c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
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
Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are. It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.
— Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty
In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.
— Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County
How 'bout a shot of truth in that denial cocktail.
— Jennifer Salaiz
I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.
— George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
I choose to love you in silence…For in silence I find no rejection,I choose to love you in loneliness…For in loneliness no one owns you but me,I choose to adore you from a distance…For distance will shield me from pain,I choose to kiss you in the wind…For the wind is gentler than my lips,I choose to hold you in my dreams…For in my dreams, you have no end.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
And I didn't choose it, Kat. I chose you.
— Ally Carter, Heist Society
We met less than a week ago and in that time I've done nothing but lie and cheat and betray you. I know. But if you give me a chance...all I want is to protect you. To be near you. For as long as I'm able.
— Marissa Meyer, Scarlet
Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.
— Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two
I understand addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could a man (or a woman) do something so self-destructive, knowing that they’re hurting not only themselves, but the people they love? It seemed that it would be so incredibly easy for them to just not take that next drink. Just stop. It’s so simple, really. But as so often happens with me, my arrogance kept me from seeing the truth of the matter.I see it now though.Every day, I tell myself it will be the last. Every night, as I’m falling asleep in his bed, I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll book a flight to Paris, or Hawaii, or maybe New York. It doesn’t matter where I go, as long as it’s not here. I need to get away from Phoenix—away from him—before this goes even one step further.And then he touches me again, and my convictions disappear like smoke in the wind.This cannot end well. That’s the crux of the matter, Sweets. I’ve been down this road before—you know I have—and there’s only heartache at the end. There’s no happy ending waiting for me like there was for you and Matt. If I stay here with him, I will become restless and angry. It’s happening already, and I cannot stop it. I’m becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, he’ll leave me. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. One way or another, he’ll be gone. Is it not wiser to end it now, Sweets, before it gets to that point? Is it not better to accept that this happiness I have is destined to self-destruct?Tomorrow I will leave. Tomorrow I will stop delaying the inevitable. Tomorrow I will quit lying to myself, and to him. Tomorrow.What about today, you ask? Today it’s already too late. He’ll be home soon, and I have dinner on the stove, and wine chilling in the fridge. And he will smile at me when he comes through the door, and I will pretend like this fragile, dangerous thing we have created between us can last forever.Just one last time, Sweets. Just one last fix. That’s all I need.And that is why I now understand addiction.
— Marie Sexton, Strawberries for Dessert
He brought out the worst in me, and was the best thing that ever happened to me.
— Coco J. Ginger
What is home? My favorite definition is "a safe place," a place where one is free from attack, a place where one experiences secure relationships and affirmation. It's a place where people share and understand each other. Its relationships are nurturing. The people in it do not need to be perfect; instead, they need to be honest, loving, supportive, recognizing a common humanity that makes all of us vulnerable.
— Gladys M. Hunt, Honey for a Child's Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life
You can be in love and you can be in a relationship. But they’re not always the same thing.
— pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You
You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away.Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.
— Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park
Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you. 
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
I could’ve sworn I was telling the truth when I told you I didn’t miss you.
— pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You
I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I love you.
— Richelle Mead, The Indigo Spell
I am troubled, immeasurablyby your eyes. I am struck by the featherof your soft reply.The sound of glassspeaks quick, disdainand concealswhat your eyes fightto explain.
— Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.
— William Shakespeare, The Complete Sonnets and Poems
I might kiss you.I might be bad at it.That's not possible.
— Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
I was his exception, and as much as I had tried to fight my feelings, he was mine.
— Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster
...Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.
— John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Love didn't make you weak, it made you stronger.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.
— Rabindranath Tagore
A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Growth in love comes from a place of absence, where the imagination is left to it’s own devices and creates you to be much more then reality would ever allow.
— Coco J. Ginger
A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims--these are lucky eventualites but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.We value love not because it's stronger than death but because it's weaker. Say what you want about love: death will finish it. You will not go on loving in the grave, not in any physical way that will at all resemble love as we know it on earth. The perishable nature of love is what gives love its importance in our lives. If it were endless, if it were on tap, love wouldn't hit us the way it does.And we certainly wouldn't write about it.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro
I'm like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he's cold, and his clothes are torn, and he's ashamed, but he's not unhappy.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
A kiss may ruin a human life
— Oscar Wilde
I only have so much willpower, Helen," he whispered. "And since you apparently sleep in the most ridiculously transparent tank top I've ever seen, I'm going to have to ask you to get under the covers before I do something stupid.
— Josephine Angelini, Starcrossed
Nobody knows you.You don't know yourself.And I, who am half in love with you,What am I in love with?My own imaginings?
