50 Quotes About Love From Authors, Artists, Movies & More

From Plato to Picasso, some of the world's greatest thinkers reflect on love.

 

"At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet," Plato once said. Don't agree? Luckily, we have real poets (and musicians and artists and philosophers) to put this elusive and complex feeling into words. Which of these quotes about love really speaks to you?


1. "Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other." — Rainer Maria Rilke

2. "Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it." ― Nicholas Sparks

3. "Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." — Franklin P. Jones

4. "All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt." — Charles Schulz

 

5. "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." — Robert Heinlein

6. "Love loves to love love." ― James Joyce

7. "Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong
mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star." — e.e. cummings

8. "Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition." ― Alexander Smith

9. "It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all." — William Makepeace Thackeray

10. "Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs." — William Shakespeare

11. "Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it." — Ray Bradbury

12. "We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love." — Dr. Seuss

13. "The opposite of love it not hate; it's indifference." — Elie Wiesel

14. "Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby: awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess." — Lemony Snicket

15. "Life is a flower of which love is the honey." — Victor Hugo

16. "Love is quivering happiness." — Kahlil Gibran

17. "Love; it will not betray you, dismay or enslave you. It will set you free." — Mumford & Sons

18. "Love is something sent from Heaven to worry the Hell out of you." — Dolly Parton

19. "Passion makes the world go round. Loves just makes it a safer place." — Ice T

20. "Love is a promise; love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear." — John Lennon

21. "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." — Aristotle

22. "Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses." — Lao Tzu

23. "In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities." — Janos Arnay

 

24. "There is no remedy for love but to love more." — Thoreau

25. "Love is a serious mental disease." — Plato

26. "Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable." — Bruce Lee

 

27. "Love is the hardest habit to break, and the most difficult to satisfy." — Drew Barrymore

28. "Do you know how you tell real love? It’s when someone else’s interest trumps your own. I like to put it that way: trumps your own. Love of somebody else — of family, of your kids — becomes the most important, most worthwhile thing in your life. It’s what you foster and protect." — Brad Pitt

29. "We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." — Orson Welles

30. "Love is a game that two can play and both win." ― Eva Gabor

31. "I hate, for example, whenever you hear someone say: 'You have to work at being a couple. “No, you have to want to be there." — Vanessa Paradis

32. "The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants." — Johnny Depp

33. "Love is the greatest refreshment in life." — Pablo Picasso

34. "Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy." — Vincent Van Gogh

35. "Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding." — Diane Arbus


37. "Love is a friendship set to music." — E. Joseph Cossman

38. "Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents never revenges itself." — Gandhi

39. "Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it." — Benjamin Franklin

40. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

41. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." — Wuthering Heights

42. "Love is all around us." — Love, Actually

43. "Soul mates. It's extremely rare, but it exists. It's sort of like twin souls tuned into each other." — What Dreams May Come

44. "If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed, but…who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt." — Before Sunrise

45. "The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds and that's what you've given me." — The Notebook

46. "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." — The Princess Bride

47. "Love is a little world; people make it big." ― Unknown

48. "Love is not measured by how many times you touch each other, but by how many times you reach each other." — Unknown

49. "Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few." — Unknown

 

50. "Love without reason lasts the longest." — Unknown