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.
And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen,
The maiden herself will steal after it soon.
Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have.
Could we forbear dispute, and practise love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Love's like the flies, and, drawing-room or garret, goes all over a house.
Love leads to present rapture,—then to pain;
But all through Love in time is healed again.
Like Dian's kiss, unask'd, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought.
It is not safe to despise what Love commands. He reigns supreme, and rules the mighty gods.
Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
And can be bought with nothing but with self.
While all the future, for thy purer soul,
With "sober certainties" of love is blest.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.