23 quotes
O, there is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love,—the first fluttering of its silken wings.
Hyperion (1839)
It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.
Kavanagh: A Tale (1849)
Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the springs to meet the sunshine.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Like Dian's kiss, unask'd, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought.
Endymion (1818)
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
It serves for food and raiment.
The Spanish Student (1843)
Sang in tones of deep emotion,
Songs of love and songs of longing.
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
I love thee, as the good love heaven.
The Spanish Student (1843)
For his heart was in his work, and the heart
Giveth grace unto every Art.
The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)
If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
But thou dost make the very night itself
Brighter than day.
How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
Something the heart must have to cherish,
Must love and joy and sorrow learn;
Something with passion clasp, or perish
And in itself to ashes burn.
Hyperion (1839)
Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse.
To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing,
As in a foundering ship.
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
The world loves a spice of wickedness.
Hyperion (1839)
Why don't you speak for yourself, John?
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858)
Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.
Table-Talk (1857)
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth;
Greater than anger is love that subdueth.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863)
As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bonds him she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows,
Useless each without the other!
The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
Ah, how skillful grows the hand
That obeyeth Love's command!
It is the heart, and not the brain,
That to the highest doth attain,
And he who followeth Love's behest
Far excelleth all the rest!
The nightingales among the sheltering boughs
Of populous many-nested trees
Shall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell me
By what resistless charms or incantations
They won their mates.