Source-backed quotations about affection, devotion, tenderness, trust, romantic attachment, and the difficult work of loving well.
A focused mix of romantic love, devotion, tenderness, friendship and active care. The core favors lines where love is central to the quotation itself rather than merely one possible secondary theme.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
The question opens a deliberate accounting of love, suggesting that affection becomes clearer when its different forms, depths, and expressions are named.
Sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese; the poem proceeds by describing multiple dimensions of love.
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
The line describes intimacy as profound likeness rather than surface compatibility, making identity and attachment almost inseparable in the speaker’s imagination.
Wuthering Heights; Catherine explains the depth and identity-level nature of her attachment to Heathcliff.
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”
Wentworth’s letter holds pain and possibility together: the renewed declaration is intense because he still does not know whether Anne’s feelings have survived their long separation.
Persuasion, Chapter XXIII, Project Gutenberg #105. Captain Frederick Wentworth writes the line to Anne Elliot while listening to her conversation with Captain Harville; the letter is signed “F. W.” and is fictional character writing, not Austen autobiography.
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
The difficulty of speaking is used as evidence of emotional depth, contrasting sincere feeling with polished or excessive declaration.
Emma, Volume III, Chapter XIII, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. George Knightley tells Emma “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” during his declaration, explicitly contrasting the depth of his feeling with his difficulty making polished speeches.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Love is described as complicated rather than frictionless, which makes the line a durable reminder against idealizing relationships.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I, Scene 1; Lysander says this to Hermia while describing the obstacles that repeatedly frustrate lovers. Verified in the scan-backed 1918 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Willard Higley Durham; direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act I transcription.
“If music be the food of love, play on.”
Love is treated as an appetite that can be intensified through beauty, sensation, and repeated emotional stimulation.
Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 1, Orsino; 1922 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by George Henry Nettleton, printed page 1 / Wikisource scan leaf 13. “If music be the food of love, play on” opens Orsino’s attempt to use excess music to surfeit and extinguish his appetite for love. It remains fictional dramatic speech shaped by Orsino’s self-dramatizing desire, not Shakespeare speaking autobiographically or a modern psychological claim about music and emotion.
“Unable are the loved to die — For Love is Immortality —”
The poem treats love as a form of continuity that resists the finality of physical death.
Opening lines.
“Love possesses not nor would it be possessed.”
Love is presented as relationship without ownership: closeness does not grant control over another person or require surrender of one’s own personhood.
The Prophet, “On Love”; Gibran warns against turning love into possession before describing love as sufficient unto itself.
“But let there be spaces in your togetherness.”
Closeness can coexist with individuality; healthy connection does not require erasing personal space.
The Prophet, “On Marriage.”
“If you would be loved, love.”
Seneca treats affection as reciprocal practice: the desire to receive love begins with becoming someone who actively gives it.
Letter 9, on philosophy and friendship; Seneca quotes Hecato while discussing how friendship is formed.
“If ever two were one, then surely we.”
Bradstreet opens with a compact assertion of marital unity, setting up a poem that measures the value of mutual love against material wealth and even mortality.
“To My Dear and Loving Husband,” posthumously published in the 1678 second edition of Several Poems; represented by Representative Poetry Online. The poem is a Puritan-era personal love lyric with explicitly religious closing language.
“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”
Irene answers an older man’s skepticism by insisting that love is not confined by age and does not simply vanish when a person or relationship passes away.
Indian Summer of a Forsyte, represented in Project Gutenberg #2594. Irene says the line to old Jolyon while speaking about her dead lover; it is emotionally charged fictional dialogue, and the surrounding conversation immediately gives old Jolyon a more ironic response.
“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.”
Human judgment includes forms of intuition, feeling, and commitment that cannot always be reduced to explicit logical argument.
Pensées; Pascal contrasts forms of knowing associated with the heart and with discursive reason.
“Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree.”
Wild rose and holly become contrasting natural images for two kinds of attachment, setting up the poem’s question about beauty, season and constancy.
“Love and Friendship,” Project Gutenberg #1019. The comparison is a poetic metaphor, not a claim that friendship and romantic love always follow one fixed pattern.
“Trust love even if it brings sorrow. Do not close up your heart.”
The advice refuses to make sorrow a reason for emotional withdrawal, presenting openness to love as worthwhile even when attachment can also bring pain.
The Gardener, poem 27; Project Gutenberg #6686. This is dialogue within a lyric sequence, and the surrounding exchange explicitly pairs love with tears and enduring sorrow.
