c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.
— David Levithan, Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List
He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
— W.H. Auden, Collected Poems
The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too.
— Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants
One more secret smile. One more shared laugh. One more electric kiss. Finding him was like finding someone I didn't know I was searching for.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush
That's when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you -- without you asking.
— Adriana Trigiani, Very Valentine
When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.
— Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
When God knows you're ready for the responsibility of commitment, He'll reveal the right person under the right circumstances.
— Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye
..."better to have loved and lost" bullshit. Don't show me paradise and then burn it down.
— Harlan Coben
I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can't see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.
— Jack Llawayllynn, Indulgence
Annabeth pressed her lips to Percy’s ear. “I love you.”She wasn’t sure he could hear her—but if they died, she wanted those to be her last words.
— Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.
— Isabel Allende, Of Love and Shadows
They've got no idea what happiness is, they don't know that without this love there is no happiness or unhappiness for us--there is no life.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Being in love, I find myself smiling for no reason at all...
— Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
If you love someone, you must be prepared to set them free.
— Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone
Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought.
— Pearl S. Buck
Love is too precious to be ashamed of.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.
— Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun
I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.
— Dave Eggers, What Is the What
I am my heart’s undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow.
— Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.Then he was gone.Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted torun after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief.
— Jenny Han, We'll Always Have Summer
The Court of Dreams.The people who knew that there was a price, and one worth paying, for that dream. The bastard- born warriors, the Illyrian half breed, the monster trapped in a beautiful body, the dreamer born into a court of nightmares...And the huntress with an artist's soul.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
If I love you more than you love me, I’m as good as dead. Yet I can’t make myself take it back. I can’t just walk away from you, because every time you pass by me without smiling, without touching my hand, or at least making eye contact, it feels like I’m dying inside.
— Rachel Vincent, Shift
He was the toast to her butter.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One
She smiled, and her eyes started to drift downward. "Cather..." Back up to his eyes."You know that I'm falling in love with you, right?
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
— Graham Greene, The Comedians
He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever.
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
...Who could refrain,	That had a heart to love, and in that heart	Courage to make love known?
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
The heart can think of no devotionGreater than being shore to the ocean-Holding the curve of one position,Counting an endless repetition.
— Robert Frost
But even when I stop crying, even when we fall asleep and I'm nestled in his arms, this will leave another scar. No one will see it. No one will know. But it will be there. And eventually all of the scars will have scars, and that's all I'll be--one big scar of a love gone wrong.
— Amanda Grace, But I Love Him
So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
— Robert Louis Stevenson, Lay Morals
Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.
— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her?Never mind physically but betray her in his mind,in the very "poetry of his soul".Well,it's not easy but men do it all the time.
— Mario Puzo, Fools Die
If you love me as you say you do,' she whispered, 'make it so that I am at peace.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.
— Paulo Coelho
The more boys I meet the more I love my dog.
— Carrie Underwood
I hug him tightly. “I can’t imagine my life without you, Christian. I love you so much it frightens me.” “Me, too,” he breathes. “My life would be empty without you. I love you so much.
— E.L. James, Fifty Shades Darker
We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls.We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.
— Maya Angelou
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.
— Charles M. Schulz
Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles
— Tahereh Mafi
She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.
— Charles Bukowski
I think you're still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.
— Ruskin Bond, Scenes from a Writer's Life
I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
Tears are words the heart can't express
— Gerard Way
The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love -- which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.
— bell hooks
I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.
— Charles Bukowski, Women
Shazi, I prefer the color blue to any other. The scent of lilacs in your hair is a source of constant torment. I despise figs. Lastly, I will never forget, all the days of my life, the memories of last night—For nothing, not the sun, not the rain, not even the brightest star in the darkest sky, could begin to compare to the wonder of you.Khalid.
— Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
I think you can only be truly mad at someone you really love.
— E.L. James, Fifty Shades Freed
Wanting him to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left.
— Brian Andreas
I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Love is illogical, love had consequences--I did this to myself, and I should be able to take it.
— Marie Lu, Prodigy
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.
— Charlie Chaplin
I would love to saythat youmake meweak in the kneesbutto be quite upfrontand completelytruthfulyoumake my bodyforgetit has kneesat all.
— Tyler Knott Gregson, Love Language
Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me, and I am in no humor at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love - now you are love.
— Osho
I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he'd look at me the way boys do in films, as if I'm beautiful.
— Jenny Downham, Before I Die
I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.
— Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.
