Quotes about Love

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

— Attributed

Frequently attributed to Hemingway. The circular logic is the point — trust is not a conclusion drawn from evidence but a leap taken before the evidence is in.

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

— A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596)

Lysander's observation in Act I. Shakespeare states what every love story demonstrates — obstacles are not incidental to love but constitutive of it.

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

— A Midsummer Night's Dream (1596)

Helena's complaint in Act I. Love is irrational — it doesn't see what's there but invents what it needs. Shakespeare diagnoses the pathology of desire.

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

— Romeo and Juliet (1597)

Juliet's argument that names are arbitrary labels. The line challenges the idea that identity is fixed by social categories — love should transcend naming.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

— Wuthering Heights (1847)

Catherine Earnshaw on Heathcliff. Not romantic love in the conventional sense but something more elemental — a claim of ontological identity between two people.

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

— Wuthering Heights (1847)

The fuller version of Catherine's declaration. The beloved is not an other but a more authentic version of the self — love as self-recognition.

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

— Wuthering Heights (1847)

Catherine's love for Heathcliff as cosmic necessity. Without him the universe itself becomes alien — the most extreme statement of romantic dependency in English literature.

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

— Pleasures and Days (1896)

From Proust's early collection. A gentler, more optimistic Proust — before the monumental introspection of the Search. Happiness as cultivation.

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”

— In Search of Lost Time (The Fugitive) (1925)

Proust's anti-avoidance principle. Grief, jealousy, and loss cannot be shortcut — they must be lived through completely before they release their hold.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

— Pride and Prejudice (1813)

The most famous opening line in English fiction after "Call me Ishmael." Austen's irony is surgical — the "universal truth" is really the neighbourhood's mercenary wish.

“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”

— Emma (1815)

From Austen's most psychologically complex novel. Against the social values of wit, beauty, and wealth, she elevates simple emotional generosity.

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe.”

— Frankenstein (1818)

The creature's plea. Shelley makes the monster's emotional range exceed that of his creator — he is capable of both infinite tenderness and infinite fury, needing only connection to choose the former.