
-Lorenz Hart: My Funny Valentine (1937 song)

Rumi Quotes

2010-02-10T19:19:00.000-08:00

Only he whose garment is rent by the violence of love is wholly pure from covetousness and sin.

Hail to thee, O Love, sweet madness! Thou who heal all our infirmities.

Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven, and makes the very hills to dance with joy!

A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart; no sickness is there like sickness of heart.

The lover’s ailment is different from all ailments; Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.

However much we describe and explain love, when we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear, but love unexplained is clearer.

When pen hasted to write, on reaching the subject of love it split in twain.

When the discourse touched on the matter of love, pen was broken and paper torn.

Only love itself can explain love and lovers.

The fertile garden of love, as it is boundless, contains other fruits besides joy and sorrow.

Love and tenderness are qualities of humanity, passion and lust are qualities of animality.

Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress, the Creator’s self, as it were, not a mere creature.

The lover’s love is visible but love depends not on outward form or face.

Through love bitter things seem sweet, through love bits of copper are made gold.

Through love thorns become roses, through love vinegar becomes sweet wine.

Through love burning fire is pleasing light.

Through love Ghouls turn into angels.

Kindle in thy heart the flame of love, and burn up utterly thoughts and fine expressions.

Love is fearless in the midst of the sea of fear.

One who is really loved is the single object of her lover, the Alpha and Omega of his desires.

With thee, my love, hell itself were heaven,

With thee a prison would be a rose garden.

With thee hell would be a mansion of delight,

Without thee lilies and roses would be as flames of fire.

The torch of love is all sweetness.

The love of the soul is for life and the living one, because its origin is the Soul not bound to place.

Love is as the ark appointed for the righteous, which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.

Love is a perfect muzzle of evil suggestions; without love who ever succeeded in stopping them?

Be a lover, and seek that fair beauty, hunt for that waterfowl in every stream.

Lost Love Quotes - Poetry on Lost Love

2010-02-06T23:34:00.000-08:00

Quotes about Lost Love

Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
-Dylan Thomas

All lost things are in the angels’ keeping, Love;
No past is dead for us, but only sleeping, Love.
-Helen Hunt Jackson

’T is better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.
-Alfred Tennyson

Bend low, O dusky Night,
And give my spirit rest,
Hold me to your deep breast,
And put old cares to flight.
Give back the lost delight
That once my soul possest,
When Love was loveliest.
-Louise Chandler Moulton

The pure, the beautiful, the bright,
That stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulse to a wordless prayer,
The dreams of love and truth,
The longings after something lost,
The spirit’s yearning cry,
The strivings after better hopes,—
These things can never die.
-Sarah Doudney

And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or wrath-consume me quite,
One flash of it within the tavern caught
Better than in the temple lost outright.
-Omar Khayyam: Rubáiyát

I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied;
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide—
And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar.
-Sir Walter Scott

Thou art to all lost love the best,
The only true plant found,
Wherewith young men and maids distrest,
And left of love, are crown'd.
When once the lover's rose is dead,
Or laid aside forlorn:
Then willow-garlands 'bout the head
Bedew'd with tears are worn.
When with neglect, the lovers' bane,
Poor maids rewarded be
For their love lost, their only gain
Is but a wreath from thee.
And underneath thy cooling shade,
When weary of the light,
The love-spent youth and love-sick maid
Come to weep out the night.
-Robert Herrick: To the Willow-tree

The Moonbeams over Arno’s vale in silver flood were pouring,
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love deploring.
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie;
I longed to hear a simpler strain, —the wood-notes of the veery.
-Henry Van Dyke

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
I cried in my dream ‘O women bid the young men lay
‘Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
‘Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
‘Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.’
-W.B. Yeats: Aedh tells of a Valley full of Lovers

Yea, in the old days thou wast she
Who lured Mark Antony from home
To death and Egypt, seeing he
Lost love when he lost Rome.
-George Sylvester Viereck

