Love Quotes
This is one of the biggest pages on the site, and most of what is on it is not the kind of line you would put on a mug. Wikiquote’s editors drew these from poems, novels, letters and essays, so a lot of them only make full sense next to the sentences around them. That is useful if you want a real source and annoying if you want a caption.
Two of the best-known love quotes are flagged here as misattributed. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” is credited to Confucius. The oldest English version anyone has found is from a 1982 alumni magazine, where the man quoted was himself passing it along from an unnamed source. “God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy” is credited to Benjamin Franklin. It looks like a garbled version of what he wrote about wine in 1779, in a letter to André Morellet.
If a quote you want is marked disputed or attributed, that is Wikiquote’s judgement, not ours. The notes on the quote’s page show what the editors found.
Love's of itself too sweet; the best of all
Is, when love's honey has a dash of gall.
Let moderation on thy passions wait;
Who loves too much, too much the lov'd will hate.
To set the cause above renown,
To love the game above the prize.
To love and be beloved, this is the good,
Which for most sovereign all the world will prove.
But beauty has wings, and too hastily flies,
And love, unrewarded, soon sickens and dies.
Ah, better to love in the lowliest cot
Than pine in a palace alone.
If you can't love two people at once, there's something wrong with you.