Sourced and curated.

Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.

Oliver Goldsmith

1768

★ 1.9

Oh, love is the crooked thing, There is nobody wise enough To find out all that is in it, For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.

W.B. Yeats

1910

★ 1.9

Interview · Academic journal

Love is not just a feeling; it's a practice, something you practice whether you feel like it or not.

Wendell Berry

1996

★ 1.9

Tragedy (play)

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, Too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like thorn.

Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

1597

★ 1.9

Letter

Rainer Maria Rilke

1929

★ 1.9

Like love we don't know where or why Like love can't compel or fly Like love we often weep Like love we seldom keep

W.H. Auden

Law like Love · 1939

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play)

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

A Midsummer Night's Dream · 1599

★ 2.0

When love is not madness, it is not love.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

1637

★ 2.0

Sonnet · Poem

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 2.1

Scripture · Religious literature

Song of Solomon 8:7

1000 BC

★ 2.6

Novella

Love is a joint experience between two persons-but the fact it is a joint experience does not mean it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and beloved, but these two come from different countries.

Carson McCullers

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe · 1943

★ 2.7

Play · Comedy (play)

The course of true love never did run smooth.

A Midsummer Night's Dream · 1599

★ 3.0

It's no good trying to fool yourself about love. You can't fall into it like a soft job, without dirtying up your hands. It takes muscle and guts. And if you can't bear the thought of messing up your nice, clean soul, you'd better give up the whole idea of life and become a saint.

John Osborne

1956

★ 3.4

Love wants to enjoy in other ways the human being whom it has enjoyed in bed; it looks forward to having breakfast. But in the morning Lust is always furtive.

Henry Fairlie

1978

★ 3.4

Film · Coming of age (film) · Coming of age

Love, love, you know what love is? Love is an illusion created by lawyer types like yourself to perpetuate another illusion called marriage to create the reality of divorce and the illusionary need for divorce lawyers.

Kevin Dolenz

St. Elmo's Fire · 1985

★ 3.5

Love is a thing. It is a prick, it is a sting, It is a pretty, pretty thing; It is a fire, it is a coal Whose flame creeps in at every hole.

George Peele

1591

★ 3.5

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; It extinguishes the small, it kindles the great.

Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy

1665

★ 3.5

You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself!

Jean Anouilh

1948

★ 3.5

What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.

Umberto Eco

The Name of the Rose · 1980

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

I never shied away from love's hugeness but I had no idea that love could be as reliable as the sun. The daily rising of love.

Jeanette Winterson

2011

★ 3.5

The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.

Amelia E. Barr

The Belle of Bowling Green · 1904

★ 3.6

Philosophical literature · Religious literature

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

C.S. Lewis

1944

★ 3.6

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Ursula K. Le Guin

1971

★ 3.6

Love is two people mutually feeding each other, not one living on the soul of the other like a ghoul.

Bessie Head

1973

★ 3.6

Love is holy because it is like grace-the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

Marilynne Robinson

Gilead · 2004

★ 3.6

Film · Romantic drama (film) · Romantic drama

The best love is the kind that awakens the soul, and makes us reach for more, that, plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me and what I hope to give to you forever.

Noah

The Notebook · 2004

★ 3.6

Film · Romantic drama (film) · Drama (film) · Romantic drama · Drama

But if you want true love, then this is it. This is real life. It's not perfect but it's real.

Jesse

Before Midnight · 2013

★ 3.6

Poem · Narrative poem

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies. Love is all truth, Lust full of forgèd lies.

Love is nothing but lust and cheating and lies.

Venus and Adonis · 1593

★ 3.7

Film · Fantasy drama (film) · Drama (film) · Fantasy drama · Drama

Jons

The Seventh Seal · 1957

★ 3.7

The half-life of love is forever.

Junot Diaz

This is How You Lose Her · 2012

★ 3.7

Sonnet · Poem

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Cause baby there ain't no mountain high enough Ain't no valley low enough Ain't no river wide enough To keep me from getting to you, babe

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 3.8

Song · Pop music · Soul

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

Ain't No Mountain High Enough · 1967

★ 3.8

Film · Coming of age (film) · Drama (film) · Coming of age · Drama

You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think it counts as love.

Sam (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower · 2012

★ 3.8

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

Lord Byron

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.9

Song · Rock music

And in the end The love you take Is equal to the love you make.

The Beatles

The End · 1969

★ 3.9