The 50 most romantic quotes from books, poetry and plays
From poems to passages from classic books and plays, here are our pick of the best love quotes in literature.
Romance is threaded through our books , poetry and plays, from classic novels like Gone With the Wind to well-known plays such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , and modern works like The Notebook .
Literature is the perfect medium in which to talk about love; its big emotions, grand gestures and tiny flutters of the heart can all be perfectly summed up on the page. So, in light of that, we’ve picked out some of the most famous, beautifully written and romantic quotes from literature.
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Whether you’re looking for a love poem as inspiration for a wedding reading , or you’re just a book lover with a preference for whimsy, this list is full of passionate prose.
We’ve broken the list into six sections, with love quotes taken from contemporary literature, historic stories, classic novels, books that have become films, love poetry and plays. Some are romance novels entirely: for others, though, love might just be a small part of their stories. Together we think they make a collection of the best romantic quotes from literature, ever.
Romantic movie quotes that originated from literature
“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Read it here and watch it here
“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Read it here and watch it here
“I wish I knew how to quit you.”
BrokeBack Mountain by Annie Proulx
“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read it here and watch it here
“I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.”
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Quotes from historical romance novels
“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”
The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle
Read it here
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”
Possession by A.S. Byatt
We are asleep until we fall in love!”
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
“He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.”
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Read it here
“I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
“We’ve loved each other so long I’ve never been a man and not loved her.”
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
“You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling.”
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
Romantic quotes from plays
“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
“She is a mortal danger to all men. She is beautiful without knowing it, and possesses charms that she’s not even aware of. She is like a trap set by nature - a sweet perfumed rose in whose petals Cupid lurks in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She instills grace in every common thing and divinity in every careless gesture. Venus in her shell was never so lovely, and Diana in the forest never so graceful as my Lady when she strides through Paris!”
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”
Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“One hour of right down love is worth an age of dully living on.”
The Rover by Aphra Benn
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Literary love quotes from historical novels
“Love is a great beautifier.”
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
“Her love was entire as a child’s, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring.”
Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
“She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
“It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.”
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Read it here and watch it here
“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
“I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.”
Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Read it here
“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
“Now, I’m not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn’t matter to me. And it’s not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I’ll do anything you say.”
Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
“All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.”
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
“All this gladness in life, all honest pride in doing my work in the world, all this keen sense of being, I owe to her!” And it doubles the gladness, it makes the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till I hardly know if it is pain or pleasure, to think that I owe it to one - nay, you must, you shall hear” - said he, stepping forwards with stern determination - “to one whom I love, as I do not believe man ever loved woman before.”
North And South by Elizabeth Gaskell
“It has made me better loving you … it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.”
The Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James
Quotes from love poems
“I would love to say that you make me weak in the knees but to be quite upfront and completely truthful you make my body forget it has knees at all.”
Love Language, Chasers of the Light by Tyler Knott Gregson
“Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.”
In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson
“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.”
Stop All The Clocks by W.H. Auden
“He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.”
In An Artist’s Studio by Christina Rossetti
“O, my luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June.”
My Luve Is Like A Red Red Rose by Robert Burns
“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.”
The Clod And The Pebble by William Blake
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
“You might not have been my first love, but you were the love that made all the other loves irrelevant”
milk and honey by Rupi Kaur
“Love starts as a feeling, but to continue is a choice. And I find myself choosing you, more and more every day.”
Bending The Universe by Justin Wetch
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depths and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and idea grace.”
Sonnet 43 by William Shakespeare
Romantic quotes from contemporary novels
“The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”
The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
“Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
“That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.”
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
“Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous, love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful.”
A Walk to Remember by Nicholoas Sparks
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Read it here and watch it here
“And the flavor of Pippa’s kiss–bittersweet and strange–stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
The Goldfinch by Donna Tart
“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
The Fault in Our Stars by John Greene
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Love Quotes By Writers
Whilst there’s no doubt Shakespeare could always write a great quote about love , many famous writers down the years have done the same. In this blog post we’ve pulled together the top love quotes by famous writers , whether written or spoken:
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
Victor Hugo
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
“there is no remedy for love but to love more.”, “‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”, “true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.”.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”
Honore de Balzac
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
A. A. Milne
“If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”
Michel de Montaigne
“A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”
Charles Dickens
“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.”
George Eliot
“I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty… you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”
J. D. Salinger
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
Henry Miller
“I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence.”
Theodore Dreiser
“How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.”
Barbara Pym
“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
G. K. Chesterton
“To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I’.”
“blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.”, “to love another person is to see the face of god.”.
Lawrence Durrell
“The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.”
“a very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.”.
Henry David Thoreau
“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.”