— Jess C. Scott, Tongue-Tied
Can I say something?''Go on''I'm a little drunk''Me too. That's okay.''Just....I missed you, you know.''I missed you too.''But so, so much, Dexter. There were so many things I wanted to talk to you about, and you weren't there-''same here.''I tell you what it is. It's.....When I didn't see you, I thought about you every day, I mean EVERY DAY in some way or another-''same here.''-Even if it was just "I wish Dexter could see this" or "Where's Dexter now?" or "Christ that Dexter, what an idiot", you know what I mean, and seeing you today, well, I thought I'd got you back - my BEST friend. And now all this, the wedding, the baby- I'm so happy for you, Dex, but it feels like I've lost you again.'--'You know what happens you have a family, your responsibilities change, you lose touch with people''It won't be like that, I promise.''Do you?''Absolutely''You swear? No more disappearing?''I won't if you won't.'Their lips touched now, mouths pursed tight, their eyes open, both of them stock still. The moment held, a kind of glorious confusion.
— David Nicholls, One Day
Every life has one true love snapshot.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Sweets to the sweet.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything I'd ever lost since my childhood had washed up, and I was now standing here in front of it, and if I waited long enough, a tiny figure would appear on the horizon across the field and gradually get larger until I'd see it was Tommy, and he'd wave, and maybe even call.
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
When you're missing a peice of yourself, aching, gut wrenching emptiness begins to take over. Until you find the link that completes your very soul, the feeling will never go away. Most people find a way to fill this void, material possessions, a string of relationships, affairs, food...I bare my soul, with words, for all to see.
— Jennifer Salaiz
Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
— Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach and Other Poems
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, 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
If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been.
— Nicholas Sparks, Message in a Bottle
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.To know the pain of too much tenderness.To be wounded by your own understanding of love;And to bleed willingly and joyfully.To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;To rest at noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;To return home at eventide with gratitude;And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.
— Kahlil Gibran
My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.
— Jess C. Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel
Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
— Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Two words. Three vowels. Four constenants. Seven letters. It can either cut you open to the core and leave you in ungodly pain or it can free your soul and lift a tremendous weight off you shoulders. The phrase is: It's over.
— Maggi Richard
There are many different types of kisses. There’s a passionate kiss of farewell—like the kind Rhett gave Scarlett when he went off to war. The kiss of I-can’t-really-be-with-you-but-I-want-to-be—like with Superman and Lois Lane. There’s the first kiss—one that is gentle and hesitant, warm and vulnerable. And then there’s the kiss of possession—which was how Ren kissed me now. It went beyond passion, beyond desire. His kiss was full of longing, need, and love, like all those other kisses. But, it was also filled with promises and pledges, some of which seemed sweet and tender while others seemed dangerous and exciting. He was taking me over. Staking a claim. He seized me as boldly as the tiger captured his prey. There was no escape. And I didn’t want to. I would have happily died in his clutches. I was his. And he made sure I knew it. My heart burst with a thousand beautiful blooms, all tiger lilies. And I knew with a certainty more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before that we belonged together. 
— Colleen Houck, Tiger's Quest
Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.
— Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe
If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.
— Cassandra Clare, Lady Midnight
As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
— Pythagoras
I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.
— Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker
Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together.
— Colleen Hoover
People always say that, when you love someone, nothing in the world matters. But that's not true, is it? You know, and I know, that when you love someone, everything in the world matters a little bit more.
— Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care
Freely we serveBecause we freely love, as in our willTo love or not; in this we stand or fall.
— John Milton
Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?""I do indeed, sir.""Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
When you find somebody you love, all the way through, and she loves you—even with your weaknesses, your flaws, everything starts to click into place. And if you can talk to her, and she listens, if she makes you laugh, and makes you think, makes you want, makes you see who you really are, and who you are is better, just better with her, you’d be crazy not to want to spend the rest of your life with her. (Carter Maguire)
— Nora Roberts, Happy Ever After
One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love.So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it todescribe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In thesame breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in theirlives. Wasn’t that insulting? Shouldn’t there be some other term to describe deeper emotion?
— Alexandra Adornetto, Halo
You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
I just...I just miss him. And I hate being so alone.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
— Sam Keen, To Love and Be Loved
I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.
— Lev Grossman, The Magicians
I was dead, then alive.Weeping, then laughing.The power of love came into me,and I became fierce like a lion,then tender like the evening star.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Relationships are all about trust and equality. If one person shares, then the other person should share, too.
— Sophie Kinsella, Can You Keep a Secret?
Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it.
— Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
— Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.
— Andrea Gibson
Cassia.I know which life is my real one now, no matter what happens. It’s the one with you. For some reason, knowing that even one person knows my story makes things different. Maybe it’s like the poem says. Maybe this is my way of not going gentle.I love you. (Ky Markham)
— Ally Condie, Matched
Love who you love while you have them. That's all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you'll never run out.
— Ann Brashares, My Name Is Memory
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours.In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
— Maya Angelou
Were you always such a stubborn, blind, obtuse girl?”“Are you calling me stupid?”“Yes, but in a more poetic way!”“Well, here’s a poem for you. Get lost!
— Colleen Houck
Know that love is truly timeless.
— Mary M. Ricksen
I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.
— C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there is dejection and darkness...
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the Earth,like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.
— Jeffrey McDaniel
I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long long sex thing that could end at any moment because after all, it's just about getting off. Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them. This only looks like love.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.
— Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.
— Margaret Weis, Dragons of a Lost Star
But how will I know who my Soulmate is?” Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life. By taking risks’ she said to Brida. ‘ By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in you search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
But love, I’ve come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
I have always found that actively lovingsaves one from a morbid preoccupationwith the shortcomings of society.
— Alan Paton
You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.
— Simone de Beauvoir
What do I care how 'e looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
We're all golden sunflowers inside.
— Allen Ginsberg
Hope is not about proving anything. It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
When you miss someone....it’s weird…your body doesn’t function normally..as it should. Because I miss you, and my heart…it’s not steady…my soul it sings numb. Fingers are cold…like you…your soul.
— Coco J. Ginger
The opposite of love is not hate, its apathy, when you simply don't bother about that person!
— Amish Tripathi, The Secret of the Nagas
I should go," I said thickly. "Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for...talking."I started to turn; then I heard him say abruptly, "No."I glanced back. "What?"He held my gaze, and something warm and wonderful and powerful shot between us."No," he repeated. "I told her no.""I..." I shut my mouth before my jaw hit the floor. "But...why? That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. You could have had a baby. And she...she was, you know, into you..."The ghost of a smile flickered on his face. "Yes, she was. Is. And that's why I had to say no. I couldn't return that...couldn't give her what she wanted. Not when..." He took a few steps toward me. "Not when my heart is somewhere else.
— Richelle Mead, Frostbite
It's not reasonable to love people who are only going to die," she said.Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small's neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement."I have two responses to that," He said at last. "First, everyone is going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reason I loved my father." He looked at her keenly. "Did you love yours?""Yes," she whispered.He stroked Small's nose. "I love you," he said, "even knowing you'll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realized before you came along. You can't help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it's liable to cause you to do.
— Kristin Cashore, Fire
Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.
— Toni Morrison, Paradise
I… What are you saying, Zsadist?" she stammered, even though she'd heard every word.He glanced back down at the pencil in his hand and then turned to the table. Flipping the spiral notebook to a new page, he bent way over and labored on top of the paper for quite a while. Then he ripped the sheet free.His hand was shaking as he held it out. "It's messy."Bella took the paper. In a child's uneven block letters there were three words: I LOVE YOUHer lips flattened tight as her eyes stung. The handwriting got wavy and then disappeared. "Maybe you can't read it," he said in a small voice. "I can do it over." She shook her head. "I can read it just fine. It's… beautiful.""I don't expect anything back. I mean… I know that you don't… feel that for me anymore. But I wanted you to know. It's important that you knew.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Awakened
Those whom we most love are often the most alien to us.
— Christopher Paolini, Eldest
Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots keeping itself alive.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Where you go, I shall go; where you die, I shall die, and there will I be buried.
— Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty
She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some people are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out—your friends, everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
Love makes us such fools.
— Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
I think everything that happened in Idris-Valentine, Max, Hodge, even Sebastian-I kept shoving it all down, trying to forget, but it's catching up with me. I... I'll get help. I'll get better. I promise." "You promise.""I swear on the Angel." He ducked his head down, kissed her cheek."The hell with that. I swear on us.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Jace looked as if she had slapped him. "Why are you determined not to believe us?""Because she loves you," said Valentine.Clary felt the blood drain out of her face.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
With you, intimacy colours my voice.even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.
— Warsan Shire
A friend of mine once defined love as finding someone you can talk to late into the night
— James Patterson
Falling in love is very real, but I used to shake my head when people talked about soul mates, poor deluded individuals grasping at some supernatural ideal not intended for mortals but sounded pretty in a poetry book. Then, we met, and everything changed, the cynic has become the converted, the sceptic, an ardent zealot.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night
Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.