— D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems
Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
— Maya Angelou
You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.— Tiny Cooper
— David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
I like being the girl nobody can have.
— Miley Cyrus
Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.
— Coco J. Ginger
A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.
— Charles Dickens
Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing." ~ Sam (Hilary Duff), A Cinderella Story
— Hilary Duff
It is only with true love and compassion that we can begin to mend what is broken in the world. It is these two blessed things that can begin to heal all broken hearts.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
If anyone were to find out—” I began.Patch kissed me, hard, but with an amused glint in his eye. “If I get caught, it’ll mean the end of kissing you. Do you really think I’d risk that?” His face grew serious. “I know I can’t feel your touch, but I feel your love, Nora. Inside me. It means everything to me. I wish I could feel you the same way you feel me, but I have your love. Nothing will ever outweigh that. Some people go their entire lives never feeling the emotions you’ve given me. There is no regret in that.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Finale
No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves it is the woman only who can make it a torment. 
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.
— Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove
Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise.
— Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
— James Joyce, Dubliners
Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper
Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.
— Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels
A real relationship is two-way.
— Sophie Kinsella, Can You Keep a Secret?
If love is like a possession, maybe my letter are like my exorcisms
— Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before
When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our".
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Vladimir did great things—so could she. Besides, they come first, right?""Not always."I stared. I'd had they come first drilled into me since I was a child. It was what all guardians believed. Only the dhampirs who'd run away from their duty didn't subscribe to that. What he said was almost like treason."Sometimes, Rose, you have to know when to put yourself first.
— Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss
Loving someone always requires you to not love others.
— Koushun Takami, Battle Royale
The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides and in its depths it has its pearls too
— Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
I didn't care who kissed you first as long as I kissed you last."-George from If We Kiss
— Rachel Vail, If We Kiss
They were kissing. Put like that, and you could be forgiven for presuming that this was a normal kiss, all lips and skin and possibly even a little tongue. You'd miss how he smiled, how his eyes glowed. And then, after the kiss was done, how he stood, like a man who had just discovered the art of standing and had figured out how to do it better than anyone else who would ever come along.
— Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
I hold it true, whate'er befall;I feel it when I sorrow most;'Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.
— Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam
Yet, it had been Dimitri’s gentleness and thoughtfulness mixed with that deadliness that made him so wonderful. The same hands that wielded stakes with such precision would carefully brush the hair out of my face. The eyes that could astutely spot any danger in the area would regard me wonderingly and worshipfully, like I was the most beautiful and amazing woman in the world.
— Richelle Mead, Blood Promise
Can he love her? Can the soul really be satisfied with such polite affections? To love is to burn - to be on fire, like Juliet or Guinevere or Eloise...
— Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film
At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It's the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it's racing towards.
— Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
You might as well make yourself fly as to make yourself love.
— Marilyn Monroe, My Story
...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...
— Plato, The Symposium
Meghan,” whispered a voice, heart wrenchingly familiar, drawing me out of the void. I recognized it immediately, just as I realized it was a figment of my desperate imagination, because the real owner of that voice would never be here, talking to me.Ash?“Wake up,” he murmured, his deep voice cutting through the layers of the darkness. “Don’t do this. If you don’t come out of this soon, you’ll fade away and drift forever. Fight it. Come back to us.”I didn’t want to wake up. There was nothing but pain waiting for me in the real world. If I was asleep, I couldn’t feel anything. If I was asleep, I didn’t have to face Ash and the cold contempt on his face when he looked at me. Darkness was my retreat, my sanctuary. I drew back from Ash’s voice, deeper into the comforting blackness. And, through the layer of dreams and delirium, I heard a quiet sob.“Please.” A hand gripped mine, real and solid, anchoring me to the present. “I know what you must think of me, but…” The voice broke off, took a ragged breath. “Don’t leave,” it whispered. “Meghan, don’t go. Come back to me.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron Daughter
When you loved someone and had to let them go, there will always be that small part of yourself that whispers, "What was it that you wanted and why didn't you fight for it?
— Shannon L. Alder
Sometimes you know you've got a chance with a girl because she wants to fight with you. If the world wasn't so messed up, it wouldn't be like that. If the world was normal, a girl being nice to you would be a good sign, but in the real world, it isn't.
— Nick Hornby
‎True love isn't expressed in passionately whispered words an intimate kiss or a embrace; before two people are married, love is expressed in self-control, patience, even words left unsaid.