Leo Tolstoy
“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
W. Somerset Maugham
“Love: the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
“to love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.”.
Francois Mauriac
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
“love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.”, “some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”.
Hermann Hesse
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
George Sand
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
Oscar Wilde (read about the most famous Irish authors , or see more Oscar Wilde quotes , and Oscar Wilde quotes about love )
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
Oscar Wilde
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
Orson Welles
Love quotes by writers
What do you think of this list of love quotes by famous writers – any more quotes we should include?
That’s your lot for love quotes by poets. What do you think – any great ones we’re missing? Let us know in the comments below!
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How do I love thee, let me count the ways… Shakespeare
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61 of Your Favorite Romance Quotes From Literature
February 14, 2017 11 min read
We asked our community of passionate writers to tell us their favorite romance lines from literature. If your favorite quote is missing, or this post fails to spark genuine emotion in you, take it up with the community! We, however, stand by our following of romantics and think they did a bang up job. Light a few candles, crack open that box of wine and have the tissues ready. In no particular order, here are 61 of our favorite romance quotes from literature:
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
- A.A. Milne, Pooh's Little Instruction Book
I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
- George Eliot, Adam Bede
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and - what I’d really like to do - explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock built when peace filled the world.
- Haruki Murakami, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
"I am desolate without you, my darling, O, so desolate! I do not mind having to work: but if you will send me one little line, and say, ‘I am coming soon,’ I will bide on, Angel—O, so cheerfully!" "The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don’t like to see the rooks and starlings in the field, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you, my own dear! Come to me—come to me, and save me from what threatens me!"
- Thomas Hardy , Tess of d'Ubervilles
I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom, but that didn’ happen.
- Charles Bukowski, An Almost Made Up Poem
I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm.
- William Goldman, The Princess Bride
He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.
- E. M. Forster, A Room With A Vie w
It's like time has lost all continuity. Every second with you outweighs days of life before I met you.
- Stephanie Meyer, The Chemist
"And when it did happen, how did you feel?" "Happy. And then I got afraid that it would vanish as quickly as it came. That it was accidental -- that I didn't deserve it. It's like this very very nice car crash that never ends."
- Douglas Copeland, Microserfs
We're all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.
- Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship
Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
- Patrick Rothfus, Name of the Wind
Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself.
- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No ... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!
- Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin
There is no pretending. I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there's life after that, I'll love you then.
- Cassandra Clare, The Mortal Instruments
To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.
- Anne Sexton, Admonitions to a Special Person
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;
- Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.
- Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady
He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize that he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that a man had been called.
- Neil Gaiman, Stardust
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
- Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet XVII
Be careful, You are not in wonderland I have heard the strange madness long growing in your soul. But you are fortunate. In your ignorance In your isolation, you who have suffered Find where love hides. Give. Share. Lose. Lest we die unbloomed.
- Allen Ginsberg
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
- Jane Austen, Emma
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it
- E. E. Cummings
There are darknesses in life, and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
I wish I knew how to quit you.
- Annie Proulax, Brokeback Mountain
I took a photo of us mid-embrace. When I am old and alone, I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.
- Joe Dunthorne, Submarine
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
- Pablo Neruda, Love Poem XIV
Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.
- Maya Angelou
Dear forgiveness, I saved a plate for you. Quit milling around the yard and come inside.
- Richard Siken, Litany in Which Certain Things Have Been Crossed Out
If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it.
- Nicole Krause, The History of Love
You have been the last dream of my soul.
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
…but language is like rhythms we beat out on kettles for bears to dance to, when what we want is to make music that will wring tears from the stars.
- Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.
- Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Isn't it pretty to think so.
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
I looked around the empty room - which was no longer empty. There was a voice in it, and a tall slim lovely woman. There was a dark hair in the pillow in the bedroom. The air was full of music.
- Raymond Chandler , Playback
Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Though lovers be lost love shall not.
- Dylan Thomas, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Love is dope, not chicken soup.
- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.
- Scarlett O'Hara, Gone with the Wind
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.
- Jane Austen, Persuasion
Love is a hawk with velvet claws Love is a rock with heart and veins; Love is a lion with satin jaws, Love is a storm with silken reins.
- Kurt Vonnegut, EPICAC
She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.
- J. D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.
- Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it. 'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that.
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road
There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.
- Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Do I love you? My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.
Like all lovers, they spoke much about themselves, as if they might thereby understand the world which made them possible.
- John Williams, Stoner
Who, being loved, is poor?
- Oscar Wild, A Woman of No Importance
I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world as me.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
But that I know love is begun by time; And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
- Shakespeare, Hamlet
You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.
He reached for her and he saw her smile and the voices melded into a single word from God: Home.
- Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
- Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee—
- Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
25 Quotes on Love from Great Authors
1. “If it is right, it happens—the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” John Steinbeck 2. “You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.” William Faulkner 3. “In love there are two things—bodies and words.” Joyce Carol Oates 4. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” Roald Dahl, The Witches 5. “The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It’s followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.” Nora Ephron 6. “I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.” Alice Walker 7. “True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring—once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome…except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners. And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous.” Stephen King, Wizard and Glass 8. “Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.” Rainer Maria Rilke 9. “I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty…you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.” J. D. Salinger 10. “Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” Nicholas Sparks 11. “We love the things we love for what they are.” Robert Frost 12. “Love loves to love love.” James Joyce 13. “The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.” Henry Miller 14. “Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.” e.e. cummings 15. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” Charles Dickens 16. “Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.” Madame De Stael 17. “Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.” Ray Bradbury 18. “To get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” Mark Twain 19. “Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs.” William Shakespeare 20. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” Orson Welles 21. “Who, being loved, is poor?” Oscar Wilde 22. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” Henry David Thoreau 23. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” James Baldwin 24. “The heart was made to be broken.” Oscar Wilde
The Top 12 Literary Love Quotes
In this post from Writers Write, we share a selection of our favourite literary love quotes .
As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. ~ Anne Sexton
Writers and poets have been writing about love for centuries. Here are 12 of our favourite literary love quotes.
- I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close. ~ Pablo Neruda
- If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you. ~ A.A. Milne
- Each time you happen to me all over again. ~ Edith Wharton
- Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ Emily Brontë
- What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? ~ George Eliot
- Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. ~ Robert Browning
- He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book. ~ Michael Ondaatje
- Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering. ~ Nicole Krauss
- We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that’s why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I’ll never forget a single moment of it. ~ Nicholas Sparks
- Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
- I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain & the words that dance between people & for me, it will always be this way, walking in the light, remembering being alive together. ~ Brian Andreas
- If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life. ~ Oscar Wilde
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Please add your favourites in the comments section below.
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Writers Quotes About Love
35 of the Most Romantic Quotes from Literature
Looking for romantic quotes from literature for your wedding readings or signage? We've got 35 beautiful quotes to inspire you
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Whether you’re total bookworms and have the perfect library wedding venue, or you are just searching for some romantic words to include in your wedding, we’ve rounded up some of the most romantic quotes from literature to inspire you.
Why not get your favourites put on to wedding signs to use around your venue? Or make a note of them to include in future wedding anniversary cards?
READ MORE: 51 Funny Quotes About Love and Marriage
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
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A Moveable Feast – Ernest Hemingway
“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows opens and the stars bright.”
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!”
READ MORE: The Most Inspiring Quotes About Love
Adam Bede – George Eliot
“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”
For One More Day – Mitch Albom
“You can find something truly important in an ordinary minute.”
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
READ MORE: The Cutest Disney Quotes For Your Wedding
The Notebook – Nicholas Sparks
“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”
Dr Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
READ MORE: Utterly Romantic Quotes From Movies
Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
The Symposium – Plato
“And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy.”
READ MORE: 45 Funny and Wise Quotes For Wedding Cards
Prometheus Unbound – Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
Winnie the Pooh – A. A. Milne
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”
READ MORE: The Best Disney Wedding Songs
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
“It has made me better loving you … it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.”
Rabbi Ben Ezra – Robert Browning
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”
The White Company – Arthur Conan Doyle
“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.”
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
“Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
READ MORE: 33 of Our Favourite Romantic Quotes
Stop All the Clocks – W. H. Auden
“He was my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest.”
Hamlet – William Shakespeare
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.”
The Amber Gods – Harriet Prescott Spofford
“The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.”
This quote is perfect as a wedding motto if you’re eloping to a romantic destination !
“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare – there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
READ MORE: 11 Harry Potter Love Quotes
The Clod and the Pebble – William Blake
“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.”
Atonement – Ian McEwan
“I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.”
A Woman of No Importance – Oscar Wilde
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
READ MORE: Brilliant Engagement Gifts For the Happy Couple
Much Ado About Nothing – William Shakespeare
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?”
The Evolution of Mara Dyer – Michelle Hodkin
“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.”
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
“Do I love you? My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.”
This quote is perfect if you’re looking for beach themed wedding ideas !
Annabel Lee – Edgar Allan Poe
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”
READ MORE: 27 Personalised Wedding Gift Ideas
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
“Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you.”
Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom
“I like myself better when I’m with you.”
READ MORE: Wedding Readings From Children’s Books
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling
“Always.”
If you’re searching for even more quote-spiration, what about reading our round up of the best Disney quotes for wedding readings ?
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