c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
That's when I finally got it. I finally understood. It wasn't the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn't enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn't enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared. And he just didn't. Not enough.
— Jenny Han, It's Not Summer Without You
Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
— Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe
It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.
— Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming
You had to know a person well to make them laugh like that.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
A busy, vibrant, goal-oriented woman is so much more attractive than a woman who waits around for a man to validate her existence.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
How do you know when it's over?" "Maybe when you feel more in love with your memories than with the person standing in front of you.
— Gunnar Ardelius, I Need You More Than I Love You and I Love You to Bits
And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
— Lauren Oliver, Requiem
If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
— Ernest Hemingway
Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know.
— Adolf Hitler
The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them.
— Steve Hall
Nothing on this planet can compare with a woman’s love—it is kind and compassionate, patient and nurturing, generous and sweet and unconditional. Pure. If you are her man, she will walk on water and through a mountain for you, too, no matter how you’ve acted out, no matter what crazy thing you’ve done, no matter the time or demand. If you are her man, she will talk to you until there just aren’t any more words left to say, encourage you when you’re at rock bottom and think there just isn’t any way out, hold you in her arms when you’re sick, and laugh with you when you’re up. And if you’re her man and that woman loves you—I mean really loves you?—she will shine you up when you’re dusty, encourage you when you’re down, defend you even when she’s not so sure you were right, and hang on your every word, even when you’re not saying anything worth listening to. And no matter what you do, no matter how many times her friends say you’re no good, no matter how many times you slam the door on the relationship, she will give you her very best and then some, and keep right on trying to win over your heart, even when you act like everything she’s done to convince you she’s The One just isn’t good enough.That’s a woman’s love—it stands the test of time, logic, and all circumstance....Well, I’m here to tell you that expecting that kind of love— that perfection—from a man is unrealistic. That’s right, I said it—it’s not gonna happen, no way, no how. Because a man’s love isn’t like a woman’s love.
— Steve Harvey
I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence?
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
The fact is…I’m in love with you, and I have been for some time.
— Colleen Houck, Tiger's Curse
He sighed and then focused his eyes right on me. It was like drowning, drowning in seas of green. There was nothing in the world except for those eyes."I want to kiss you, Rose," he said softly. "And I want you to want me too.
— Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss
Anne laughed."I don't want sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will protect upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you are there, in everything I am, in everything I've ever done, and looking back, I know that I should have told you know much you've always meant to me. 
— Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
I'm the kind of boy that can fall in love with any girl because I love with the heart, not the eyes.
— Niall Horan
I want you any way I can get you. Not because you’re beautiful or clever or kind or adorable, although devil knows you’re all those things. I want you because there’s no one else like you, and I don’t ever want to start a day without seeing you.
— Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight
I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
No, it's not that. It's not what you're thinking. I was serious when I said 'all of it'. I can remember every moment we were together, and in eachof them there was something wonderful. I can't really pick any one time that meant more than any other. The entire summer was perfect, the kind of summer everyone should have. How could I pick one moment over another? Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only 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, The Notebook
Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing I could never have him.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo
But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
— James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
— Oscar Wilde
So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole. Love was substance, broken down and beating through your bloodstream.
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Just because I'm not forever by your side doesn't mean that's not precisely where I want to be.
— Stephanie Laurens, A Rogue's Proposal
Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.
— Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
anyone lived in a pretty how town(with up so floating many bells down)spring summer autumn winterhe sang his didn't he danced his didWomen and men(both little and small)cared for anyone not at allthey sowed their isn't they reaped their samesun moon stars rainchildren guessed(but only a fewand down they forgot as up they grewautumn winter spring summer)that noone loved him more by morewhen by now and tree by leafshe laughed his joy she cried his griefbird by snow and stir by stillanyone's any was all to hersomeones married their everyoneslaughed their cryings and did their dance(sleep wake hope and then)theysaid their nevers they slept their dreamstars rain sun moon(and only the snow can begin to explainhow children are apt to forget to rememberwith up so floating many bells down)one day anyone died i guess(and noone stooped to kiss his face)busy folk buried them side by sidelittle by little and was by wasall by all and deep by deepand more by more they dream their sleepnoone and anyone earth by aprilwish by spirit and if by yes.Women and men (both dong and ding)summer autumn winter springreaped their sowing and went their camesun moon stars rain
— E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems
She's my kitten, and no one else's.
