100 Best Quotes about Love

Writings of Love: A Collection of Essential Quotes

Love. A simple word, complex emotion. Love keeps us guessing, makes us do silly things, inspires, frustrates, and completes us. What is the real meaning of love, how does it start, and of course, why does it have to end? Here is a compilation of quotes that may provide the answers or at least reassure you, you’re not alone.

This list below features BQOTD’s picks for best quotes about love.

Love, What art Thou?

Yes, it’s almost impossible to agree on a definition of love and its various forms, but perhaps a few well known writers, celebrities, and our favorite movies can share their insights.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

William Shakespeare

Death cannot stop true love; it can only delay it for a little while.

Princess Bride

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

Robert Frost

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.

Dr. Seuss

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.

Kahlil Gibran

Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given, never forgotten, never let it disappear.

John Lennon

Love withers under constraints. Its very essence is liberty; it is comparable neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries are in confidence, equality and unreserve.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Best Love Quotes
Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it.

Tom Hanks, Sleepless In Seattle

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

Sam Keen, from To Love and Be Loved

I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.

Julia Roberts, Notting Hill

I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.

Dirty Dancing

When you’re with the right person, it’s impossible to do anything wrong, and if you’re with the wrong person, no matter what you do, it won’t be right.

Unknown

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you’re always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it when you’re not around, and the fact that you didn’t call. But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

Julia Stiles, 10 Things I Hate About You

Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another.

Emma by Jane Austen

According to Greek mythology humans were originally created with four arms four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.

Unknown

If you can’t get someone off your mind they are probably supposed to be there.

Unknown

A guy and a girl can be friends. But sooner or later one will fall for the other. Maybe too early, maybe too late, but maybe, just maybe forever.

Unknown

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Aristotle

When in Love…
Love has a unique way of changing and interrupting our thoughts and actions. People in love behave differently as these quotes show.

He brought out the worst in me, and was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Coco J. Ginger

If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.

William Shakespeare

Love can never grow old.
Locks may lose their brown and gold.
Cheeks may fade and hollow grow.
But the hearts that love will know,
never winter’s frost and chill,
summer’s warmth is in them still.

Leo Buscaglia

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.

Vincent Van Gogh

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Plato with Unknown Sources

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give, the more they possess.

Rainer Maria Rilke

There is a comfort in the strength of love; ‘Twill make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.

William Wordsworth

When you trip over love, it is easy to get up. But when you fall in love, it is impossible to stand again.

Albert Einstein

It’s a very dangerous state. You are inclined to recklessness and kind of tune out the rest of your life and everything that’s been important to you. It’s actually not all that pleasurable. I don’t know who the hell wants to get in a situation where you can’t bear an hour without somebody’s company.

Colin Firth

When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.


Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.

Paulo Coelho

If you asked me how many times you have crossed my mind I would say once because you never really left…

Unknown

Love Takes Effort
They say anything worth having is worth working for. No one ever said love was easy.

That’s why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they’d call them something else.

Sixteen Candles

I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

Marilyn Monroe

Sometimes you need to run away just to see who will come after you.

Lisa Brooks

He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can.

Bob Marley

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.

Alexandra Penney

Everyone wants to be the sun that lights up your life. But I’d rather be your moon, so I can shine on you during your darkest hour when your sun isn’t around.

Unknown

I would like to have engraved inside every wedding band ‘Be kind to one another.’ This is the Golden Rule of Marriage and the secret of making love last through the years.

Randolph Ray

NEVER assume love is enough to make someone stay or come back to you… Because when pain strikes the heart love fades away, No matter how great it was.

Unknown

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

Mark Twain

Love Expressed
There are as many ways to express love as there are definitions of love. And as Plato said, “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” We’ve got plenty of lovers that express how to express love.

No, I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.

Gone with the Wind

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

George Bernard Shaw

WHAT EACH KISS MEANS”
– Kiss on the Forehead: We’re cute together .
– Kiss on the Cheek: We’re friends.
– Kiss on the Hand: I adore you.
– Kiss on the Neck: I want you, now.
– Kiss on the Shoulder: Your perfect.
– Kiss on the Lips: I LOVE YOU…

Unknown

The spaces between your fingers were created so that another’s could fill them in.

Unknown

A kiss, when all is said, what is it?
A rosy dot placed on the “i” in loving;
‘Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear.

