Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

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My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
~Jessie B. Rittenhouse

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We choose those we like; with those we love, we have no say in the matter. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

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The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. ~Quoted by Alexandra Penney in Self

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Love is, above all, the gift of oneself. ~Jean Anouilh

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When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage. ~Bill Balance

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Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. ~Rose Franken

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Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. ~Ben Hecht

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A bell is no bell ’til you ring it,
A song is no song ’til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay -
Love isn’t love
‘Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, “You Are Sixteen (Reprise)”
(Thanks, Krystel)

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Love is like dew that falls on both nettles and lilies. ~Swedish Proverb

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Time is too 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 eternity. ~Henry Van Dyke

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Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia. ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

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Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place. ~Ice T, The Ice Opinion, quoted in Reader’s Digest, “Quotable Quotes,” February 2002

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Love is no respecter of age or practicality
Neither morality: unabashed
She enters where she will
Unheeding that her immortal fires
Burn up human hearts…
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Beyond Me,

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Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses. ~Lord Dewar

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When you’re in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. ~Natalie Clifford Barney

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Only in love are unity and duality not in conflict. ~Rabindranath Tagore

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Love burns across the infinitude. ~Terri Guillemets

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It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves. ~John Bulwer

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‘Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come. ~Lord Byron

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A hundred hearts would be too few
To carry all my love for you.
~Author Unknown

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Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. ~Author unknown, as printed in The Hoosier Farmer

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Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. ~Lynda Barry

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Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies. ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

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Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all of the time, made new. ~Ursula K. LeGuin

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Love is not singular except in syllable. ~Marvin Taylor

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Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old. ~John Ciardi

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People who are sensible about love are incapable of it. ~Douglas Yates

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Love never reasons but profusely gives; gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles lest it has done too little. ~Hannah More (Thanks, Steven)

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The past is behind us, love is in front and all around us. ~Terri Guillemets

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Ah me! why may not love and life be one? ~Henry Timrod

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Take away love and our earth is a tomb. ~Robert Browning

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Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. ~William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXVI”

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He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. ~Leo Tolstoy

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It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken. ~Marguerite de Valois