“What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”
Nietzsche presents love as a motive that can resist simple moral classification, complicating attempts to judge every action by one fixed formula.
Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 153, Helen Zimmern translation.
“Whither thou goest, I will go.”
The promise expresses loyalty through shared direction: love is shown by choosing to accompany another person into an uncertain future.
Ruth 1:16 in the King James Version; Ruth’s pledge to Naomi.
“Charity suffereth long, and is kind.”
Love is defined partly through patience and kindness, shifting the idea from emotion alone toward repeated behavior under strain.
1 Corinthians 13:4 in the King James Version; this is the opening clause of the verse.
“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.”
Love is measured by conduct rather than verbal display, making practical help and truthful action more important than affectionate claims alone.
1 John 3:18 in the King James Version, following a contrast between having resources and closing oneself to another person’s need.
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.”
Love is framed as a practice people owe one another, not only as a private emotion or preference.
1 John 4:7 in the King James Version; this record uses the opening clause of the verse.
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”
Mature love is pictured as creating security rather than terror, especially where fear is tied to punishment and uncertainty.
1 John 4:18 in the King James Version; this record uses the opening clauses of the verse.
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
The command uses care for oneself as the measure for care toward another person, linking healthy self-regard with outward responsibility rather than selfishness.
Matthew 22:39 in the King James Version.
“Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”
The teaching moves beyond merely withholding retaliation and asks for active goodwill toward opponents, making forgiveness part of a transformed response to hostility.
Matthew 5:44, King James Version; Jesus commands love, blessing, and good action toward enemies within the Sermon on the Mount.
“If I can stop one Heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
A meaningful life is measured through alleviating even one person’s suffering rather than through scale or fame.
Opening line of the poem.
“Friendship springs from nature rather than from need.”
Friendship is not reduced to usefulness; Cicero argues that it arises from natural affection before calculations of advantage.
De Amicitia, chapter 8 / classical section 27, Andrew P. Peabody translation, Project Gutenberg #7491. Laelius argues that friendship springs from nature rather than need and from an inclination of the mind with consciousness of love rather than calculation of utility. This is Cicero’s philosophical position voiced through Laelius, not modern social-science evidence.
“A true friend is, as it were, another self.”
The phrase captures the intimacy of friendship: another person becomes close enough that concern for them resembles concern for oneself.
De Amicitia, chapter 21 / classical section 80, Andrew P. Peabody translation, Project Gutenberg #7491. Laelius says that unless self-love is transferred into friendship a true friend cannot be found, “for such a friend is, as it were, another self.” The familiar another-self formulation is presented in its philosophical context and not as a literal identity claim.
“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”
Thoreau argues that close friendship communicates through shared understanding that can run deeper than explicit statements, explanations, or ordinary conversational exchange.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Wednesday; the friendship meditation contrasts true mutual understanding with the limits of conventional conversation.
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”
Friendship permits unusual honesty because the relationship is secure enough to hold unguarded thought without constant performance.
Essays: First Series, “Friendship” (1841), verified against Project Gutenberg #2944 and the 1907 Merrill/Turpin page witness in Project Gutenberg #16643, printed page 126. Emerson names Truth as one of friendship’s two sovereign elements and says “A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.” This collection preserves the essay’s idealizing moral argument rather than treating unrestricted disclosure as universally safe or appropriate.
“There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.”
Austen gives emotional gentleness greater value than surface charm or social performance.
Emma, Volume II, Chapter XIII, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. This corrects the inherited Volume III note: Emma says to herself that there is no charm equal to tenderness of heart after Harriet’s gratitude and affection move her to reassess Harriet’s character.
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
The advice combines generosity with judgment: goodwill can be broad while trust remains selective.
All’s Well That Ends Well, Act I, Scene 1; the Countess of Roussillon gives Bertram the counsel “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” Verified against Wikisource’s 1910 facsimile transcription of the 1623 First Folio (folio spelling “Loue all, trust a few, Doe wrong to none”); direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act I transcription.
“Never let us be parted any more, Papa. Never let us be parted any more!”
The repeated plea marks reconciliation as a commitment to renewed family presence after years in which pride and neglect kept father and daughter emotionally apart.
Dombey and Son, Chapter 59, Project Gutenberg #821. Florence speaks while embracing her father after returning to him.
“Time, not the will, can put an end to love.”
The maxim distinguishes deliberate decision from emotional change, suggesting that some attachments fade through time rather than a single act of will.
The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 43, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).
“The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.”
Shelley treats imagination as the capacity that lets a person move beyond a narrow private viewpoint and enter the pains and pleasures of others, with poetry strengthening that sympathetic faculty.