Too soon did I love it, and lost love’s rose; and I car’d not for glory’s:
Only the blossoms of sleep and of pleasure were mix’d in my hair.
Was it myrtle or poppy thy garland was woven with, O my Dolores?
Was it pallor or slumber, or blush as of blood, that I found in thee fair?
For desire is a respite from love, and the flesh, not the heart, is her fuel;
-Algernon Charles Swinburne

From Spanish chestnut trees’ dense shade,
By old and heavy convent walls, a wailing song,
Song of lost love—the torch of youth and life quench’d in despair,
Song of the dying swan—Fernando’s heart is breaking.
-Walt Whitman

By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost—love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered—my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained—a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.
-Charles Dickens: David Copperfield

The Magic of Making Up

Taylor Swift - Love Story

2010-02-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

Taylor Swift performing Love Story.

Tolstoy Quotes

2010-01-30T18:58:00.000-08:00

In order to be happy, you should love - love with self-sacrifice, love all and everything, and spread a network of love everywhere. No matter who gets into this net, catch them all and fill them with love.

Love brings people to unification. The universal intellect, which is the same for everyone, supports this unification.

Try to live with the part of your soul which understands eternity, which is not afraid of death. And that part of your soul is love.

The purpose of life is to express love in all its manifestations.

Anything you do should be filled with love.

There is only one thing in this world which is worth dedicating all your life. This is creating more love among people and destroying barriers which exist between them.

-Leo Tolstoy

Fausto Papetti - Emmanuelle

2010-01-24T16:51:00.000-08:00

Fausto Papetti: Emmanuelle

When Someone You Love Dies

2010-01-23T13:33:00.000-08:00

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's
gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

-John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Love Is a Sour Delight

2010-01-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

Love is a sour delight; a sug'red grief
A living death; an ever-dying life
A breach of Reason's law; a secret thief
A sea of tears; an ever-lasting strife
A bait for fools; a scourge of noble wits
A Deadly wound; a shot which ever hits.
Love is a blinded God; an angry boy
A Labyrinth of doubts; an idle lust
A slave to Beauty's will; a witless toy
A ravening bird, a tyrant most unjust
A burning heat; a cold; a flattering foe
A private hell; a very world of woe.
Yet mighty Love regard not what I say,
Which lie in trance bereft of all my wits,
But blame the light that leads me thus astray,
And makes my tongue blaspheme by frantic fits:
Yet hurt her not, left I sustain the smart,
Which am content to lodge her in my heart.

-Thomas Watson: Hekatompathia, or Passionate Centurie of Love, Sonnet XVIII (1582)

The Way to Arcady

2010-01-17T12:41:00.000-08:00

Love must kiss that mortal’s eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady.
No gold can buy you entrance there;
But beggared Love may go all bare—
No wisdom won with weariness;
But Love goes in with Folly’s dress—
No fame that wit could ever win;
But only Love may lead Love in.

-Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896)

What Thing Is Love?

2010-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

What thing is love? for sure I am it is a thing,
It is a prick, it is a thing, it is a prettie, prettie thing.
It is a fire, it is a coale, whose flame creeps in at every hoale.
And as my wits do best devise,
Loves dwelling is in Ladies eies.

-The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll, an anonymous play (1600)

Happiness from Loving

2010-01-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again - this is the brave and happy life.

-J.E. Buckrose

Classical Romance Love Plot

2010-01-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

A handsome youth and a beautiful girl meet by chance and fall in love, but unexpected obstacles obstruct their union; they are separated, and each is launched on a series of journeys and dangerous adventures; through all their tribulations, however, they remain faithful to each other and to the benevolent deities who at critical junctures guide their steps; and eventually they are reunited and live happily ever after.

-Bryan P. Reardon: The Form of Greek Romance; Quoted in Barbara Fuchs: Romance.