— Bill Ayers
Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary.
— Jason Mraz
It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride.
— John Ruskin
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience
—  it is all about relationships of love and respect.
Cut the ending. Revise the script. The man of her dreams is a girl.
— Julie Anne Peters, Keeping You a Secret
Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed.
— Tiffany Madison
Would you rather live one perfect day over and over or live your life with no perfect days but just decent ones?
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.
— Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
Love is like breathing. You take it in and let it out.
— Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.
— Raymond Carver
Hate is... It's too easy. Love. Love takes courage.
— Hannah Harrington, Speechless
It's like I'm thirteen again and he's my crush. All I'm aware of in this entire roomful of people is him. Where he is, what he's doing, who he's talking to.
— Sophie Kinsella, Remember Me?
I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops. 
— Nikki Giovanni
Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Everybody has a home team: It’s the people you call when you get a flat tire or when something terrible happens. It’s the people who, near or far, know everything that’s wrong with you and love you anyways. These are the ones who tell you their secrets, who get themselves a glass of water without asking when they’re at your house. These are the people who cry when you cry. These are your people, your middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what people.
— Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
Love.Not the kind you see in the movies or hear about on the radio.The real kind.The kind that gets beaten down and bloody, yet perseveres.The kind that hopes even when hope seems foolish.The kind that can forgives. The kind that believes in healing. The kind that can sit in silence and feel renewed.The real kind of love.It's rare and we have it..
— Chelsea Fine, Sophie & Carter
I have known her longer, my smile said. True, you have been inside the circle of her arms, tasted her mouth, felt the warmth of her, and that is something I have never had. But there is a part of her that is only for me. You cannot touch it, no matter how hard you might try. And after she has left you I will still be here, making her laugh. My light shining in her. I will still be here long after she has forgotten your name.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
When it comes to men, deal with them as they are, not how you’d like them to be.
— Greg Behrendt, He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
The Universe is very, very big.It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.
— Craig Ferguson, Between the Bridge and the River
You can't hurt me the way you think you can. But even if you could? I would rather die with the taste of you on my tongue than live and never touch you again. I'm in love with you, Mara. I love you. No matter what you do.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
I'm guilty of giving people more chances than they deserve but when I'm done, I'm done.
— Turcois Ominek
Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I’m stuck babysitting turtle eggs while a volleyball player slash grease monkey slash aquarium volunteer tries to hit on me.” I’m not hitting on you,” he protested.No?”Believe me, you’d know if I was hitting on you. You wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from succumbing to my charms.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song
When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.
— Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe
I thought perhaps that when you told me you did not love me that my own feelings would fall away and atrophy, but they have not. They have grown every day. I love you now more desperately, this moment, than I have ever loved you before, and in an hour I will love you more than that
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess
I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Do you really think anyone in this world, compares to you in my eyes?
— S.C. Stephens, Thoughtless
Herondales." Zachariah's voice was a breath, half laughter, half pain. "I had almost forgotten. No other family does so much for love, or feels so much guilt for it. Don't carry the weight of the world on you, Jace. It's too heavy for even a Herondale to bear.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
I'm backing down now. I really do love you. That's why I'm doing this.
— Richelle Mead, Last Sacrifice
You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.
— Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
People wait around too long for love. I'm happy with all of my lusts!
— C. JoyBell C.
Heart, we will forget him,You and I, tonight!You must forget the warmth he gave,I will forget the light.
— Emily Dickinson
I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.
— Paul Auster, Moon Palace
Kiss a lover, Dance a measure, Find your name And buried treasure. Face your life, It's pain, It's pleasure, Leave no path untaken.
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
What are you doing?”“Kneeling before a goddess.”“I’m not a goddess.”“You are. A goddess, a princess, a queen. As a soldier, I pledge myself to your service. As a prince, I grant you any boon within my power. As a man, I ask to sit at your feet and worship you. Ask me to do anything for you and I will do it.
— Colleen Houck
love is thicker than forgetmore thinner than recallmore seldom than a wave is wetmore frequent than to failit is most mad and moonlyand less it shall unbethan all the sea which onlyis deeper than the sealove is less always than to winless never than aliveless bigger than the least beginless littler than forgiveit is most sane and sunlyand more it cannot diethan all the sky which onlyis higher than the sky
— E.E. Cummings
We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
What's a fuck when what I want is love?
— Henry Miller