If I speak to thee in friendship's name,Thou think'st I speak too coldly;If I mention love's devoted flame,Thou say'st I speak too boldly. Thomas Moore Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?Was ever woman in this humour won? William Shakespeare Richard III (1591)
So mourn'd the dame of Ephesus her love,And thus the soldier arm'd with resolutionTold his soft tale, and was a thriving wooer. Colley Cibber Richard III (altered) (1700)
'Tis an old lesson; time approves it true,And those who know it best, deplore it most;When all is won that all desire to woo,The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost. Lord Byron
What is commonly called “falling in love” is in most cases and intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever. Eckhart Tolle A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)
'T is sweet to think that where'er we roveWe are sure to find something blissful and dear;And that when we 're far from the lips we love,We've but to make love to the lips we are near. Thomas Moore Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)
Romances paint at full length people's wooings,But only give a bust of marriages:For no one cares for matrimonial cooings.There's nothing wrong in a connubial kiss.Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife,He would have written sonnets all his life? Lord Byron
Never give her o'er;For scorn at first makes after-love the more.If she do frown, 'tis not in hate of you,But rather to beget more love in you;If she do chide, 'tis not to have you gone,For why, the fools are mad if left alone. William Shakespeare
Wooing thee, I found thee of more valueThan stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags;And 'tis the very riches of thyselfThat now I aim at. William Shakespeare
Never wedding, ever wooing,Still a lovelorn heart pursuing,Read you not the wrong you're doingIn my cheek's pale hue?All my life with sorrow strewing;Wed or cease to woo. Thomas Campbell
The nightingales among the sheltering boughsOf populous many-nested treesShall teach me how to woo thee, and shall tell meBy what resistless charms or incantationsThey won their mates. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
That you are in a terrible taking,By all these sweet oglings I see;But the fruit that can fall without shaking,Indeed is too mellow for me. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
"Chops and Tomata Sauce. Yours, Pickwick." Chops! Gracious heavens! and Tomata Sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away by such shallow artifices as these? Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers (1836)
Say that upon the altar of her beautyYou sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart:Write till your ink be dry and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling line,That may discover such integrity. William Shakespeare
Perhaps if you address the ladyMost politely, most politely,Flatter and impress the ladyMost politely, most politely.Humbly beg and humbly sue,She may deign to look on you. W. S. Gilbert
O gentle Romeo,If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,So thou wilt woo: but else, not for the world. William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (1597)
Bring therefore all the forces that ye may,And lay incessant battery to her heart;Playnts, prayers, vowes, truth, sorrow, and dismay;Those engins can the proudest love convert:And, if those fayle, fall down and dy before her;So dying live, and living do adore her. Edmund Spenser
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'dThat heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,I should but teach him how to tell my storyAnd that would woo her. William Shakespeare Othello (1603)
Alas! to seize the momentWhen heart inclines to heart,And press a suit with passion,Is not a woman's part.If man come not to gatherThe roses where they stand,They fade among their foliage,They cannot seek his hand. William Cullen Bryant