Love Metaphors - Metaphor Examples of Love

2010-01-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

Examples of Love metaphors:

Love is a nutrient: I am starved for love.

Love is a journey: It’s been a long, bumpy road.

Love is a unity of parts: We’re as one. They’re breaking up. We’re inseparable.

Love is a bond: There is a close tie between them.

Love is a fluid in a container: She was overflowing with love.

Love is fire: I am burning with love.

Love is an economic exchange: I’m putting more into this than you are.

Love is a natural force: She swept me off my feet.

Love is a physical force: I was magnetically drawn to her.

Love is an opponent: She tried to fight her feelings of love.

Love is a captive animal: She let go of her feelings.

Love is war: She conquered him. Love is insanity: I am crazy about you.

Love is a social superior: She is completely ruled by love.

Love is rapture/a high: I have been high on love for weeks.

The object of love is a small child: Well, baby, what are we gonna do?

The object of love is a deity: Don’t put her on a pedestal. He worships her.

-Zoltán Kövecses: Metaphor and Emotion in The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought

Wedding Speeches and Toasts!

First Love

2010-01-03T11:50:00.000-08:00

First Love

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet,
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.

My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked "what could I ail?"
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my sight away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.

I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start;
They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice
And love's appeal to know.

I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My heart has left its dwelling-place
And can return no more.

-John Clare (1793-1864)

Sonnet 116

2009-12-30T23:31:00.000-08:00

(Sonnet CXVI)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
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 proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Sonnet 116 is probably one of the most famous Shakespearean sonnets. It is quoted by many literature teachers when they need to provide an example of structure and form, versification and rhyme. However, I want to discuss its meaning rather than the A-B-A-B rhyme and such. After all, I believe it is way more important to understand the content of a poem because even someone who can barely read would realize that ‘minds’ rhymes with ‘finds’ and such…

This sonnet was first published more than four centuries ago, back in 1609. Ever since, it has been quoted and analyzed by many, and most agree on the fact that the whole poem is a definition of true love. We all believe we can recognize true love when we experience it, but do we? The Bard arguments that true love is an ever lasting love, so if it fades, then it was probably something else (infatuation is not true love, and modern psychology would probably agree on that!).

Despite the difficulties, love should stand. Love should last all through the distance, and the time passing by, because it is constant and unchanging. True love is compared to marriage in a religious sense in at least two ways in the sonnet: first, the word ‘marriage’ itself appears on the first verse, although metaphorically meaning ‘union’; second, when Shakespeare writes “But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”, that is the equivalent of “till death do us part”.

How can something as deep and obscure as love be defined? The Bard achieves it (who else could?) thanks to well chosen comparisons, some of them proper of the time the sonnet was written. For example, take “It is the star to every wondering bark”, written way before GPS was invented, and sailors could only find their way home if they could follow the map of the stars, so this verse implies that true love provides a sense of hope even if you are going through a really rough time in your life…

True love is not based on looks, of course, and that is why Sonnet 116 establishes that “rosy lips and cheeks” don’t last in time, but true love does. I’m thinking about those old couples who have aged together and they are still crazy for each other!

Finally, the poem closes with a sort of paradox: if it is not the actual definition of true love, then no man has ever loved at all, and Shakespeare himself hasn’t written anything! Of course, since we are actually reading the sonnet, that can only mean Sonnet 116 is the real definition of love.

The original spelling version. The f = s -> ftar = star; u = v -> loue = love.

The Sonnets - volume one - William Shakespeare

Shall I Compare Thee? Choral Songs on Shakespeare Texts

-William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

André Rieu - Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet

2009-12-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

-André Rieu: Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (written by Nino Rota).

Tristram Shandy Quotes

2009-12-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

Harsh and untuneful are the notes of love,
Unless my Julia strikes the key,
Her hand alone can touch the part,
Whose dulcet movement charms the heart,
And governs all the man with sympathetick sway.

