“ But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
17 notes
(
)
“ Every amorous episode can be, of course, endowed with a meaning: it is generated, develops, and dies; it follows a path which it is always possible to interpret according to a causality or a finality—even, if need be, which can be moralized (‘I was out of my mind, I’m over it now” “Love is a trap which must be avoided from now on” etc.): this is the love story, subjugated to the great narrative Other, to that general opinion which disparages any excessive force and wants the subject himself to reduce the great imaginary current, the orderless, endless stream which is passing through him, to a painful, morbid crisis of which he must be cured.
— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse
12 notes
(
)
“ We knew from our reading of great literature that Love involved Suffering, and would have happily have got in some practice of Suffering if there was an implicit, perhaps even logical, promise that Love might be on its way.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
26 notes
(
)
“ You know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
101 notes
(
)
I found this fragment of a poem that I wrote when I was sixteen. It’s exceedingly simple, but I like it. I think I was trying to be optimistic, because God knows I did not feel this way when I was sixteen. I still don’t. Well, re: romantic love, anyway.
I love like heaven is filled
with my friends, and hell
is empty. I love like kisses
given away aplenty.
I love like a child, drawing
hearts and figures,
and pointing to each one
in turn. I love,
despite heartbreak,
despite past failures in love.
12 notes
(
)
“ Her whole illness and treatment seemed to her such a stupid, even ridiculous thing! Her treatment seemed to her as ridiculous as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. And what did they want to do, treat her with pills and powders?
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
43 notes
(
)
“ Love is something that comes in different clothes, with a different way and different face, and perhaps it takes a long time for you to accept it, to be able to call it love.
— John Fowles, The Collector
25 notes
(
)
“ Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
(
)
“ Ever has it been that love knows not its depth until the hour of separation.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
16 notes
(
)