Edmond Rostand

My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.

Ingrid Bergman

If you love someone tell them… because hearts are often broken by words left unspoken.

Pamela Daranjo

When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

St. Augustine

A Love Lost

Do you agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson, who said the following? “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Time has a way of changing everything, especially love, and sometimes it grows while in other settings it fades, yet these quotes prove why it never truly ends.

Stuart needs “space” and “time,” as if this were physics and not a human relationship.

Kathryn Stockett, The Help

Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones.

Mignon McLauglin

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings.

William Shakespeare

If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.

C.S. Lewis

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

True love only comes once in a life time, so take it as it goes and enjoy every bit of it while it is still burning strong.

Unknown

All my joys resemble more a momentary intoxication than the real gold of happiness. It was all but an illusion.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis: The Case Histories

I don’t love you anymore … It comes down to that, I think.

Elizabeth Cox, The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love

If two past lovers can remain friends, either they never were in love or they still are.

Unknown

There’s no point in holding onto someone that has already let you go.

Unknown

I refuse to let what happened to me make me bitter. I still completely believe in love and I’m open to anything that will happen to me.

Nicole Kidman

I miss your smile… but I miss mine more.

Laurel House

But now the other half of “us” was gone and, lying there in my shadowy room, I’d be struck with this realization that I had no clue how to be just me again.

Jennifer Brown

When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It’s like death.

Dennis Quaid

The best way to mend a broken heart is time and girlfriends.

Gwyneth Paltrow

The heart was made to be broken.

Oscar Wilde

Jealousy is just love and hate at the same time.

Drake

I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.

Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.

Graham Greene, The Comedians

Feeling Bitter
Love, like people, can be fickle. Men and women once scorned let us know, we’re not alone in our feelings. Of course I don’t know if these people felt bitter, but they sound it…

Men are a luxury. Not a necessity.

Cher

Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorned.

William Congreve

A true heiress is never mean to anyone — except a girl who steals your boyfriend.

Paris Hilton

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.

Ernest Hemingway

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Oscar Wilde

Love has the power of making you believe what you would normally treat with the deepest suspicion.

Mirabeau

The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain.

Jennifer Aniston

I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

Josh Billings

You know you’ve checked into Heartbreak Hotel for real when you feel less desirable than uncooked fish.

Plum Sykes, Bergdorf Blondes

Having a guy dump you and say, ‘We can still be friends.” Is like having your mom say, ‘Your dog died but you can still keep it.’

Unknown

The sweetest part of being a couple is sharing your life with someone else. But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.

Charlaine Harris, Club Dead

In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.

Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense.

Mark Overby

The best revenge is a life well lived.

Common adaptation of George Herbert’s quote, “Living well is the best revenge

A wise girl kisses but doesn’t love, listens but doesn’t believe, and leaves before she is left.

Marilyn Monroe

Men should be like Kleenex…soft, strong, disposable.

Cher

As long as you know most men are like children, you know everything.

Coco Chanel

Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than try to hurt yourself putting it back together.

Unknown Author

There is no pleasure without a tincture of bitterness.

Hafiz

Recipe for greatness – To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great.

Zane Grey

There’s nothing in this world can make me joy: Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man; And bitter shame hath spoil’d the sweet world’s taste that it yields nought but shame and bitterness.

William Shakespeare

I’ve seen men like you in Doris Day films, but I never thought they existed in real life…The men who can’t commit, who can’t say ‘I love you’ even when they want to, who start to cough and sputter and change the subject. But here you are. A living, breathing specimen. Incredible.

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

The Alternative
Because a world without love isn’t a world any of us want, these quotes remind us that love is better than the alternative.

I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King, Jr

It is better for girl to sleep a hundred years and be kissed and awakened by the right prince than to stay awake and be kissed a hundred times by the wrong frog.

Unknown

Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

William Blake

Love lights more fire than hate extinguishes.

Ella Wilcox

Just look at your experiences for further answers about love, and keep searching for quotes on your own to find ones that speak to you. No one can figure it out for you and it remains universal. So we leave you with an excellent quote from Shakespeare about how love really works:

If you love and get hurt, love more.
If you love more and hurt more, love even more.
If you love even more and get hurt even more, love some more until it hurts no more…

William Shakespeare

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