Love quotes from classic books

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of Being and ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday’sMost quiet need, by sun and candlelight.I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,My love as deep; the more I give to thee,The more I have, for both are infinite.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

For aught that I could ever read,Could ever hear by tale or history,The course of true love never did run smooth.

If music be the food of love, play on,Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken and so die.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,Doubt that the sun doth move,Doubt truth to be a liar,But never doubt I love.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,That can sing both high and low.Trip no further, pretty sweeting.Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.

What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet;So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,Retain that dear perfection which he owesWithout that title.

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrowThat I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove:O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,That looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle’s compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me prov’d,I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Drink to me only with thine eyes,And I will pledge with mine;Or leave a kiss but in the cupAnd I’ll not look for wine.The thirst that from the soul doth riseDoth ask a drink divine;But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,I would not change for thine.

Come live with me and be my Love,And we will all the pleasures proveThat hills and valleys, dales and fieldsOr woods or steepy mountain yields.

She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that’s best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes:Thus mellow’d to that tender lightWhich heaven to gaudy day denies.

O my Luve’s like a red, red roseThat’s newly sprung in June:O my Luve’s like the melodieThat’s sweetly play’d in tune!As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,So deep in luve am I:And I will luve thee still, my dear,Till a’ the seas gang dry:Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;I will luve thee still, my dear,While the sands o’ life shall run.And fare thee weel, my only Luve,And fare thee weel a while!And I will come again, my Luve,Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.

I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but no one with such justice.

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” said she afterwards to herself. “There is nothing to be compared to it.”

All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.

All mankind love a lover.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love.

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up there will be you.

Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship—camaraderie—usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death—that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one’s own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one’s self

Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps. To love, or to have loved,—this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life.

Each time you happen to me all over again.

Reader, I married him.

Time isToo Slow for those who Wait,Too Swift for those who Fear,Too Long for those who Grieve,Too Short for those who Rejoice;But for those who Love,Time is not.

John Anderson, my jo, John,When we were first acquent;Your locks were like the raven,Your bonie brow was brent;But now your brow is beld, John,Your locks are like the snaw;But blessings on your frosty pow,John Anderson, my jo.

Love is life in its fulness like the cup with its wine.

You smiled and talked to me of nothing and I felt that for this I had been waiting long.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness—Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The fountains mingle with the riverAnd the rivers with the ocean,The winds of heaven mix for everWith a sweet emotion;Nothing in the world is single,All things by a law divineIn one another's being mingle—Why not I with thine?See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the waves clasp one another;No sister-flower would be forgivenIf it disdain'd its brother:And the sunlight clasps the earth,And the moonbeams kiss the sea—What are all these kissings worth,If thou kiss not me?

If thou must love me, let it be for noughtExcept for love’s sake only. Do not say“I love her for her smile—her look—her wayOf speaking gently,—for a trick of thoughtThat falls in well with mine, and certes broughtA sense of pleasant ease on such a day”—For these things in themselves, Belovëd, mayBe changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,May be unwrought so. Neither love me forThine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry,—A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!But love me for love’s sake, that evermoreThou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.