Quotes by theme

35 Quotes About Love

Not the greeting-card kind — the kind the Sufis, the Stoics and the poets meant: love as practice, as attention, as the hardest and most worthwhile discipline a person can keep.

“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli The 48 Laws of Power

“We pardon to the extent that we love.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld The 48 Laws of Power

“The Gita is a love letter from God to humanity, written in the language of dilemma.”

— distilled maxim The Bhagavad Gita

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

— The Buddha Dharma

“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.”

— The Buddha Dharma

“I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

— Morrnah Simeona Hoʻoponopono

“When you say I love you to your body, it remembers it was loved before it was hurt.”

— Morrnah Simeona Hoʻoponopono

“The four phrases are not magic words. They are a stance. The stance is: I see, I am responsible, I am grateful, I love.”

— Joe Vitale Hoʻoponopono

“I love you is a sentence that does the work of a lifetime, if you are willing to mean it.”

— Morrnah Simeona Hoʻoponopono

“Aloha au ia ʻoe. I love you. The shortest hoʻoponopono. Said to the self in the mirror, the body, the work, the child, the ancestor — it works in every direction.”

— Hoʻoponopono tradition Hoʻoponopono

“Hygge is about an atmosphere and an experience, rather than about things. It is about being with the people we love. A feeling of home. A feeling that we are safe.”

— Meik Wiking Hygge

“I do not eat to live. I live to eat well, slowly, with people I love.”

— A 102-year-old Sardinian woman Longevity

“I am one whose heart is light. I have done what is loved by gods and men.”

— Anonymous scribe Maat

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”

— Mignon McLaughlin Relationships

“Eroticism in long-term love requires distance, mystery, and a partner you have not entirely figured out.”

— Esther Perel Relationships

“We are wired to need a few irreplaceable others. Love is not an emotion. It is a survival code.”

— Sue Johnson Relationships

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr Relationships

“Two people who really love each other are more than two people — they are a third, which is the relationship.”

— A 60-year-old Harvard study participant Relationships

“We do not need more good ideas about love. We need to call the people we love today.”

— Mary Oliver Relationships

“Hold onto the people you love. It is the whole work.”

— A 95-year-old widow, Harvard Study Relationships

“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”

— Brené Brown The Power of No

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”

— Prentis Hemphill The Power of No

“Saying no can be the most self-loving, self-respecting thing you do all week.”

— Nedra Glover Tawwab The Power of No

“Finns do not say "I love you." They build something with you and let the years speak.”

— Finnish proverb Sisu

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

— Marcus Aurelius Stoicism

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

— Jalaluddin Rumi Sufism

“Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with a love like that — it lights the whole sky.”

— Hafiz of Shiraz Sufism

“The Seven Valleys of the soul are seven, and the journey through them is the work of a lifetime: Quest, Love, Knowledge, Independence, Unity, Bewilderment, Annihilation.”

— Fariduddin Attar Sufism

“The Beloved is in your house, in your sleeve, in the mirror of your own face. The seeking is the not-finding.”

— Ibn Arabi Sufism

“My heart has opened to every form. It is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, a Kaaba for the pilgrim, the tablets of the Torah, the book of the Quran. Love is my religion.”

— Ibn Arabi Sufism

“I love Thee with two loves — love for my own happiness, and perfect love, to love Thee as is Thy due.”

— Rabia al-Adawiyya Sufism

“I have three treasures which I hold and keep. The first is compassion. The second is frugality. The third is not daring to be ahead of others.”

— Lao Tzu The Tao

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It is a relationship between equals.”

— Pema Chodron Tonglen

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

— Dalai Lama Tonglen

“When elephants fight, the grass suffers. When they make love, the grass also suffers.”

— Kikuyu proverb Ubuntu