A Defence of Poetry, written in 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840. The represented wording is verified in Project Gutenberg #5428 and the standalone Wikisource transcription; the immediately preceding sentences define moral imagination through identification with other people rather than through fantasy alone.
“A man begins to deteriorate, to go toward failure, not when he loses all of his material possessions, not when he fails in his undertakings, but when he loses faith in himself, in his ability to make his dreams come true.”
Material loss and failed attempts are separated from the deeper danger of abandoning personal agency; the sentence treats continued self-belief as a resource for beginning again.
The Victorious Attitude; this sentence appears in Marden’s sustained argument that loss of self-faith is more damaging than the loss of possessions or an individual undertaking.
“The most precious possessions of the heart of humanity manifest themselves most simply.”
What matters most in human feeling is pictured as needing less display, not more, because affection and moral seriousness can be weakened by theatrical presentation.
The Simple Life, Chapter IV, “Simplicity of Speech,” Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner is arguing that deep feeling often appears plainly.
“We believe that the second great step toward a better adjustment of the relations between races, should be a more impartial selection of ability in the economic and intellectual world, and a greater respect for personal liberty and worth, regardless of race.”
Du Bois connects fair recognition of ability with personal liberty and worth, arguing that racial identity should not erase an individual’s claim to equitable consideration.
The Conservation of Races, Academy Creed, point 6; Project Gutenberg #5685. This is Du Bois’s own programmatic statement. The essay’s broader nineteenth-century racial theory remains historical context and is not presented as current biological science.
“If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.”
Dignity is separated from possessions and appearance, locating self-worth in conduct and inner standards when external status has been stripped away.
A Little Princess; Sara uses an imagined inner identity to preserve dignity during poverty and mistreatment.
“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.”
A life copied from convention leaves important human faculties unused; choosing deliberately requires observation, judgment and firmness.
On Liberty, Chapter III; Mill contrasts imitation with actively choosing one’s own plan of life.
“If a man is to turn everything whatsoever into his own calm, dignity, and happiness, he must make this use even of his own failures.”
Failure becomes useful when it is examined and incorporated into future conduct instead of being allowed to settle a person’s sense of dignity or possibility.
The Human Machine, discussion of using experience for self-command. Bennett’s claim is philosophical self-training advice; it does not imply that every failure is beneficial or emotionally easy.
“Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”
Attention to other people’s interests expands life beyond self-concern and makes cooperation and care possible.
Philippians 2:4 in the King James Version.
“It recalled to life my crushed self-respect, and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to be a free man.”
Douglass describes confidence as something restored through resistance: the change is not abstract positive thinking but a renewed sense of personal agency after physically resisting the violence of enslavement.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Project Gutenberg #71893, in Douglass’s retrospective account of resisting Edward Covey. The passage belongs to the history of slavery and self-emancipation; it should not be reduced to a generic motivational slogan detached from that violence.
“I believe in Liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.”
Liberty is described in civic, bodily and spiritual terms, joining political rights with the ordinary freedom to live without racial restriction.
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, “Credo,” originally published in 1920. Project Gutenberg #15210. The sentence continues with freedom of association, movement, thought, dream and work “uncursed by color.”
“Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are pleased to think.”
Dependence on approval can turn other people’s judgments into a form of control; self-respect requires allowing outside opinion to inform rather than govern one’s sense of worth.
The Wisdom of Life; the sentence appears in Schopenhauer’s criticism of giving excessive weight to reputation and social opinion.
“Only the Black Woman can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.””
Cooper makes dignified self-possession politically consequential: the Black woman enters public life without begging special patronage, while her advance is framed as inseparable from broader racial progress.
A Voice from the South, “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race,” Project Gutenberg #61741 / Wikisource 1892 text. The sentence belongs to Cooper's Black feminist argument about representation, education and racial uplift; it is not a generic claim that one individual literally represents every Black person.
“The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.”
Dickinson’s compressed image emphasizes selective attention and the right to decide what receives intimate access.
“The Soul Selects Her Own Society”; capitalization is lightly normalized.
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
Schopenhauer links solitude with freedom from the constant accommodation that social life requires, especially for strongly individual temperaments.
Counsels and Maxims, chapter on our relation to others, translated by T. Bailey Saunders.
“Of all worlds, may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor.”
Du Bois rejects enforced sameness, defending the value of people and groups retaining genuine difference rather than conforming to a majority ideal.
