Romantic Quotations

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When you’re in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. ~Natalie Clifford Barney

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star: –
So many times do I love again.
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. ~Leo Tolstoy

When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

…Let the world know, if there was ever love:
Mine for you…
~Peter Winstanley

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. ~George Moore

I need the starshine of your heavenly eyes,
After the day’s great sun.
~Charles Hanson Towne

How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said. ~Victor Hugo

Let me lie,
let me die on thy snow-covered bosom,
I would eat of thy flesh as a delicate fruit,
I am drunk of its smell, and the scent
of thy tresses
Is a flame that devours.
~George Moore

Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs. ~Ovid

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports…. When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them. ~Gustave Flaubert, letter to wife Louise Colet, 15 August 1846

The simple lack of her is more to me than others’ presence. ~Edward Thomas

They who meet on an April night are forever lost in love, if there’s moonlight all about and there’s no moon above. ~E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Fred Saidy, dialogue just before the song “Old Devil Moon” in the musical Finian’s Rainbow (Thanks, Katherine!)

My heart to you is given:
Oh, do give yours to me;
We’ll lock them up together,
And throw away the key.
~Frederick Saunders

I can no longer think of anything but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me. ~Honore de Balzac, letter to Evelina Hanska, June 1836

Many are the starrs I see, but in my eye no starr like thee. ~English saying used on poesy rings

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea: –
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Love’s Philosophy

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law. ~Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

We loved with a love that was more than love. ~Edgar Allan Poe

In melody divine,
My heart it beats to rapturous love,
I long to call you mine.
~Author Unknown

[M]y love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break… ~Sullivan Ballou, letter to wife Sarah, 14 July 1861

Who, being loved, is poor? ~Oscar Wilde

A hundred hearts would be too few
To carry all my love for you.
~Author Unknown

Ah me! why may not love and life be one? ~Henry Timrod

Once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro’
My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Love me and the world is mine. ~David Reed

I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, letter to wife Sophia, 5 December 1839

I love thee – I love thee,
‘Tis all that I can say
It is my vision in the night,
My dreaming in the day.
~Thomas Hood

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days – three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain. ~John Keats

I love your hills and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating;
but oh, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!
~John Keats

For you see, each day I love you more
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
~Rosemonde Gerard

You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. ~Dr. Seuss

If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
~John Donne

My debt to you, Belovèd,
Is one I cannot pay
In any coin of any realm
On any reckoning day.
~Jessie B. Rittenhouse

Ah, lady, when I gave my heart to thee,
It passed into thy lifelong regency.
~Gilbert Parker

Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire. ~Napolean Bonaparte, letter to wife Josephine, December 1795

Oh, hasten not this loving act,
Rapture where self and not-self meet:
My life has been the awaiting you,
Your footfall was my own heart’s beat.
~Paul Valéry

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words. ~William Shakespeare

Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
A thousand to that hundred; so kisse on,
To make that thousand up a million;
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let’s kisse afresh, as when we first begun.
~Robert Herrick, “To Anthea (III)”

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life. ~John Milton

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. ~William Shakespeare

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, both are infinite.
~William Shakespeare

Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling words. ~Margaret Mitchell

Come live in my heart and pay no rent. ~Samuel Lover

The Oriole weds his mottled mate,
The Lily weds the bee;
Heaven’s marriage ring is round the earth,
Let me bind thee?
~Author Unknown

I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art. ~Thomas Moore

Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
~Hartley Coleridge

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

My whole heart for my whole life. ~French saying used on poesy rings

A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly worth for this,
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

[L]eave a kiss but in the cup,
And I’ll not look for wine.
~Ben Jonson, To Celia

Two souls, one heart. ~French saying used on poesy rings

What I do and what I dream
include thee,
as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lastly, do I vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. ~Catherine of Aragon, 1535