— Jeaniene Frost, One Foot in the Grave
Work without love is slavery.
— Mother Teresa
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
I love you more than I hate everything else.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.
— Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time
One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.
— Osho
Love, when spelled backwards and read phonetically, reads evil
— Eminem
I threw myself into that fire, threw myself into it, into him, and let myself burn.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses
Wait a second," Four says. I turn toward him, wondering which version of Four I'll see now-the one who scolds me, or the one who climbs Ferris wheels with me. He smiles a little, but the smile doesn't spread to his eyes, which look less tense and worried."You belong here, you know that?" he says. "You belong with us. It'll be over soon, so just hold on, okay?"He scratches behind his ear and looks away, like he's embarrassed by what he said. I stare at him. I feel my heartbeat everywhere, even in my toes. I feel like doing something bold, but I could just as easily walk away. I am not sure which option is smarter, or better. I am not sure that I care.I reach out and take his hand. His fingers slide between mine. I can't breathe. I stare up at him, and he stares down at me. For a long moment, we stay that way. Then I pull my hand away and run after Uriah and Lynn and Marlene. Maybe now he thinks I'm stupid, or strange. Maybe it was worth it.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons
He wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
Marry me, Kiara,” he blurts out in front of everyone.“Why?” she asks, challenging him.“Because I love you,” he says, walking up to her and bending down on one knee while he takes her hand in his, “and I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up seein’ your face every mornin’, I want you to be the mother of my children, I want to fix cars with you and eat your crappy tofu tacos that you think are Mexican. I want to climb mountains with you and be challenged by you, I want to argue with you just so we can have crazy hot makeup sex. Marry me, because without you I’d be six feet under … and because I love your family like they’re my own … and because you’re my best friend and I want to grow old with you.” He starts tearing up, and it’s shocking because I’ve never seen him cry. “Marry me, Kiara Westford, because when I got shot the only thing I was thinkin’ about was comin’ back here and makin’ you my wife. Say yes, chica.
— Simone Elkeles, Chain Reaction
And he leans in, so carefully. Breathingand not breathing and hearts beatingbetween us and he’s so close, he’s so close and I can’t feel my legs anymore. I can’t feel my fingers or the cold or the emptiness of this room because all I feel is him, everywhere,filling everything and he whispers“Please.”He says “Please don’t shoot me for this.”And he kisses me.His lips are softer than anything I've ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. It’s sweet, it’sso effortlessly sweet.And then it changes.“Oh God—”He kisses me again, this time stronger,desperate, like he has to have me, like he’s dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he’s all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I've just begun reeling him in, pulling him into me when he breaks away.He’s breathing like he’s lost his mind andhe’s looking at me like something has brokeninside of him, like he’s woken up to find thathis nightmares were just that, that they never existed, that it was all just a bad dream that felt far too real but now he’s awake and he’s safe and everything is going to be okay andI’m falling.I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.
— Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me
But you're the only one, Scarlet. You'll always be the only one.
— Marissa Meyer, Scarlet
I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.""Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
The Simple PathSilence is PrayerPrayer is FaithFaith is LoveLove is ServiceThe Fruit of Service is Peace
— Mother Teresa
Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
If you love deeply, you're going to get hurt badly. But it's still worth it.
— C.S. Lewis
Statistically speaking, there is a 65 percent chance that the love of your life is having an affair. Be very suspicious.
— Scott Dikkers, You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day
Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love
…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.
