Love, depending on your perspective, is blind, cruel or heals all things. Valentine’s Day then is a day to celebrate love, in all its facets: The love of a parent for a child, the love of two newlyweds embarking on the adventure we call life, young love overcome by giggles and nervous glances, the boundless love of a pet, the decades-long love renewed as life enters its twilight.
So, here are memorable words of love, and wisdom, for a day dedicated to this most basic human emotion whether you are looking for love, deeply in love or mourning a love lost.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“That I did always love
I bring thee proof
That till I loved
I never lived.”
— Emily Dickinson
“Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”
— Satchel Paige
“Love is what moves the world, I’ve always thought. … it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down … bring them low … and make them crawl.”
— Stephen King
“The most important thing in the world is family and love.”
— John Wooden
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
— Charles M. Schulz
“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”
— Kinky Friedman
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
— William Shakespeare
“I loved you first: but afterwards your love
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? my love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.”
— Christina Rossetti
“This is what youth must figure out:
Girls, love, and living.
The having, the not having,
The spending and giving,
And the melancholy time of not knowing.
“This is what age must learn about:
The ABC of dying.
The going, yet not going,
The loving and leaving,
And the unbearable knowing and knowing”
― E.B. White
“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
— Alfred Lord Tennyson