Some say love is like a river that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love is like a razor, and it leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, and endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed.
“Love is the crocodile on the river of desire.” Bhartrihari.
“Love isn’t who you can see yourself with…its who you can’t see yourself without”
Some long ones, some short ones. They are all from memory, but I think I’ve gotten most of them right:
“When I die, I wish to come back as one of her tears. What man should be so lucky as to have been born in her eyes, live on her cheeks, and die at her lips?” Anonymous
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
of the rang’ed empire fall. Here is my place.
Kingdoms are clay.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
“Egypt, thou knewest too well
my heart was to thy rudder tied by thy string,
and thou should tow me after. O’er my soul
thy full supremacy thou knewest, and that thy beck
might from the bidding of the gods command me.” Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
“My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red.
If snow be white, why then her breats are dun.
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.” -Shakespeare, Sonnet 130
“What light is light, if Sylvia be not seen?
What joy is joy if Silvia be not by,
unless it is to think that she is by
and feed upon the shadow of perfection.
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
there is no music in the nightengale;
unless I look on Silvia in the day,
there is no day for me to look upon.
She is my essense, and I leave to be
If I be not by her fair influence
fostered, illumined, kept alive.” Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
who is already sick and pale with grief
that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“The brightness of her cheeks would shame those stars
as daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
would through the airy regions stream so bright
that birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she rests her cheek upon her hand;
Oh that I were a glove upon that hand,
that I might touch that cheek!” Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“Too well what love women to men may owe.
I’ faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter, loved a man,
as it might be, perhaps, were I a maid,
I should you lordship…She never told her love,
but let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
and with a green and yellow melancholy,
she sat like patience on a monument
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
our words are more than show, for we prove
much in our vows, but little in our love.” Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
to the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
in my olf griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with my lost saints; I love thee with the breath,
smiles, tears of all my life, and if God should choose
I shall but love thee better after death.” Elizabeth Barre Browning, Sonnets of the Portugese
“If you knew how lonely my life has been
and how low I’ve felt for so long.
If you knew how I’ve wanted someone to come along
and change my life the way you’ve done.” Bonnie Raitt, Feels Like Home
“He looked like the love thoughts of women…He was a glance from God.” Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
On marriage: “Remembering it now, I half believe the angels came down for a little while just to watch us, to see what joy really is. It was the best that ever was. I’m here to tell you: It was the very best.” Michael Paterniti
"If I were love - ah love, if I were king!
What tributary nations would I bring
to stoop before your sceptre and to swear
allegiance to you lips and eyes and hair.
Beneath your feet what treasures I would fling-
the stars would be your pearls upon a string,
the world a ruby for your finger ring,
and you should have the sun and moon to wear
If I were king.
Let these wild dreams and wilder words take wing,
deep in the woods I hear a shepherd sing
A simple ballad to a sylvan air,
of love, that ever finds your face more fair.
I could not give you any godlier thing
If I were king." Justin McCarthy
“We worked
in the same office
banter and loneliness
leading to the shared secret
that to help
National Biscuit sell biscuits
was wildly comic, which led to my body
existing with hers
like rain that found its way underground
to water it naturally join.” Stephen Dunn
“Here is a romantic fairy tale: there once was a Moorish King of Seville who brought a young Scandinavian princess to Spain as his bride. But she pined for the snow-covered landscapes of her native country and fell into a decline. The King couldn’t bear to see her unhappy, so he had thousands of almond trees planted around his palace, and in spring the white blossoms fell in heaps beneath the tress. He then led his bride outside to show her the drifts of white. See, he said, I have brought you the snow.” (I read this about five years ago in Vogue magazine. I can’t remember the author, but I think it was in an article about Ungaro.)
“She’s beautiful, but burn all the maps to your body; I’m not here of my own choosing.” Richard Brautigan
“I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us-
Not a roof but a field of stars.” Jane Cooper, Rent
Enough? 
“Once more unto the breach!”
–Henry V, Act 3, Scene i
