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Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
Toni Morrison (1931 - ), Beloved

Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simplier, but much less magical.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Chef Aid, 1998

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Moon and Sixpence

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
William Penn (1644 - 1718)

But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 6

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), Sonnet cxvi

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn’t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, 02-14-2003

Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.
Ice T, The Ice Opinion

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999)

We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999), O Magazine, February 2004

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey

I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park

In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love.
Don Juan (1819-24) canto 3, st. 3
Lord Byron

Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possessed,
No craving void left aching in the breast.
Eloisa to Abelard (1717) l. 91
Alexander Pope

The hind that would be mated with the lion
Must die of love.
All’s Well that Ends Well (1603-4) act 1, sc. 1, l. [103]
William Shakespeare

And yet I love this false, this worthless man,
With all the passion that a woman can;
Dote on his imperfections, though I spy
Nothing to love; I love, and know not why.
Female Poems (1679) 'To one that asked me why I loved J.G.'
Ephelia

There is no fury like a woman looking for a new lover.
The Unquiet Grave (1944) pt. 1.
Cyril Connolly

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned,
Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.
The Mourning Bride (1697) act 3, sc. 8
William Congreve

Dire que j’ai gâché des années de ma vie, que j’ai voulu mourir, que j’ai eu mon plus grand amour, pour une femme qui ne me plaisait pas, qui n’était pas mon genre!

To think that I’ve wasted years of my life, that I’ve longed to die, that I’ve experienced my greatest love for a woman who didn’t appeal to me, who wasn’t even my type!
Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way, 1913) vol. 2, p. 228
Marcel Proust

Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Franklin P. Jones
 

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Plato
 

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost
 

If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
Sir James M. Barrie

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Henry Louis Mencken
 

Love is a friendship set to music.
E. Joseph Cossman
 

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
Erich Segal
 

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire

They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.
William Shakespeare
 

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
Lord Byron