---------------

As the ancients agree, brother Toby, said my father, that there are two different and distinct kinds of love, according to the different parts which are affected by it — the Brain or Liver — I think when a man is in love, it behoves him a little to consider which of the two he is fallen into.

-Laurence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1769)

I Loved You First - Christina Rossetti

2009-12-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

-Christina Rossetti

Sonnet 8

2009-12-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

I live, I Die. I drown and I burn.
I shiver with cold and perish with heat.
I leap from anguish to delight; from sweet
To bitter. No two moments are the same.

Suddenly my laughter and my cries
Join in a single instant, each pleasure
Aches with a hidden torment, and the night
Fades, yet endures. I wither and I bloom.

So Love leads me on forever.
And when I think I know the limits of pain
Without knowing, I find myself at peace.

When I think my joy is lasting and I see
Some future hope, some present certainty,
He returns and brings back the past again.

-Louise Labé (1525-1565): Sonnet 8
(transl. Richard A. Branyon)

Romantic Music - Concierto de Aranjuez

2009-12-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

The Concierto de Aranjuez is a composition by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. This second movement "Adagio" is performed by Paco de Lucía.

When Love Is Done

2009-12-16T16:55:00.000-08:00

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies,
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies,
When love is done.

-F. W. Bourdillon: Among the Flowers

William Blake Love Quote - Tell Thy Love

2009-12-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

Never pain to tell thy love
Love that never told can be
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

-William Blake: MS Note-Book

Philip Larkin - What Will Survive of Us

2009-12-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

-Philip Larkin: An Arundel Tomb

Adyashanti Quote - When True Love Arises

2009-12-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed, with whatever quality of love you have experienced, that when true love arises, it opens up both your mind and emotions? It's an openness to whatever is happening.

-Adyashanti: Emptiness Dancing

Romantic Music - Endless Love

2009-12-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

My first love,
You're every breath that I take
You're every step I make

-Luther Vandross / Mariah Carey: Endless Love

Love Quote - I Loved You Once

2009-12-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

I loved thee once. I’ll love no more,
Thine be the grief, as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?

-Sir Robert Aytoun (1570-1638)

Falling in Love

2009-12-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Falling in love often presents us with the opportunity of experiencing a deeper reality. Feeling that someone was fated to come into one’s life, having a sense that
someone is a soul mate, appeals to a level of reality not referred to by our
ongoing concerns with practical matters. It suggests that there is some meaning
in life that is not created by us, but is there to be found. Falling in love
also gives many people a sense that such powerful feelings have trans-human
origins, that somehow the divine is connected with the love they feel.

-Bonnelle Lewis Strickling: Dreaming about the Divine (2007)

Thomas Campion Quote - The Seasons

2009-12-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

The Summer hath his joys,
And Winter his delights.
Through Love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

-Thomas Campion (1567-1620): Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Twilight Love Quotes

2009-12-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn't know how potent that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

...

My head was spinning at the rapid change in direction our conversation had taken. From the cheerful topic of my impending demise, we were suddenly declaring ourselves. He waited, and even though I looked down to study our hands between us, I knew his golden eyes were on me. "You already know how I feel, of course," I finally said. "I'm here… which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you." I frowned. "I'm an idiot."

"You are an idiot," he agreed with a laugh. Our eyes met, and I laughed, too. We laughed together at the idiocy and sheer impossibility of such a moment.

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…" he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.

...

"Isn't it supposed to be like this?" He smiled. "The glory of first love, and all that. It's incredible, isn't it, the difference between reading about something, seeing it in the pictures, and experiencing it?"

...

His gold eyes grew very soft. "You said you loved me."
"You knew that already," I reminded him, ducking my head.
"It was nice to hear, just the same."
I hid my face against his shoulder.
"I love you," I whispered.
"You are my life now," he answered simply.
There was nothing more to say for the moment. He rocked us back and forth as the room grew lighter.

...

