Love is the whole and
more than all.
- EE Cummings
The heart has its reasons,
of which the mind knows nothing.
- Blaise Pascal
Tis better to have
loved and lost — than never to have loved at all.
- Tennyson, "In Memoriam"
The supreme happiness
in life is the conviction that we are loved.
- Victor Hugo
We are, each of us
angels with only one wing; and we can only fly by embracing one another.
- Luciano de Crescenzo
To live in dialogue
with another is to live twice. Joys are doubled by exchange and burdens
are cut in half.
- Wishart
It has been said that
the reason we establish relationships is to assure ourselves of a witness
to our lives.
- Roger Ebert
Love consists in this,
that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Life has taught us
that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward
together in the same direction.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)
Every human being must
be viewed according to what it is good for, for none of us — no, not one
— is perfect, and were we to love none who had imperfections, this world
would be a desert for our love.
- Thomas Jefferson
Remember tonight, for
it is the beginning of always.
- Dante
"It is the difference
betwixt lust and love that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, lust
wastes by enjoyment."
- William Penn
Who ever loved that
loved not at first sight?
~ Christopher Marlowe
You have to walk carefully
in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms
can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
- Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"
The most important
thing in life is to love someone. The second most important thing in life
is to have someone love you. The third most important thing is to have
the first two happen at the same time.
- Howie Schneider
Every adult life could
be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest
for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
- Alain de Botton, "Status Anxiety"
I'll give you an exact
definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to
yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
The highest function
of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
- T. Robbins
"We lay there without
moving... never knew such silence. The Earth might be uninhabited."
- Krapp, recalling a youthful romance in Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last
Tape"
The most important
things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.
~ Stephen King
People who are sensible
about love are incapable of it.
- Douglas Yates
"Fools rush in, where
wise men never go,
But wise men never
fall in love, so how are they to know?"
- Johnny Mercer, "Fools Rush In"
"Faint heart never
won fair lady."
- Old English proverb
"The human heart feels
things the eyes cannot see, and knows what the mind cannot understand."
- Robert Valett
"Tears are the safety
valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it."
- Albert Smith
"Don't be reckless
with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless with
yours."
- Mary Schmich
When so many are lonely
as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
- Tennessee Williams
A man without a woman
is like a tugboat in a logjam.
- Anon
"Deliver my heart from
this fearful, lonely place. Send me a great love from somewhere or else
I shall die, truly I shall die."
- from Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native"
"She took the bus home,
reflecting on all the grief and loneliness of her 16 years and on the fact
that no one here even said hello to her. She got off the bus, multplying
this night by some many others, and so many more to come, and when the
next bus came, she stepped in front of it."
- from "The Twilight Zone: Time and Teresa Golowitz"
"Commitment and loyalty
are not stuffy issues of the past, but are enduring qualities that raise
us above creatures that procreate without compassion or disgression."
- from "The Outer Limits: Flower Child"
"Love? Pah. Overrated.
Here, look, these are my three wives: Pestilence, Famine and Death. Do
you think I married them for their personalities? Their personalities could
shatter entire planets! Arranged marriages, every one, but they worked
out. They inspired me. Knowing that they are waiting at home for me is
what keeps me here — 75 light years away."
- Londo, "Babylon 5"
"Money can't buy love,
but it improves your bargaining position."
- Christopher Marlowe
"An archaeologist is
the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested
he is in her."
- Agatha Christie
Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out a candle, and blows in a fire.
"I have to decide where
my heart belongs before the rest of me can follow."
- Susan Ivanova, "Babylon 5"
Men always want to be a womans first love - women like to be a mans last romance.
I too have known love, that ruler of hearts, that soul of our soul: it's never brought me anything except one kiss and twenty kicks in the rump.
- Holbrook Jackson
Love and friendship are profoundly personal, selfish values. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love. Concern for the welfare of those one loves is a rational part of one's selfish interest.
BEAUTY
Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?
- Audrey Hepburn
"Beauty in life may
come from makeup, or what have you, but in death, you have to fall back
on character."