— Homer, The Iliad
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen
There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.
— Shannon L. Alder
Transformation is my favorite game and in my experience, anger and frustration are the result of you not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life. Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can’t work for you if you don’t show up as you.
— Jason Mraz
‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. 
— Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
— Hermann Hesse
Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with 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.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
— Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.
— Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium
Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly in the same direction.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey
If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.
— Christopher Poindexter
Never give all the heart, for loveWill hardly seem worth thinking ofTo passionate women if it seemCertain, and they never dreamThat it fades out from kiss to kiss;For everything that's lovely isBut a brief, dreamy, kind delight.O Never give the heart outright,For they, for all smooth lips can say,Have given their hearts up to the play.And who could play it well enoughIf deaf and dumb and blind with love?He that made this knows all the cost,For he gave all his heart and lost.
— W.B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age
You can obsess and obsess over how things ended—what you did wrong or could have done differently—but there's not much of a point. It's not like it'll change anything. So really, why worry?
— Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me
You asked why I couldn't forgive you," Nick said, very quietly, and I jumped a little. "It was because you were the love of my life, Harper. And you didn't want to be. That's hard to let go.
— Kristan Higgins, My One and Only
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.
— Woody Allen
There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me than your smile...no sound sweeter than your laughter...no pleasure greater than holding you in my arms. I realized today that I could never live without you, stubborn little hellion that you are. In this life and the next, you’re my only hope of happiness. Tell me, Lillian, dearest love...how can you have reached so far inside my heart?
— Lisa Kleypas, It Happened One Autumn
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
— E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems
His breath hitched, and he regarded me hungrily. “You’re playing with fire, you know that?” “That’s weird, considering you’re an ice prin—” I didn’t get any further, as Ash leaned in and kissed me.
— Julie Kagawa, Winter's Passage
Blood of my Blood," he whispered, "and bone of my bone. You carry me within ye, Claire, and ye canna leave me now, no matter what happens, You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go.
— Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber
Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.
— Leo Buscaglia
She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.
— T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Being with her I feel a pain, like a frozen knife stuck in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is I'm thankful for it. It's like that frozen pain and my very existence are one.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.
— John Lennon
I don't care if you say we can't be together. I don't care if you think I'm the most evil, unnatural creature walking on earth. You can think whatever you want, go whatever you want. I'm going to just go on loving you, even if it's hopeless.
— Richelle Mead, The Indigo Spell
You're a hero and a gentleman, you're kind and honest, but more than that, you're the first man I ever truly loved. And no matter what the future brings, you always will be, and I know that my life is better for it.
— Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
You made me feel alive again.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron King
I have learned that you can go anywhere you want to go and do anything you want to do and buy all the things that you want to buy and meet all the people that you want to meet and learn all the things that you desire to learn and if you do all these things but are not madly in love: you have still not begun to live.
— C. JoyBell C.
And now," Eric yelled into his mircophone, "we're going to sing a new song-one we just wrote. This one's for my girlfriend. We've been going out for three weeks, and, damn, our love is true. We're gonna be together forever, baby. This one's called 'Bang You Like a Drum.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.
— Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
That's why I loved being with you. We could do the simplest things, like toss starfish into the ocean and share a burger and talk and even then I knew that I was fortunate. Because you were the first guy who wasn't constantly trying to impress me. You accepted who you were, but more than that, you accepted me for me. And nothing else mattered-- not my family or your family or anyone else in the world. It was just us.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Best of Me
The minute I stopped trying to find the right girl, and started trying to become the right guy...the girl came.
— Jonathan Antin
Don't go looking for boys in the darkThey will say pretty things thenleave you with scars.Do go looking for boys in the parkFor that is where the true gentlemen are.
— Anna Godbersen, The Luxe
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
— H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series
Don't worry about hurting me, if that's what you're afraid of. I want to get hurt. At least I´ll feel something for a change.
— Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken
When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters a table leg breaks or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart when that breaks it s completely silent. You would think as it s so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world or even have some ... Read Moresort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it s silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain. If there is a noise it s internal. It screams and no one can hear it but you. It screams so loud your ears ring and your head aches. It trashes around in your chest like a great white shark caught in the sea it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That s what it looks like and that s what it sounds like a trashing panicking trapped great big beast roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions. But that s the thing about love no one is untouchable.
— Cecelia Ahern, If You Could See Me Now
To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Everybody is a main character to someone...
— Amy Harmon, Making Faces
He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasn't just a friend either. Instead, our relationship was elastic, stretching between those two extremes depending on who else was around, how much either of us had to drink, and other varying factors. This was exactly what I wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
A true gentleman is one that apologizes anyways, even though he has not offended a lady intentionally. He is in a class all of his own because he knows the value of a woman's heart.
— Shannon L. Alder
They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with."...As I sailed into the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if.
— Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth
You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
I think in the end, you would have stayed with me, out of obligation...or maybe comfort. Maybe I was safe to you, and you needed to feel that. I know how scared you get of the unknown. To you...I must be kind of a security blanket. Do you see now, how that doesn't work for me? I don't want to be there, simply because the idea of me being gone is too...scary. I want to be someone's everything. I want fire and passion, and love that's returned, equally. I want to be someone's heart... Even if it means breaking my own.
— S.C. Stephens, Thoughtless
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Love doesn't mean anything if you're not willing to make a commitment, and you have to think not only about what you want, but about what he wants. Not just now, but in the future.
— Nicholas Sparks, Safe Haven
It is the possibility that keeps me going, and though you may call me a dreamer or a fool or any other thing, I believe that anything is possible.
— Nicholas Sparks
Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.
— Christina Westover
I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.
— Neil Gaiman, Stardust
Only time can heal your broken heart. Just as only time can heal his broken arms and legs.
— Jim Henson
O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villain!
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
— Kahlil Gibran
Before, I wanted to say: "I found love!" But now, I want to say: "I found a person. And he belongs to me and I belong to him.
— C. JoyBell C.
All of sudden, this shooting star went by, and all I could think was that they were listening to us somehow. 
— Nicholas Sparks
His hands lay flat on either side of him, his arms at his sides. He seemed barely to be breathing; she wasn't sure she was breathing herself. She slid her own hand across the bedsheet, just far enough that their fingers touched-so lightly that she would have probably hardly been aware of it had she been touching anyone but Jace; as it was, the nerve endings in her fingertips pricked softly, as if she were holding them over a low flame. She felt him tense beside her and then relax. He had shut his eyes, and his lashes cast fine shadows against the curve of his cheekbones. His mouth curled into a smile as if he sensed her watching him, and she wondered how he would look in the morning, with his hair messed and sleep circles under his eyes. Despite everything, the thought gave her a jolt of happiness.She laced her fingers through his. "Good night," she whispered. With their hands clasped like children in a fairy tale, she fell asleep beside him in the dark.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
— Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart
I could never pretend something I didn't feel. I could never make love if I didn't love, and if I loved I could no more hide the fact than change the color of my eyes.
— Marilyn Monroe, My Story
I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
Time will make it worse! You're...the other half of his soul. He's never going to get over you. And no matter how much you hope that you will... you'll never get over him. You're going to wake up one day and realize what you've done, and you're going to regret the time you wasted apart from him for the rest of your life.
— Jamie McGuire, Providence
It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Why are you leaving me?He wrote, I do not know how to live.I do not know either but I am trying.I do not know how to try.There were some things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So i buried them and let them hurt me
— Jonathan Safran Foer
And I, infinitesima­l being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind.
— Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, and the blood in my veins.
— J.A. Redmerski, The Edge of Never
She had loved him for such a long time, she thought. How was it that she did now know him at all?