— Joshua Harris
Not that she didn't love almost every boy she'd ever met, and not that every boy in the world didn't totally love her. It was impossible not to. But she wanted someone to love her and shower her with attention the way only a boy who was completely in love with her could. The rare sort of love. True love. The kind of love she'd never had.
— Cecily von Ziegesar, I Like It Like That
I used to think I knew everything. I was a "smart person" who "got things done," and because of that, the higher I climbed, the more I could look down and scoff at what seemed silly or simple, even religion.But I realized something as I drove home that night: that I am neither better nor smarter, only luckier. And I should be ashamed of thinking I knew everything, because you can know the whole world and still feel lost in it. So many people are in pain-no matter how smart or accomplished-they cry, they yearn, they hurt.But instead of looking down on things, they look up, which is where I should have been looking, too. Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things:comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.
— Mitch Albom, Have a Little Faith: a True Story
Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.
— bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
There's only one thing that can heal the heart... Only one... It's love, Gaara.
— Masashi Kishimoto
We are born to love as we are born to die, and between the heartbeats of those two great mysteries lies all the tangled undergrowth of our tiny lives. There is nowhere to go but through. And so we walk on, lost, and lost again, in the mapless wilderness of love.
— Tim Farrington, The Monk Downstairs
I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do — to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited and harmful image of people. It thus impedes a broader social acceptance of what someone, or a group of people, might actually be like.
— Jess C. Scott, New Order
Love [is] supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it [falls] apart at the deatils. It [can't] save a single person.
— Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
I love you," I whisper. "I love you exactly as you are.
— Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me
Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
— Anne Tyler
Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Love entered in my heart one dayA sad, unwelcome guest.But when it begged that it might stayI let it stay and restIt broke my nights with sorrowingIt filled my heart with fearsAnd, when my soul was prone to sing,It filled my eyes with tears.But...now that it has gone its way,I miss the dear ole pain.And, sometimes, in the night I prayThat Love might come again.
— J. California Cooper
The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I haven’t been very impressed lately.By people,or places,or the way someone said he loved me and then slowly changed his mind.
— Charlotte Eriksson
When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. I see in you that part of me which is you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, we share the same madness.
— Anaïs Nin
When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Ain't She Sweet
he placed his handson my mindbefore reachingfor my waistmy hipsor my lipshe didn't call mebeautiful firsthe called meexquisite - how he touches me
— Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey
So, it's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? Thirty years from now, forty years from now? What's it look like? If it's with him- go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again, if I thought that's what you really wanted. But don't you take the easy way out.
— Nicholas Sparks
You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.
— Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves
I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her –after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred–I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever–for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation)–and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again–and 'oh, no,' Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven, and the next moment the tenderness and the azure–all would be shattered.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Emotion without reason lets people walk all over you
—  reason without emotion is a mask for cruelty.
I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe.
— Anaïs Nin, House of Incest
LoveEmbracing Tao, you become embraced.Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.Clearing your vision, you become clear.Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial.Opening your heart, you become accepted.Accepting the World, you embrace Tao.Bearing and nurturing,Creating but not owning,Giving without demanding,Controlling without authority,This is love.
— Lao Tzu, The Teachings of Lao-Tzu: The Tao-Te Ching
He kissed me wildly, overwhelming me like a giant wave rushing to shore. I was soon lost in the turbulent grasp of his embrace and yet…I knew I was safe. His wild kiss drove me, pushed me, asked me questions I was unwilling to consider. But I was cherished by this dark Poseidon, and though he had the power to crush me utterly, to drown me in the purple depths of his wake, he held me aloft, separate. His passionate kiss changed. It gentled and soothed and entreated. Together we drifted towards a safe harbor. The god of the sea set me down securely on a sandy beach and steadied me as I trembled. Effervescent tingles shot through my limbs delighting me with surges of sparkling sensation like sandy toes tickled by bubbly waves. Finally, the waves moved away and I felt my Poseidon watching me from a distance. We looked at each other knowing we were forever changed by the experience. We both knew that I would always belong to the sea and that I would never be able to part from it and be whole again.
— Colleen Houck
Love never dies.
— Lauren Kate, Torment
I’ve met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I’m not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months’ time, I’ll be far away and he’ll be just a memory, but I couldn’t stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit…	Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meeting are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions.
— Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
Everything is clearer when you're in love.
— John Lennon
We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
I love you, even if there isn’t any me, or any love, or even any life. I love you.
— Zelda Fitzgerald
Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.
— George Eliot
It's risky, falling in love.""I know that," I answered. "I've been in love before. It's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours."But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love.""What a horrible way to put it," he said.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death!
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.
— Brian Tracy
Love is keeping the promise anyway.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet
— Robert Browning
But you've slipped under my skin, invaded my blood and seized my heart.
— Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study
If music be the food of love, play on.
— William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.
— Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion
He loved her.Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood was in love with her. He didn't say it but she knew that it was true.And the part that really freaked her out, the part that caught her completely off guard, is that he wasn't alone. Because even though she'd been denying it for a long, long time, it had always been there... waiting beneath the surface of their friendship. And now that it was out there was no going back. And it was so weird to even be thinking it but...... she was in love with him too.
— Kimberly Derting, The Body Finder
To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect
— Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Every time I read to her, it was like I was courting her, because sometimes, just sometimes, she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?
— Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding
Most true is it that 'beauty is in the eye of the gazer.' My master’s colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth, — all energy, decision, will, — were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me, — that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
I thought I was going to sweat five years before I'd feel like this.""I wanted it as much as you did. I've just got a hell of a poker face" I smiled, pressing my lips against his.
— Jamie McGuire, Beautiful Disaster
For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.
— Neil Gaiman, The Doll's House
Relationships are like Rome -- difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the 'golden age', and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt... that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soul mate, and your love.
— Helen Keller
You're my Star, a stargazer too,and I wish that I were Heaven,with a billion eyes to look at you!
— Plato
I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.
— Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels
I told you," he whispers back. I can feel his breath just tickling the space behind my ear, making my hair prick up on my neck. "I like you.""You don't know me," I say quickly."I want to, though.
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
— George Eliot
You know I meant it. I am human. And male. And not remotely blind. Do you want me to say it again? You are distractingly, even if-that-is-not-a-real-word pretty. You are so pretty that I bullied Clay Whitaker into drawing me a picture of you so I could look at you when you aren't around. You are so pretty that one of these days I'm going to lose a finger in my garage because I can't concentrate with you so close to me. You are so pretty that I wish you weren't so I wouldn't want to hit every guy at school who looks at you, especially my best friend.
— Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility
Is it possible not to ever know your type-not to even know you have a type-until quite suddenly you do?
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
A quiet but indomitable voice behind me said, “I believe this is my dance.” It was him. I could feel his presence. The warmth of him seeped into my back, and I quivered all over like spring leaves in a warm breeze.
— Colleen Houck, Tiger's Curse
We should love, not fall in love, because everything that falls, gets broken.
— Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The truth was...he was in love with her. Totally over-the-line, no-going-back, not-even-dead-would-he-part kind of shit.
— J.R. Ward, Lover Mine
You are what happiness means to me. And I would rather have today with you than forever with anyone else.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Retribution of Mara Dyer
I am two fools, I know,For loving, and for saying so.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
Till I loved I never lived.
— Emily Dickinson
Give me the Love that leads the wayThe Faith that nothing can dismayThe Hope no disappointments tireThe Passion that'll burn like fireLet me not sink to be a clodMake me Thy fuel, Flame of God
— Amy Carmichael
When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.
— Lisa Unger, Beautiful Lies
We’d read about sirens in English this fall; Greek mythology bullshit about women so beautiful, their voices so enchanting, that men did anything for them. Turned out that mythology crap was real because every time I saw her, I lost my mind.
— Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable.
— Marguerite Duras
You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen
— Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
People accuse me of falling in love easily. It just means that I'm able to see the beauty in most of the people who cross paths with me and I appreciate it for what it is and also for what it isn't. Love is imperfect. Falling for someone's flaws is just as necessary as falling for their strengths. And people like myself, who fall into love easily, are sometimes the loneliest souls around at the end of the day.
— Ashly Lorenzana
Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
But you're so busy changing the worldJust one smile can change all of mine
— Jack Johnson
I really don't even know you, and yet, in my life, you are forever entangled; to my history, inextricably bound.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
Find a woman who makes you feel more alive. She won't make life perfect but she'll make it infinitely more interesting. And then love her with all that's in you.
— Gayle Roper, Shadows on the Sand
Daddy," I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. "I love you."Just when I was sure he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. "I knew that," he murmured. "Always knew that.
— Morgan Matson, Second Chance Summer
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.
— Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl
Maybe sometimes we can only see the truth about ourselves if someone shows us where to look.
— Michelle Hodkin, The Retribution of Mara Dyer
People Die...Beauty Fades...Love Changes...And You Will Always Be Alone
— L.J. Smith, Night World, No. 3
Because I trust in the ever-changing climate of the heart. (At least, today I feel that way.) I think it is necessary to have many experiences for the sake of feeling something; for the sake of being challenged, and for the sake of being expressive, to offer something to someone else, to learn what we are capable of.