Darkwater, essay “Of Beauty and Death.” The preceding sentence says that simply wanting to be oneself can be inconceivable to “the average worshiper of the majority”; the line is about individuality amid racialized conformity pressures.
“Work is love made visible.”
Work gains meaning when care is expressed through attention, craft, and service, making effort a visible form of commitment rather than mere obligation.
The Prophet, “On Work,” Project Gutenberg #58585. Almustafa answers a ploughman’s request to speak of work; after linking work, knowledge and love, he says “Work is love made visible” and develops the statement through craft, bread, wine and song imagery. This remains framed poetic-spiritual discourse, not an empirical workplace or productivity rule.
“Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness.”
The sentence frames development of one’s capacities as a right tied to safety and happiness, not as a privilege granted only through dependence on another person.
Solitude of Self; Stanton uses an imagined solitary-island example to separate a woman’s individual rights from the incidental roles society may assign her.
“That faith and self-respect had early been awakened which must always lead, at last, to an outward serenity and an inward peace.”
Self-respect and inward faith are presented as foundations that can survive adversity and gradually produce greater steadiness in both outward life and inner experience.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century, in the discussion of Miranda; Fuller explicitly connects awakened self-respect with serenity and inward peace.
“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
Thoreau argues that private self-judgment can become a powerful constraint or permission, shaping choices more strongly than public opinion alone.
Walden, “Economy,” in the passage contrasting public opinion with a person’s own private opinion of himself.
“those know little of real love or grief who do not know how much we deceive ourselves when we pretend to aim at the cure of either.”
Booth recognizes that people may claim to be curing love or grief while unconsciously choosing actions that keep those feelings alive.
Amelia, Book II, Chapter III, “The narrative continued. More of the touchstone,” Project Gutenberg #6098, George Saintsbury edited witness. Captain Booth says the love / grief sentence while recounting his failed attempts to cure himself of attachment to Amelia. It is fictional retrospective speech, not clinical guidance about grief or relationships.
“I believe in Pride of race and lineage and self: in pride of self so deep as to scorn injustice to other selves; in pride of lineage so great as to despise no man's father; in pride of race so chivalrous as neither to offer bastardy to the weak nor beg wedlock of the strong, knowing that men may be brothers in Christ, even though they be not brothers-in-law.”
Du Bois connects self-respect with respect for other people, making dignity incompatible with accepting injustice toward either oneself or another group.
Darkwater, “Credo.” The passage uses Du Bois’s period language of race and lineage within a broader declaration of human brotherhood, service, justice and liberty.
“On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.”
Instead of beginning with what an event has taken away, the practice asks which capacity—endurance, restraint, patience, or judgment—can still be exercised.
Enchiridion, section X, George Long translation; Epictetus gives examples such as endurance under pain and patience under abuse.
“What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others.”
Schopenhauer places personal character and inner constitution above possessions and reputation, making well-being depend more on what a person is than on external valuation.
The Wisdom of Life; T. Bailey Saunders’s public-domain translation distinguishes what a person is from possessions and from the opinions of other people.
“Fair as a star, when only one is shining in the sky.”
Wordsworth makes beauty quiet and easily overlooked: Lucy is compared not to spectacle but to a single star whose isolation makes it more noticeable.
“She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways,” second stanza.
“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
Freedom is framed as room for self-directed living bounded by equal regard for other people’s ability to pursue their own good.
On Liberty, Chapter I; Mill states the liberty principle before developing its implications for individuality and social authority.
“Whoever seeks to work out for himself his destiny, the life-work that all his nature tells him should be his, bravely, calmly and with due consideration of the rights of others and his duties to them, is a reformer.”
Individual vocation is paired with duties to other people: Jordan’s reformer follows a personally meaningful course without treating self-direction as permission to ignore others’ rights.
The Power of Truth, “The Way of the Reformer.” The qualifying language about rights and duties is retained because it prevents the individualist passage from being reduced to purely self-centered advice.
“See, how this strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop—catch the light thwartwise—and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together the whole world.”
A sympathetic adult character imagines love as something easy to overlook yet widely connective, using morning gossamer as the image for hidden bonds between people.
The Golden Age, Project Gutenberg #53250. The passage is spoken by the narrator’s adult friend during a conversation about love; it is literary dialogue inside Grahame’s childhood-remembrance fiction rather than a sociological claim.
“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”
The joke distinguishes healthy self-respect from vanity by showing how self-adoration can become a closed competition with everyone else.
Poor Richard’s Almanack.
“I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.”
The line combines joy with humility: Wentworth recognizes that his renewed happiness exceeds what his earlier pride and mistakes make him feel he has earned.
