If you’re a bookworm in the mood for L-O-V-E, you will adore these famous literary quotes about love.

Valentine's Day Books

Since the title of this post is famous literary quotes about love, the focus is those romantic love quotes that are most recognizable and popular, from classic love stories to modern favorites that I love and think YOU will too.

They would be especially great for DIY wedding ceremony scripts and beyond!

I bet you will recognize many in this bunch.

Famous Literary Quotes About Love

ardemntly love quote from pride and prejudice by jane austen

“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.” – Gone With The Wind 

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

“I wish I knew how to quit you.” – Brokeback Mountain 

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!” – Sense and Sensibility

“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.” – Much Ado About Nothing

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” – The Great Gatsby

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depths and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and idea grace.” – Sonnet 43 by William Shakespeare

“She was one of those, who, having, once begun, would be always in love.” – Emma

“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and Iโ€™ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone whoโ€™s ever lived: Iโ€™ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.” – The Notebook

“Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.” –  In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson

“To love is to burn, to be on fire.” – Sense and Sensibility

“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” – The Fault in Our Stars 

“How do you spell ‘love’?” โ€“ Piglet / “You donโ€™t spell itโ€ฆyou feel it.” – Winnie the Pooh

“Love is like the wind, you canโ€™t see it but you can feel it.” โ€“ A Walk to Remember

“Who, being loved, is poor?”โ€“ A Woman of No Importance

“I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony.” – Pride and Prejudice

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” โ€• The Alchemist

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I neโ€™er saw true beauty till this night.” – Romeo and Juliet

“Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.” – Emma

“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they donโ€™t, they never were.” – A Tear and a Smile

“My real purpose was to see you, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me.” – Pride and Prejudice

“In my opinion, love and quiet simplicity if they speak less, they say more.” – Much Ado About Nothing

“This bud of love by summerโ€™s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.” – Romeo and Juliet

“They had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coatโ€™s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.” – The Great Gatsby

“But our love it was stronger by far than the love / Of those who were older than we- / Of many far wiser than we- / And neither the angels in heaven above, / Nor the demons down under the sea, / Can ever dissever my soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.” – Annabel Lee 

“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is!” – Romeo and Juliet

“It was your heart that saved you.” – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” – Robert Frost

“But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit.” – The Merchant of Venice

“For I love you tenderlyโ€”you aloneโ€”and in making me happy you can attain to your own happiness.”  โ€“ Sleeping Beauty

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – An Ideal Husband

“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.” – Mansfield Park

“We accept the love we think we deserve.” – The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Look after my heart โ€“ Iโ€™ve left it with you.” – Eclipse (Book 3 in the Twilight Saga)

“You donโ€™t love someone because theyโ€™re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that theyโ€™re not.” – My Sister’s Keeper

“Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues.” – Much Ado About Nothing

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“We are all fools in love.โ€ – Pride and Prejudice

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” – The History of Love

“And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.” – Love’s Labour’s Lost

“It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love.” – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.” – Romeo and Juliet

“You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!” – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, thereโ€™s no need at all to understand whatโ€™s happening, because everything happens within you.” – The Alchemist

“You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” – The Fault in Our Stars

“You have bewitched me body and soul and I love, love, love you.” – Pride and Prejudice

โ€œGrow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.” – Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning

โ€œI have no notion of loving people by halves.โ€ – Northanger Abbey

โ€œHe wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.โ€ – The Great Gatsby

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” – Airman’s Odyssey

โ€œHe declared that he loved her better than he loved himself. His words were faltering, but they pleased the more for that. The less there is of eloquence, the more there is of love.โ€ โ€“ Sleeping Beauty

“Under loveโ€™s heavy burden do I sink.” – Romeo and Juliet

“My heart is and always will be yours.โ€ – Pride and Prejudice

“Love is a spirit all compact of fire.” – Venus and Adonis

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further.” – Les Miserables

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – The Alchemist

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” โ€“ Pride and Prejudice

“Now, our story seems to show / That a century or so, / Late or early, matters not; / True love comes by fairy-lot.” โ€“ Sleeping Beauty

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” – Sonnett XVII by Pablo Neruda

“To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I neโ€™er saw true beauty till this night.” – Romeo and Juliet

“Your every wish shall be gratified. Only try to find me out, no matter how I may be disguised, for I love you dearly, and in making me happy, you will find your own happiness. Be as truehearted as you are beautiful, and we shall have nothing left to wish for.” โ€“ Beauty and the Beast

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” – Great Expectations

“A heart to love, and in that heart, Courage, to makeโ€™s love known.” – Macbeth

“Do I love you? My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.” –The Princess Bride

“Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then.” – Pride and Prejudice

“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” – Hamlet 

“He hadnโ€™t once ceased looking at Daisy and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes.” – The Great Gatsby

“I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say ‘I love you.'” – Henry V

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” – Anna Karenina 

“Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly at your service.” – The Tempest

“Love is never any better than the lover.” – The Bluest Eye 

“If Ioved you less I might be able to talk about it more.” – Emma

“Donโ€™t waste your love on somebody, who doesnโ€™t value it.” – Romeo and Juliet

“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!” – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

“Oh, โ€™tis love, โ€™tis love, that makes the world go round!” โ€“ Aliceโ€™s Adventures in Wonderland 

“Sweet, above thought I love thee.” – Troilus and Cressida

“When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.” – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain, But lustโ€™s effect is tempest after sun; Loveโ€™s gentle spring doth always fresh remain, Lustโ€™s winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth; lust full of forged lies.” – Venus and Adonis

“For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt.” – Romeo and Juliet

“Love can transpose to form and dignity.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“No man is offended by another manโ€™s admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.” – Northanger Abbey

“Love is begun by time, And time qualifies the spark and fire of it.” – Hamlet 

“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in / my heart) i am never without it[.]” – E.E. Cummings

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.” – Persuasion

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.” – Pride and Prejudice

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.โ€ – Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

“She called to him to come to her, and great was the joy of these lovers at seeing each other again.” โ€“ Aladdin and the Magic Lamp

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” – 100 Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” – Maya Angelou

“I, Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world, Do love, prize, honour you.” – The Tempest

โ€œBeware how you give your heart.โ€ – Northanger Abbey

“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lipsโ€™ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.โ€ – The Great Gatsby

โ€œAll, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.โ€ – War and Peace

โ€œThere are darknesses in life, and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.โ€ – Dracula

“I love you more than words can wield the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty.” – King Lear

“Love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” – Romeo and Juliet

“If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” – Anna Karenina

“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; when little fears grow great, great love grows there.” – Hamlet 

“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?” – Pride and Prejudice

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” – Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

“Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.” – Persuasion

“A loverโ€™s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A loverโ€™s ears will hear the lowest sound.” – Love’s Labours Lost

“Young menโ€™s love then lies Not truly in their hearts but in their eyes.” – Romeo and Juliet

“The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.” – Northanger Abbey

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore, is winged Cupid painted blind.” – A Midsummer Nightโ€™s Dream

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Les Miserables

“‘Real isnโ€™t how you are made,โ€ said the Skin Horse. โ€œItโ€™s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'” – The Velveteen Rabbit

“After all this time?” / “Always,” said Snape. – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Conclusion

Those are all the most famous literary quotes about love.

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