A sunbeam filtering through the blind shed a gentle light on her soft golden hair, on her pure throat, on her tranquil breast...It seemed to me that I had known her for a long time, and that before I knew her I had known nothing and had not lived..."And here I am sitting opposite of her," I was thinking, "I have met her; I know her. God, what happiness!" I almost leapt from my chair in ecstasy....
Ivan Turgenev, from "First Love"

When two souls, which have sought each other for however long in the throng, have finally found each other, when they have seen that they are matched, are in sympathy and compatible, in a word, that they are alike, there is then established for ever between them a union, firey and pure as they themselves are, a union which brings on earth and continues for ever in heaven. This union is love, true love, such as in truth very few men can concieve of, that love which is a religion, which deifies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), to Adèle Foucher

Submit to love faithfully and it gives a person joy. It intoxicates, it envelopes, it isolates. It creates a fragrance in the air, ardour from coldness, it beautifies everything around it.
Leos Janacek (1854-1928), to Kamila Stosslova

To love is the great Amulet that makes this world a garden.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man's only promise.
Leo Buscaglia, from "Love"

Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky before the sun came out. You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain and how glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.
Annie Sullivan (1866-1936)

I met in the street
a very poor young man
who was in love.
his hat was old,
his coat worn,
his cloak
was out at the elbows,
the water passed
through his shoes,-
and the stars through
his soul.
Victor Hugo(1802-1885)

Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It will not ebb like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies-
You are my deepening skies;
Give me your stars to hold.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility...It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and warrents them to take effect, where he who does not love would faint and lie down. Love is watchful and sleeping, slumbereth not. Though weary, it is not tired; though pressed, it is not straitened; though alarmed, it is not confounded; but, as a lively flame and burning torch, it forces its way upwards and securely passes all.
Thomas À Kempis (1379-1471)

I wonder why love is so often equated with joy when it is everything as well. Devestation, balm, obsession, granting, and receiving excessive value, and losing it again. It is not recognition, often of what you are not but might be. It sears and it heals. It is beyond pity and above law. It can seem like the truth.
Florida Scott-Maxwell

When love beckons you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions
may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as
the north wind lays waste to the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify
you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for
your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and
caresses your tenderest branches that quiver
in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake
them in their clinging to the earth...
if in your fear you would seek only love's
peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your
nakedness and pass out of love's
threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall
laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep,
but not all of your tears.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), from "The Prophet"

Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock. Across the barriers of time and the ultimate destiny, love persists, for the home of the beloved, absent or present, is always in the mind and heart. Absence does not diminish love.
Mary Parrish b.1905 from "McCalls" Magazine

The need to surrender is one of the great paradoxes of love. Surrender may seem like giving up. Or giving in. But in reality we are strengthened when we actively choose to make ourselves vulnerable. We are empowered by sharing our deepest self with another person, offering him or her our heart, our soul, our life. Surrender is an act of free will. A sacred trust.
Ellen Sue Stern

I want my rapscallionly fellow vagabond.
I want my dark lady. I want my angel-
I want my tempter. I want
my Freia with her apples. I want the lighter of
my seven lamps of beauty, honour, laughter,
music, love, live, and immortality...I want
my inspiration, my folly, my happiness,
my divinity, my madness, my selfishness,
my final sanity and sanctification,
my transfiguration, my purification,
my light across the sea,
my palm across the desert,
my garden of lovely flowers,
my million nameless joys,
my day's wage,
my night's dream,
my darling and,
my star...
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), to Beatrice Campbell

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
Helen Hayes

A life without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth - with the fire dead, the laughter stilled, and the light extinguished.
Frank P. Tebbetts

To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; It is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.
Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Amid the gloom and travail of existence, suddenly to behold a beautiful being, and as instantaneously to feel an overwhelming conviction that with that fair form for ever our destiny must be entwined; that there is no more joy than her joy, no sorrow but when she grieves; that in her sigh of love, in her smile of fondness, hereafter is all bliss; to feel our flaunty ambition fade away like a shrivelled gourd before her vision; to feel fame a juggle and posterity a lie; and to be prepared for at once, for this great object, to forfeit and fling away all former hopes, ties, schemes, views; to violate in her favour every duty of society; this is a lover, and this is love.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), from "Henrietta Temple"

I am writing to you on Sunday evening, which is the time I like to write to you best, because I feel the quietest and descend the most into my real self, where my love is strongest and deepest. So you know I always have a fancy at such times, that our love makes us somehow alone together in the world. We seem to have a deep life together apart from all the other people on earth, and which we cannot show, explain or impart to them. At least my affection seems to isolate me in the deepest moments from all others, and it makes me speak with my whole heart and soul to you and you only.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), to Eliza Wilson, 1858

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.
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), from "Anne of Avonlea"

I never see beauty without thinking of you or scent happiness without thinking of you. You have fulfilled my ambition, realized my hopes, made all my dreams come true. You have set a crown of roses on my youth and fortified me against the disaster of our days.
Duff Cooper (1890-1954)

During the fleeting weeks of that single summer, I lived through my first experience of intense love. All the poetry in my nature centered itself with sudden passion upon a single girl. For me, she was the sun and moon, the sea, the hills, and the rivers, the cornfields, the hayfields, the plough-lands, and the first stars of nightfall. From the moment I had seen her in the church I could think of nothing else. My whole approach to life was altered. I no longer cared whether I was to be a poet or not a poet, I no longer was concerned with the deeper problems of existence. Unless I could associate what I saw, heard, tasted, smelt, and touched with her I no longer give it attention. It seemed to me then, as indeed it seems to me still, that every inch of her body shone with some mysterious light…
Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939), from "Love and Death"

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.
Jalalu'ddin Rumi, from "Open Secret"