- Martha, in "A Woman's Tale"
"I think your whole
life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."
- Lauren Bacall
Slinky as a lynx, hot
as pepper, cool as rain, dry as smoke. There’s considerably more to her
than staying sexy at 60.
- Ros Asquith, watching Lauren Bacall, "The London Observer"
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
"Uncommon beauty is
commonly overlooked. People only notice the birds with the brightest colors."
- Walter to Robin, people-watcher and bird-watcher, "The Woodsman"
Things are more beautiful when they're obscure.
- Veda Hille
"All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told."
- Unknown
"Laddie, every woman has her own charm. You just have to know where to look for it."
Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue's girl-next-door is all the American male could wish for: unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship.
"When I see a sexy
lady I look. That's the price of beauty."
- Carlos, "The Woodsman"
"I cried myself to
sleep wishing I was ugly because men leered and disrespected me."
- Evangeline Lilly, "Lost" actress, on the downside of being beautiful
Sorry. I thought I recognized landmarks in your face, felt familiar contours along the bones of your hand, caught a cry that tore in flight across your voice. Forgive me for staring. Someone I knew once lived there.
- Saul Bellow
Excuse me, guess I've mistaken you for somebody else, somebody who gave a damn, somebody more like myself.
- George Orwell
The best way to be beautiful is to choose your parents well.
- Jared Diamond, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee"
Of course plastic surgery
is needed in the case of deformity or burn scars, but as cosmetic measure?
Do we really live
in such a shallow world? How sad that now it would seem people are judged
on how they look, rather than how they act. Time was when a person was
judged on their achievements and behaviour. On how they treated their fellow
human beings, and kindness of the heart was regarded as the ultimate trait
of humanity. I wonder what the men of yesteryear would think of the new
egotistical self-abosorbed male of the 21st century? This whole new obsession
with personal appearance just goes to show how weak we are becoming as
a species.
- Maurice Aherne, reader's "Letter of the Week" to Ireland's "Sunday Independent"
She was what we used
to call a suicide blond — dyed by her own hand.
- Saul Bellow
What, when drunk, one
sees in other women, one sees in Gretta Garbo sober.
- Kenneth Tynan
Sex appeal is 50% what
you've got and 50% what people think you've got.
- Katy French
"I hired you because
you look good."
"I was in the top
of my class."
"But not the top...
would that upset you, really, to think that you were hired because of some
genetic gift of beauty not some genetic gift of intelligence?"
"I worked very hard
to get where I am."
"But you didn’t have
to. People choose the paths that grant them the greatest rewards for the
least amount of effort. That’s the law of nature, and you defied it. That’s
why I hired you."
- House and Cameron, "House"
>> LOVE LETTERS
"I will dine nowhere
without your consent although with my present feelings I might be trusted
with fifty virgins naked in a dark room."
- letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson to Lady Hamilton (1801)
"My love is founded
on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last."
- letter from Horatio Nelson to his fiancee Fanny Nisbet (from "Nelson"
by Tom Pocock)
"I wish you had one
of those fairy telescopes that can look into the hearts and souls of people
a thousand leagues off, then you might see how much you possess my mind."
- letter from Royal Navy Captain Cuthbert Collingwood to Mary Moutray (1785)
"The heart is long,
very long in receiving the convictions that is forced upon it by reason...
affection still lingers in the Bosom, even after esteem has taken its flight."
- Abigail Adams, (platonic) letter to Thomas Jefferson
"Who can know her,
and himself, and entertain much hope? Who can see and know such a creature,
and not love her to distraction? She has all the softness that does not
imply weakness... she is not made to be the admiration of everybody, but
the happiness of one."
- Edmund Burke, letter to a friend after becoming besotted with one Jane
Nugent
"You are leaving at
noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amour, a thousand
kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire."
- letter from Napoelon to Josephine (Paris 1795)
"If this lady is pleased
to spend her days with Franklin, he would be just as pleased to spend his
nights with her."
- Benjamin Frankling, note to one Mme Helvétius
"I speak to you as
I would speak to any person who possesses my true thoughts. For my true
thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these
last few weeks, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth."
