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150 quotes that mention love in so many words. Each one is checked against the book it comes from.
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of
Love your life, poor as it is.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Work is love made visible.
It is much safer to be feared than loved
All mankind love a lover.
For the love of money is the root of all evil
Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule.
To love, or to have loved,—this suffices.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
If music be the food of love, play on
Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Self-love is the greatest of flatterers.
Self love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.
Pride will not owe, self-love will not pay.
Lovers are never tired of each other,—they always speak of themselves.
There is more self-love than love in jealousy.
We pardon in the degree that we love.
In love deceit almost always goes further than mistrust.
There is a kind of love, the excess of which forbids jealousy.
We only appreciate our good or evil in proportion to our self-love.
When one loves one doubts even what one most believes.
The greatest miracle of love is to eradicate flirtation.
We have much trouble to break with one, when we no longer are in love.
A gentleman may love like a lunatic, but not like a beast.
Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it.
Envy is destroyed by true friendship, flirtation by true love.
We keep our first lover for a long time—if we do not get a second.
What we find the least of in flirtation is love.
In love the quickest is always the best cure.
There are many remedies to cure love, yet none are infallible.
It would be well for us if we knew all our passions make us do.
However rare true love is, true friendship is rarer.
More persons exist without self-love than without envy.
Love to one only is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. Love to God also!
One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa—blessing it rather than in love with it.
By means of music the very passions enjoy themselves.
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
One no longer loves one’s knowledge sufficiently after one has communicated it.
One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.
Love is a true renovator.
Against the great superiority of another there is no remedy but love.
The passions are good or bad qualities, only intensified.
The first and last thing that is required of genius is love of truth.
Duty: where a man loves what he commands himself to do.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgement of one another’s faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.
ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
ENVELOPE, n. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.
MERCY, n. An attribute beloved of detected offenders.
NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
PLATONIC, adj. Pertaining to the philosophy of Socrates. Platonic Love is a fool’s name for the affection between a disability and a frost.
PROPERTY, n. Any material thing, having no particular value, that may be held by A against the cupidity of B. Whatever gratifies the passion for possession in one and disappoints it in all others. The object of man’s brief rapacity and long indifference.
Table D’HOTE, n. A caterer’s thrifty concession to the universal passion for irresponsibility.
ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
Whatever discoveries have been made in the region of self-love, there remain many unexplored territories there.
The duration of our passions is no more dependant upon us than the duration of our life.
Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever.
The passions are the only advocates which always persuade. They are a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion will be more persuasive than the most eloquent without.
The passions possess a certain injustice and self interest which makes it dangerous to follow them, and in reality we should distrust them even when they appear most trustworthy.
In the human heart there is a perpetual generation of passions; so that the ruin of one is almost always the foundation of another.
Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity.
Whatever care we take to conceal our passions under the appearances of piety and honour, they are always to be seen through these veils.
Our self love endures more impatiently the condemnation of our tastes than of our opinions.
People are often vain of their passions, even of the worst, but envy is a passion so timid and shame-faced that no one ever dare avow her.
The attachment or indifference which philosophers have shown to life is only the style of their self love, about which we can no more dispute than of that of the palate or of the choice of colours.
The hate of favourites is only a love of favour. The envy of NOT possessing it, consoles and softens its regrets by the contempt it evinces for those who possess it, and we refuse them our homage, not being able to detract from them what attracts that of the rest of the world.
It is difficult to define love; all we can say is, that in the soul it is a desire to rule, in the mind it is a sympathy, and in the body it is a hidden and delicate wish to possess what we love—Plus many mysteries.
If there is a pure love, exempt from the mixture of our other passions, it is that which is concealed at the bottom of the heart and of which even ourselves are ignorant.
There is no disguise which can long hide love where it exists, nor feign it where it does not.
There are few people who would not be ashamed of being beloved when they love no longer.
If we judge of love by the majority of its results it rather resembles hatred than friendship.
There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand different copies.
Neither love nor fire can subsist without perpetual motion; both cease to live so soon as they cease to hope, or to fear.
There is real love just as there are real ghosts; every person speaks of it, few persons have seen it.
Love lends its name to an infinite number of engagements (Commerces) which are attributed to it, but with which it has no more concern than the Doge has with all that is done in Venice.
The love of justice is simply in the majority of men the fear of suffering injustice.
We can love nothing but what agrees with us, and we can only follow our taste or our pleasure when we prefer our friends to ourselves; nevertheless it is only by that preference that friendship can be true and perfect.
What men term friendship is merely a partnership with a collection of reciprocal interests, and an exchange of favours—in fact it is but a trade in which self love always expects to gain something.
We often persuade ourselves to love people who are more powerful than we are, yet interest alone produces our friendship; we do not give our hearts away for the good we wish to do, but for that we expect to receive.
Self love increases or diminishes for us the good qualities of our friends, in proportion to the satisfaction we feel with them, and we judge of their merit by the manner in which they act towards us.
If we conquer our passions it is more from their weakness than from our strength.
There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.
Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which causes our heart to attach itself to all the qualities of the person we love in succession, sometimes giving the preference to one, sometimes to another. This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited to the same person.
There are two kinds of constancy in love, one arising from incessantly finding in the loved one fresh objects to love, the other from regarding it as a point of honour to be constant.
The health of the mind is not less uncertain than that of the body, and when passions seem furthest removed we are no less in danger of infection than of falling ill when we are well.
Love of glory, fear of shame, greed of fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others are often causes of that bravery so vaunted among men.
It would seem that even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a subtle and delicate manner.
The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters.
The pleasure of love is in loving, we are happier in the passion we feel than in that we inspire.
The usual education of young people is to inspire them with a second self-love.
There is no passion wherein self-love reigns so powerfully as in love, and one is always more ready to sacrifice the peace of the loved one than his own.
The beauty of novelty is to love as the flower to the fruit; it lends a lustre which is easily lost, but which never returns.
Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.
It is impossible to love a second time those whom we have really ceased to love.
It is difficult to love those we do not esteem, but it is no less so to love those whom we esteem much more than ourselves.
We are nearer loving those who hate us, than those who love us more than we desire.
Infidelities should extinguish love, and we ought not to be jealous when we have cause to be so. No persons escape causing jealousy who are worthy of exciting it.
The violences we put upon ourselves to escape love are often more cruel than the cruelty of those we love.
It is generally the fault of the loved one not to perceive when love ceases.
The struggle we undergo to remain faithful to one we love is little better than infidelity.
It is equally as difficult to be contented when one has too much or too little love.
We are often less unhappy at being deceived by one we loved, than on being deceived.
It appears that nature has hid at the bottom of our hearts talents and abilities unknown to us. It is only the passions that have the power of bringing them to light, and sometimes give us views more true and more perfect than art could possibly do.
All passions make us commit some faults, love alone makes us ridiculous.
In the old age of love as in life we still survive for the evils, though no longer for the pleasures.
As in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance than from knowledge.
The most violent passions give some respite, but vanity always disturbs us.
Pride as the other passions has its follies. We are ashamed to own we are jealous, and yet we plume ourselves in having been and being able to be so.
The same firmness that enables us to resist love enables us to make our resistance durable and lasting. So weak persons who are always excited by passions are seldom really possessed of any.
When the heart is still disturbed by the relics of a passion it is proner to take up a new one than when wholly cured.
Those who have had great passions often find all their lives made miserable in being cured of them.
We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from ambition to love.
Extreme avarice is nearly always mistaken, there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future.
Some people are so self-occupied that when in love they find a mode by which to be engrossed with the passion without being so with the person they love.
Love, though so very agreeable, pleases more by its ways than by itself.
A soul which knows that it is loved, but does not itself love, betrays its sediment: its dregs come up.
Heavy, melancholy men turn lighter, and come temporarily to their surface, precisely by that which makes others heavy—by hatred and love.
Discovering reciprocal love should really disenchant the lover with regard to the beloved. “What! She is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or—or—-“
The danger in HAPPINESS.—“Everything now turns out best for me, I now love every fate:—who would like to be my fate?”
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of today—burning us.
Sensuality often forces the growth of love too much, so that its root remains weak, and is easily torn up.
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.
Love brings to light the noble and hidden qualities of a lover—his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive as to his normal character.
One occasionally embraces some one or other, out of love to mankind (because one cannot embrace all); but this is what one must never confess to the individual.
Ye Utilitarians—ye, too, love the UTILE only as a VEHICLE for your inclinations,—ye, too, really find the noise of its wheels insupportable!
Be genuine and strenuous; earn for yourself, and look for, grace from those in high places; from the powerful, favour; from the active and the good, advancement; from the many, affection; from the individual, love.
Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
Defects are perceived only by one who has no love; therefore, to see them, a man must become uncharitable, but not more so than is necessary for the purpose.
By force of habit we look at a clock that has run down as if it were still going, and we gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still loved.
If a man feels no love, he must learn how to flatter; otherwise he will not succeed.
There are men who love their like and seek it; others love their opposite and follow after it.
Ill-favour and hatred limit the spectator to the surface, even when keen perception is added unto them; but when keen perception unites with good-will and love, it gets at the heart of man and the world; nay, it may hope to reach the highest goal of all.
There is a politeness of the heart, and it is allied to love. It produces the most agreeable politeness of outward demeanour.
Voluntary dependence is the best state, and how should that be possible without love?
Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix. When the old one burns away, the new one rises out of its ashes at once.
Great passions are hopeless diseases. That which could cure them is the first thing to make them really dangerous.
Passion is enhanced and tempered by avowal. In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more desirable than in confidence and reticence towards those we love.
Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature; they worked together and created a lovely image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.
There is and will be much discussion as to the use and harm of circulating the Bible. One thing is clear to me: mischief will result, as heretofore, by using it phantastically as a system of dogma; benefit, as heretofore, by a loving acceptance of its teachings.
What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance, and without any visible reason. Be upon your guard, too, against those, who confess, as their weaknesses, all the cardinal virtues.