"I love you," he said. "It's a poor excuse for what I'm doing, but it's still true."
It was the first time he'd said he loved me — in so many words. He might not realize it, but I certainly did.
"Now, please try to behave yourself," he continued, and he bent to softly brush his lips against mine.
I held properly still. Then I sighed.

...

I stopped on the porch and took hold of his face in my hands. I looked fiercely into his eyes.
"I love you," I said in a low, intense voice. "I will always love you, no matter what happens now."
"Nothing is going to happen to you, Bella," he said just as fiercely.

...

"Edward." I tried to tell him, but my voice was so heavy and slow. I couldn't understand myself.
"Bella, you're going to be fine. Can you hear me, Bella? I love you."

...

He sighed without returning my gaze. "It was impossible… to stop," he whispered. "Impossible. But I did." He looked up finally, with half a smile.
"I must love you."

...

-Stephenie Meyer: Twilight

Edward Cullen (The Twilight Saga: New Moon) - Life-Size Standup Poster

Romantic Music - Wuthering Heights

2009-12-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window

I'm coming back love , cruel Heathcliff
My one dream, my only master...

Kate Bush wrote this song when she was 18 years old. Hayley Westenra sings this beautifully also.

This is the scene of the novel Wuthering Heights (by Emily Brontë) where the chorus of the song is from (chapter III):

This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten.
‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed,
‘Let me in—let me in!’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself.
‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton)—‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’
As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear.
‘How can I!’ I said at length. ‘Let me go, if you want me to let you in!’
The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer.
I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on!
‘Begone!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.’
‘It is twenty years,’ mourned the voice: ‘twenty years. I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’
Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward.
I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.
To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal: hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open, with a vigorous hand, and a light glimmered through the squares at the top of the bed. I sat shuddering yet, and wiping the perspiration from my forehead: the intruder appeared to hesitate, and muttered to himself.
At last, he said, in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, ‘Is any one here?’
I considered it best to confess my presence; for I knew Heathcliff’s accents, and feared he might search further, if I kept quiet. With this intention, I turned and opened the panels. I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced.

Matthew Arnold Quote - Love, let us be true to one another

2009-12-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

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: from Dover Beach (1867)

What's Romance?

2009-12-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time.

-D.H. Lawrence: Studies in Classic American Literature (1924)

Romantic Music - Don McLean, Crying

2009-12-07T08:56:00.000-08:00

Don McLean's version of Roy Orbison original song Crying. It went to #1 in UK charts (summer of 1980).

Erich Fromm Quote - Love is Union

2009-12-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

LOVE IS UNION with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under
the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own
self. It is an experience of sharing, of communing, which permits
the full unfolding of one's own inner activity.

-Erich Fromm

Romantic Music - Chopin Nocturne

2009-12-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

Chopin Nocturne Op.9 No.2

Quotes on Love - Love Is a Feeling and a Code

2009-12-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Language is the medium of expression of new semantic forms which enable intimacy to be communicated. Love is perhaps a feeling, but more than this, it is one to be communicated – or expressed. The complexity of love discourse these days becomes the basis of the renewal of the expressions of love.

Society is forced to develop new, more subtle codes of love. But even a code of love presupposes that love is something originating in the separation of the lovers. And
this, no doubt, is the big difference between a contemporary experience of love and love in the past.

-from John Lechte: Key Contemporary Concepts

Love Quotes Romantic - These Foolish Things Remind Me of You

2009-12-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces,
An airline ticket to romantic places;
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of You.

-Holt Marvell: These Foolish Things Remind Me of You (1935 song)

Balzac Quotes - Honoré de Balzac on Love

2009-12-05T16:56:00.000-08:00

Love has its own instinct. It knows how to find the road to the heart just as the weakest insect moves towards its flower by an irresistible will which fears nothing. Honoré de Balzac: La Femme de trente ans (1832)

To love without hope, to be disgusted with life, constitute, in these days, a social position. Ferragus

I love him for his own sake, the dear cherub. For four years his home has been in my heart. Cousin Betty

Women believe in men when they flavor their speeches with the word love. Colonel Chabert

Those in love either doubt nothing or doubt everything.