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
Sometimes people don’t understandthe promises they’re making when they make them,” I said.Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course.But you keep the promise anyway. That’swhat love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don’t you believe in true love?
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Tonight was... well, it was perfect for me too. You've turned my world upside down. I've fallen in love with you, chica, and it scares the fuckin' shit outta me. I've been shakin' all night, because I knew it.I've tried to deny it, to make you think I wanted you as a fake girlfriend, but that was a lie.
— Simone Elkeles, Rules of Attraction
Love's about finding the one person who makes your heart complete. Who makes you a better person than you ever dreamed you could be. Its about looking in the eyes of your wife and knowing all the way to your bones that she's simply the best person you've ever known.
— Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me
Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.
— Kiera Cass, The Elite
I knew I loved you before I met youI think I dreamed you into lifeI knew I loved you before I met youI have been waiting all my life
— Savage Garden
When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don't know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don't know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it already.
— Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road
I feel like a part of my soul has loved you since the beginning of everything.Maybe we’re from the same star.
— Emery Allen
He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.
— Brian Andreas
You looove me. (holds out arms) You love me this much.
— James Patterson, Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love you. Like that.)
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world.
— Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story
He looked so lost, so soulful, so lonely. I wanted him to kiss me now. I wanted to let him know I was his for all eternity.
— Ellen Schreiber, Vampire Kisses
I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Each time you happen to me all over again.
— Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved.
— Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.
— Coco Chanel
I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.
— Emily Brontë
Make me into anything, but just love me.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
— Mother Teresa
To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they so clearly see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you be imperfect and beautiful, too. (20)
— Victoria Moran, Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty
What I cannot love, I overlook.
— Anaïs Nin
Every time I think I'm missing a piece of me, you give it back.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
A mighty pain to love it is,And 't is a pain that pain to miss;But of all pains, the greatest painIt is to love, but love in vain.
— Abraham Cowley, The Poems of Abraham Cowley
It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
— Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Unending LoveI seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times...In life after life, in age after age, forever.My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,In life after life, in age after age, forever.Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age old pain,It's ancient tale of being apart or together.As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.You become an image of what is remembered forever.You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.At the heart of time, love of one for another.We have played along side millions of lovers,Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,the distressful tears of farewell,Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in youThe love of all man's days both past and forever:Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -And the songs of every poet past and forever.
— Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems
No matter where it is in the sky... No matter where you are in the world... the moon is never bigger than your thumb. -John
— Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.
— Henry Rollins
This time when we kiss, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel it in my heart. And I realize love isn't about sex. It's about connection.
— Ellen Hopkins
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning, but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply,And in my heart there stirs a quiet painFor unremembered lads that not againWill turn to me at midnight with a cry.Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:I cannot say what loves have come and gone,I only know that summer sang in meA little while, that in me sings no more.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies … the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen
The way you're singing in your sleepThe way you look before you leapThe strange illusions that you keepYou don't knowBut I'm noticingThe way your touch turns into arcsThe way you slide into the darkThe beating of my open heartYou don't knowBut I'm noticing
— David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself ~ all that runs over will be yours.
— Charles Caleb Colton
And yes, I’ll admit, I am jealous. I’m jealous of every minute you spend with him, of every concerned expression you send his way, of every tear shed, of every glance, every touch, and every thought. I want to rip him to pieces and purge him from your mind and from your heart. But I can’t.
— Colleen Houck
Would you mind repeating that? I'm afraid I might have lost my wits altogether and just hallucinated what I've longed to hear.
— Jeaniene Frost, Halfway to the Grave
Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.
— Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus
Loving someone is giving them the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to.
— Julianne Moore
What irritated me most in that entire situation was the fact that Iwasn’t feeling humiliated, or annoyed, or even fooled. Betrayal waswhat I felt, my heart broken not just by a guy I was in love with, butalso by, as I once believed, a true friend.
— Danka V., The Unchosen Life
Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling likethey're falling in love with the ground.
— Andrea Gibson
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you.
— Paul McCartney