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Valentine's Day Quotes

This page has no collection of its own behind it. It is built from the pages on love, romance and beauty, so it is very large and not selective. Use it as a place to start, and check what you pick.

The check matters more for love than for most topics, because so many of the famous lines are not what they seem. “Choose a job you love” is not Confucius, and “God made beer because he loves us” is probably a garbled Franklin on wine. See the Love page for both. If you are going to put a quote in a card, look at the label next to it first.

Random quote on Valentine's Day

Most quoted on valentine's day:

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.

Nathaniel Hawthorne The American Notebooks (1835)

But love can mean many things. It can be an instrument of aggression or a function of disease.

Roger Zelazny Frost & Fire (1989)

Beauty is but the cloak of happiness. Where joy tarries, there also is beauty.

Ludwig Klages Rhythmen und Runen (1944)

The demons had invented love. There needs to be said no more.

Tanith Lee Night's Sorceries (1987)

The Sufi's love to God goes with God's love towards him. Sufis are folk who have preferred God to everything, so that God has preferred them to everything.

Dhul-Nun al-Misri The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Everyone wants love, but there are so few who can give it. Or else you offer it passionately, selflessly, and it's rejected, your love is not wanted, it's a burden.

Sophia Tolstaya

From the hand of the cup-bearer I drank the goblet of love. Oneness became overpowering, forget infidelity and Islam.

Khwaja Ghulam Farid The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

I fear to accept anything from anybody lest my heart should start cherishing love for that person. I desire only to live in His thoughts.

Sufyan al-Thawri The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Divine way is extremely difficult to tread, but you should not despair. If you have courage, true aspiration, and ardency of love, then come to this path, otherwise be silent.

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004)

Parents—so essential yet sometimes like something you have stepped in and cannot get off your shoe. What else is there but to love them?

Jeffrey Ford The Empire of Ice Cream (2006)

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man (1988)

Don’t mistake gratitude for love.

Esther Friesner Harlot's Ruse (1986)

Love is ungrateful, infirm, and unworthy of the name of love if it is not faithful in doing every will of God.

Jane Frances de Chantal

We always thought the living earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.

Arthur C. Clarke The Light of Other Days (2000)

I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.

Kurt Vonnegut Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)

Beauty was the promise of happiness, not happiness itself; and the anticipated world was often more rich than anything real.

Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars (1992)

I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything.

George Harrison

I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.

Norman Mailer The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956)

“Peace, simpleton!” said the Princess. “Though he said he was unhappy, it does not follow that he must be in love.”

Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, gentle, strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly and never seeking her own; for whosoever a man seeketh his own, there he falleth from love.

Thomas à Kempis The Imitation of Christ (1418)

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