To love without hope is still happiness.

If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart?

Love is the gold, hatred the iron of the mine of feeling that lies buried in us.

Love and vengeance, hunting together, will always strike down their prey.

Love is to the moral nature exactly what the sun is to the earth.

Love is the only passion that cares not about the past or the future.

Love Quotes Romantic - Voltaire on Love

2009-12-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

There are so many kinds of love, that in order to define it, we scarcely know which to direct our attention to. Some boldly apply the name of “love” to a caprice of a few days, a connection without attachment, passion without affection, the affectations of cicisbeism, a cold usage, a romantic fancy, a taste speedily followed by a distaste. They apply the name to a thousand chimeras.

If you wish to form an idea of love, look at the sparrows in your garden; behold your doves; contemplate the bull when introduced to the heifer; look at that powerful and spirited horse which two of your grooms are conducting to the mare that quietly awaits him, and is evidently pleased at his approach; observe the flashing of his eyes, notice the strength and loudness of his neighings, the boundings, the curvetings, the ears erect, the mouth opening with convulsive gaspings, the distended nostrils, the breath of fire, the raised and waving mane, and the impetuous movement with which he rushes towards the object which nature has destined for him; do not, however, be jealous of his happiness; but reflect on the advantages of the human species; they afford ample compensation in love for all those which nature has conferred on mere animals—strength, beauty, lightness, and rapidity.

As men have been endowed with the talent of perfecting whatever nature has bestowed upon them, they have accordingly perfected the gift of love. Cleanliness, personal attention, and regard to health render the frame more sensitive, and consequently increase its capacity of gratification. All the other amiable and valuable sentiments enter afterwards into that of love, like the metals which amalgamate with gold; friendship and esteem readily fly to its support; and talents both of body and of mind are new and strengthening bonds.

-Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary

Love Quotes Romantic - The Death of the Heart

2009-12-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.

-Elizabeth Bowen

Love Quotes Romantic - Baudelaire Fusées

2009-12-03T14:40:00.000-08:00

Love seeks to escape from itself, to mingle itself with its victim, as a victor nation with the vanquished - and yet at the same time to retain the privileges of a conqueror.

-Charles Baudelaire

Love Quotes Romantic - Le Morte D'Arthur

2009-12-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.
--
The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.
--
For as well as I have loved thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee, for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed.
--
And much more am I sorrier for my good knights' loss than for the loss of my fair queen; for queens I might have enough, but such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in no company.

-Thomas Malory

Quote from George Birmingham, Hyacinth

2009-11-02T09:46:00.000-08:00

He had read a few novels, and he knew that even the writers whose chief business it is to glorify the passion of love do not dare to represent it as independent of money.

-George Birmingham

Love Quotes Romantic - Kiss of Welcome

2009-08-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

There is a kiss of welcome and of parting; the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen or mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise and receipt of fulfillment. It is strange, therefore, that a woman is invincible whose armory consists of kisses, smiles, sighs and tears?

-Haliburton

Love Quotes Romantic - Love and Friendship - Emily Brontë

2009-08-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild-rose briar is sweet in the spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He may still leave thy garland green.

-Emily Brontë

Love Quotes Romantic - Camilla

2009-08-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

"The cure of a romantic first flame is a better surety to subsequent discretion, than all the exhortations of all the fathers, and mothers, and guardians, and maiden aunts in the universe."

"No man is in love when he marries. He may have loved before; I have even heard he has
sometimes loved after: but at the time never. There is something in the formalities of the matrimonial preparations that drive away all the little cupidons."

-Fanny Burney (Mme d’Arblay): Camilla (1796)

Love Quotes Romantic - Wuthering Heights

2009-08-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees - My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: - a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

-Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights (1847)