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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:

I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind.

Ben Jonson The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640)

It's harder to lose the wish to love than the wish to live.[7]

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Love is almost never simple.

Dejan Stojanovic

King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face. Yet, when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.

Lionel Johnson By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

Milo: You have to be serious if you want to be in love.
Andrew: You have to be serious about crime if you want to afford to be in love.

Anthony Shaffer Sleuth (1970)

Children were meant to be gifts. The physical manifestation of love between a man and a woman. And for that love all manner of sacrifice could be borne.

Steven Erikson Memories of Ice (2001)

The only Real Love is the Love for this Infinity (God), which arouses an intense longing to see, know and become one with its Truth (God).

Meher Baba Discourses (1967)

So you must always remember
that time ends the beauty

Mellin de Saint-Gelais

She is young. Have I the right
Even to name her? Child,
It is not love I offer
Your quick limbs, your eyes;
Only the barren homage
Of an old man whom time
Crucifies.

R. S. Thomas Pietá (1966)

I would hate to think I am not an amateur. An amateur is one who loves what he is doing. Very often, I'm afraid, the professional hates what he is doing. So, I'd rather be an amateur.

Yehudi Menuhin

It... [abstract structure] is a beautiful thing, and sometimes all that matters is that it's a beautiful thing.

Eugenia Cheng Keynote: How to bake "How to Bake Pi (2016)

The beauty of a butterfly’s wing, the beauty of all things, is not a slave to purpose, a drudge sold to futurity. It is excrescence, superabundance, random ebullience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own high right.

Donald C. Peattie An Almanac for Moderns (1935)

"Verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty"

R. S. Thomas Poetry For Supper (1958)

Love, Lettie thought, it hurts and gladdens us no matter what a woman's age. (p177)

Linda Hogan Mean Spirit (1990)

He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,—
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.

Lord Byron The Giaour (1813)

I want you to have this,
all the beauty in my eyes,
and the grace of my mouth,
all the splendor of my strength,
all the wonder of the musk parts of my body,
for are we not talking about real love, real love?”

Meera Bai

My soul is occupied,
And all my substance in His service;
Now I guard no flock,
Nor have I any other employment:
My sole occupation is love. ~ 28

John of the Cross

No state can match the beauty of the Chesapeake Bay, our beaches and farms, or the mountains of Western Maryland, the Port of Baltimore, or the historic charm of every corner of our state.

Larry Hogan State of the State Address: A New Direction for Maryland (2015)

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think. (p59)

Alice Hoffman Practical Magic (1995)

The sky at the top of the gray ocean has become much lighter now. The sun is about to rise. I will end this recording for now and stop the bus and walk outside and watch the sun rise over the ocean.
My God, the world can be beautiful.

Walter Tevis Mockingbird (1980)

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