Persuasion, Chapter XXIII. Captain Frederick Wentworth says this to Anne Elliot while reflecting on the six years of separation his pride helped prolong.
“It is not selfish to think for oneself.”
Independent thought is distinguished from selfishness: forming one’s own judgment can protect individuality without requiring indifference to other people.
The Soul of Man under Socialism; Wilde defends individual thought while criticizing social pressure that mistakes conformity for moral virtue.
“They consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity.”
Socrates depicts two lovers who regard their mutual promises as binding, even though their relationship follows the less philosophical path of his two possible outcomes. The line describes commitment within a particular ancient mythical account; it is not a free-standing promise that every relationship will remain harmonious.
Phaedrus, approximately Stephanus 256d–e, Socrates’s second speech contrasting the self-controlled philosophical lovers with another pair moved more by ambition and desire. Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1636. The sentence belongs to the second pair, NOT the ideal self-controlled pair, which matters to its meaning; these are a philosophical narrator’s words, not a romantic pledge made by Plato.
“And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve.”
Socrates reverses his earlier criticism of lovers by proposing that some kinds of inspired passion can be gifts rather than failings. His defense belongs to a mythical and philosophical speech, not to a claim that impulsive behavior is automatically beneficial or justified.
Phaedrus, around Stephanus 245b–c, in Socrates’s second speech (palinode) to Phaedrus following his retraction of the anti-lover argument. Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1636; the complete sentence occurs in the dramatic speech after examples of prophetic, religious and poetic inspiration. The divine origin of love is a claim of this ancient philosophical argument, not independently established evidence.
“O BEAUTY, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror.”
Beauty is located in relationship and love rather than self-admiring reflection, pushing worth away from flattering appearance alone and toward a less self-enclosed measure.
Stray Birds, aphorism 28, Project Gutenberg #6524, translated from Bengali by Tagore himself. ‘O BEAUTY, find thyself in love, not in the flattery of thy mirror’ is a compact personified poetic aphorism placed between numbered sayings 27 and 29. It should not be flattened into a literal rule about appearance, self-worth or relationships.
“To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel.”
The voyage metaphor makes personal preparation unavoidable: support from others matters, but a person still needs judgment and capacity when circumstances require independent action.
Solitude of Self; Stanton develops an extended navigation metaphor to argue that every person must be equipped for the emergencies and decisions of an individual life.
“Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.”
Contrast with what she calls evil sharpens Keller’s appreciation of truth, love and goodness, tying gratitude to moral discernment rather than uncomplicated cheerfulness.
Optimism: An Essay (1903), Project Gutenberg #31622. The sentence belongs to Keller’s personal moral and religious account of optimism.
“Man never rises to the dignity of true living until he has the courage that dares to face ingratitude calmly, and to pursue his course unchanged when his good works meet with thanklessness or disdain.”
Jordan separates the worth of principled action from the applause it receives, arguing that worthwhile conduct sometimes has to continue without gratitude or recognition.
The Power of Truth, “The Courage to Face Ingratitude.” Project Gutenberg #56020; first published August 1902. Jordan’s standard is moral perseverance, not indifference to all criticism.
“Charity never faileth.”
The brief statement gives enduring love priority over gifts and achievements that are temporary within the chapter’s larger argument.
1 Corinthians 13:8 in the King James Version; “charity” is the KJV rendering in this passage.
“And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it.”
In Socrates’s myth of the soul, attraction to visible beauty can awaken memory of a higher beauty. The language of inspiration describes the philosophical ascent imagined by the dialogue; it does not reduce love to appearance or imply that a person literally remembers another lifetime.
Phaedrus, around Stephanus 249d–e, Socrates’s palinode and description of inspired recollection of true beauty. Benjamin Jowett English, Project Gutenberg #1636. This is Socrates speaking in Plato’s dialogue; the claim comes after his charioteer-and-soul allegory and should not be extracted as a universal account of romance.
Relationship quotations become more useful when they distinguish affection from trust, closeness from dependence, and loyalty from the absence of boundaries.
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“Before him, I may think aloud.”
Essays, First Series — Friendship · 1841Read meaning & context →“I know I am solid and sound.”
Song of Myself · 1882Read meaning & context →“Nay, rather they are men.”
Moral Letters to Lucilius — Letter 47 · c. 65Read meaning & context →“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Romeo and Juliet · c. 1595Read meaning & context →“Love is a great beautifier.”
Little Women · 1869Read meaning & context →“Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.”
The Woman's Bible · 1898Read meaning & context →