- Henry Ash, in "Possession"
"You are so near to
my thoughts and my heart yet so far from my body and my arms... I once
loved the whole world because you were in it."
- Brunnhild, in "Ring of the Nibelungs"
"We both know that
love blooms in our embrace. The way that your tongue playfully rolls over
the name Charlie. I thank God the silliest of names is mine."
- Letter from Charlie Chaplin to Marion Davies in "The Cat's Meow"
>> POETRY
Give me a look, give
me a face, that makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing,
hair as free,-- Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries
of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
- Benjamin Johnson, "Epicaene; Or, the Silent Woman"
She dwelt among the
untrodden ways beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there
were none to praise and very few to love.
A violet by a mossy
stone half hidden from the eye;
Fair as a star, when
only one is shining in the sky.
- Wordsworth, "She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways"
Many are the starrs
I see, but in my eye no starr like thee.
~ English saying used on poesy rings
Over the Earth he flies
and the loud-echoing salt-sea.
He bewitches and maddens
the heart of the victim he swoops upon.
He bewitches the race
of the mountain-hunting lions and beasts of the sea,
And all the creatures
that Earth feeds,
And the blazing sun
sees -
And man too -
Over all you hold
kingly power,
Love you are the only
ruler over all these.
- Euripedes, "Hippolytus"
If I were loved, as
I desire to be,
What is there in the
great sphere of the earth,
And range of evil
between death and birth,
That I should fear,
— if I were loved by thee?
- Tennsyon, "If I were loved, as I desire to be"
Shall I compare thee
to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely
and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake
the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease
hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the
eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold
complexion dimm'd;
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet #18
My mistress' eyes are
nothing like the sun ;
Coral is far more
red than her lips red :
I grant I never saw
a goddess go,
My mistress, when
she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven,
I think my love as rare as any she belied by false compare.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet # 130
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
That looks on tempests
and is never shaken;
It is the star to
every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown,
although his height be taken.
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.
If this be error and
upon me proved,
I never writ, nor
no man ever loved.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI
Had we but world enough,
and time,
This coyness, Lady,
were no crime
We would sit down
and think which way
To walk and pass our
long love's day.
..
But at my back I always
hear
Time's winged chariot
hurrying near;
And yonder all before
us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no
more be found,
Nor, in thy marble
vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then
worms shall try
That long preserved
virginity,
And your quaint honour
turn to dust,
And into ashes all
my lust:
The grave's a fine
and private place,
But none, I think,
do there embrace.
- Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
Almost home on the
longest day of the year,
I saw two birds on
a telephone wire.
Two beaks, two sharp-peaked
ruffed,
Two tails that stuck
down stiff,
Like two closed fans
and matched up neatly.
And against the faintly
yellow pre-dusk sky,
The birds and wire
were all one color,
A fading black or
darkening grey,
Sometimes the smallest
thing brings harmony in through the eye.
Or was it that I on
that particular day,
Had harmony to bring
to what I saw?
- Deborah Garrison, "Happily Married"
Red-haired girls with
eyes that are metallic and full of green, spooky depths ...
Red-haired girls with
pale, orange freckles of irregular shape, like alphabet-noodles.
Red-haired girls who
wear their hair in high, wild leaps, like red-hot spaghetti...
Red-haired girls of
Brunnhildian architecture, magnificent in opera cloaks ...
Little, mousy red-haired
girls...
Red-haired girls who
seem to be afire. Red-haired girls like smoky autumn days. ...
Red-haired girls with
complexions resembling the chests of alligators. ...
Red-haired girls looking
self-conscious every time they pass white horses.
Red-haired girls with
their hair bobbed, looking like fabulous chrysanthemums.
Red-haired girls lying
on the beach, scaring the oysters and scallops away.
Red-haired girls dropping
their eyes with fiendish art...
Red-haired girls wondering
whether to thank God for it or to curse him.
- HL Mencken, "Dianthus Caryophyllus", from "The Gist of Mencken"