— Jason Mraz
No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby
You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
I feel…and I have reason to believe…that we could come to mean something to each other.
— Colleen Houck
The heart is a strange beast and not ruled by logic.
— Maria V. Snyder, Touch of Power
You were a summer gift, one I'll always treasure. You were a dream I never wanted to wake up from. You opened my eyes to things I'll never really see. You're the best thing that will ever happen to me.
— Ellen Hopkins, Crank
The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.
— Rick Warren
Nice costume," he said. "Ditto. I can tell you put a lot of thought into yours."Amusement curled his mouth. "If you don't like it, I can take it off.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Finale
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
— Pico Iyer
Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.
— bell hooks
I can't promise not to make you mad. I can't promise that I won't hurt you. All I can promise is that I want you in my life, and I'll do anything to keep you there.
— Chelsea M. Cameron, My Favorite Mistake
Why did he have to be so gorgeous? Why did he have to stand so close, and why did I still love him so much? 
— Jeaniene Frost, One Foot in the Grave
Get up, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. You kneel before no one. Least of all me.
— Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn
To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I have so much love for you, I could fill rooms with it. Buildings. You’re surrounded by it wherever you go, you walk through it, breathe it...it’s in your lungs, and under your tongue, and between your fingers and toes...” His mouth moved passionately over hers, urging her lips apart. It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis. Or at least that was how Poppy felt about it.
— Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight
I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I’d live in such fear of losing another person. Was this how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such panic?
— Richelle Mead, The Fiery Heart
But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,To die upon the hand I love so well.
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
To love is easy, to be in a relationship is extremely difficult.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.
— Jean Anouilh
Think of two people, living together day after day, year after year, in this small space, standing elbow to elbow cooking at the same small stove, squeezing past each other on the narrow stairs, shaving in front of the same small bathroom mirror, constantly jogging, jostling, bumping against each other’s bodies by mistake or on purpose, sensually, aggressively, awkwardly, impatiently, in rage or in love – think what deep though invisible tracks they must leave, everywhere, behind them!
— Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man
At first we had so much to catch up on we were talking a hundred words a second, barely even listening to the ends of one another's sentences before moving onto the next. And there was laughing. Lots of laughing. Then the laughing stopped and there was this silence. What the hell was it?It was like the world stopped turning in that instant. Like everyone around us had disappeared. Like everything at home was forgotten about. It was as if those few minutes on this world were created just for us and all we could do was look at each other. It was like he was seeing my face for the first time. He looked confused but kind of amused. Exactly how I felt. Because I was sitting on the grass with my best friend Alex, and that was my best friend Alex's face and nose and eyes and lips, but they seemed different. So I kissed him. I seized the moment and I kissed him,
— Cecelia Ahern, Love, Rosie
The desire to love someone always exceeds the desire to be loved by someone & that's exactly why we end up loving the person who doesn't deserve that LOVE.
— Anirban Bose, Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls
I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Silence
I know I am but summer to your heart,And not the full four seasons of the year;And you must welcome from another partSuch noble moods as are not mine, my dear.No gracious weight of golden fruits to sellHave I, nor any wise and wintry thing;And I have loved you all too long and wellTo carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and roseWhen I come back to you, as summer comes.Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems
No." Magnus strode toward him. "I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else-someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise. No one compares to you, but there's no you, except in my dreams tonight
— Lana Del Rey
When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
— Kahlil Gibran
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
— Albert Camus
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
— Anonymous, Holy Bible: The New King James Version
She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Lately I can't help wanting usto be like other people.For example, if I were a smoker,you'd lift a match to the cigarettejust as I put it between my lips.It's never been like thatbetween us: none of thateasy chemistry, no quick, half automaticflares. Everything between ushad to be learned.Saturday finds me broodingbehind my book, all my fantasiesof seduction run upagainst the rocks.Tell me againwhy you don't likesex in the afternoon?No, don't tell me--I'll never understand younever understand us, America's strangestloving couple: they neverdrink a bottle of wine togetherand rarely look at each other.Into each other's eyes, I mean.
— Deborah Garrison, A Working Girl Can't Win
How can you still count yourself a knight, when you have forsaken every vow you ever swore?" Jaime reached for the flagon to refill his cup. "So many vows...they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other.
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
Often you don't know whether a woman is friend, enemy or lover until it is too late. Sometimes, she is all three.
— Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos
I love you. You’re mine. I’ll kill any bastard who tries to take you from me.
— Samantha Young, On Dublin Street
Tucker: Why would you tell me now if it's against the rules?Clara: Because I love you.
— Cynthia Hand, Unearthly