Romantic Quotations Throughout History

Even the most eloquent of writers can occasionally find themselves at a loss for words in conveying their deepest heartfelt sentiments. We have collected a few of our favorite romantic quotations from the literature and poetry of every era of history. Keep reading for humorous, witty, touching, and passionate words on love and marriage, that will inspire every heart.

Quotations from the Ancient Era

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.
- Song of Solomon 8:6-7

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 record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
- 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
- Homer (Before 700 B.C.), Odyssey

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.
- Sophocles (496-406 B.C.)

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
- Plato (427-327 B.C.)

My advice to you is to get married. If you find a good wife, you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
- Socrates (469-399 B.C.)

What I needed most was to love and to be loved.
- St. Augustine (354-430)

Quotations from the Medieval Era

And ill doth she her days employ who lets life pass without love's joy.
- Guillaume de Lorris (1212-1237), "Romance of the Rose"

I love you so much, truly, that one could sooner dry up the deep sea and hold back its waves than I could constrain myself from loving you.
- Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)

For where there is true love, a man is neither out of measure lifted up by prosperity, nor cast down by mishap; whether you give or take away from him, so long as he keeps his beloved, he has a spring of inward peace.
- Johannes Tauler (1300-1361)

Quotations from the Renaissance and Elizabethan Eras

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
- Martin Luther (1483-1546)

So dear I love him that with him, all deaths I could endure. Without him, live no life.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Romeo and Juliet"

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.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Romeo and Juliet"

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), "Venus and Adonis"

Where, when Death shall all the world subdue, our love shall live, and later life renew.
- Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), "One Day I Wrote Her Name"

Marriages are made in Heaven and consummated on Earth.
- John Lyly (1554-1606)

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Quotations from the Baroque Era

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee.
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), "We May Live Together"

I prize thy love more than whole Mines of gold; or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that Rivers cannot quench, nor ought but love from thee give recompetence.
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), "We May Live Together"

Then while we live, in love let's so persevere that when we live no more, we may live ever.
- Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), "We May Live Together"

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.
- John Dryden (1631-1700)

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Quotations from the Georgian Era

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
- William Blake (1757-1827)

That is the true season of love; when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved as much before, and that no one will ever love in the same way again.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

Quotations from the Regency Era

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
- Alphonse De Lamartine (1790-1869)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice

Men of sense, whatever you choose to say, do not want silly wives.
- Jane Austen (1775-1817), Emma

Quotations from the Victorian Era

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made.
- Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

You were made perfectly to be loved, and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise.
- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

What a grand thing, to be loved! What a grander thing still, to love!
- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.
- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
- George Sand (1804-1876)

'Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.
- Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1883)

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

There isn't time--so brief is life--for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Marriage--yes, it is the supreme felicity of life.
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.
- Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Love is the river of life in the world.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

Quotations from the Edwardian Era

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.
- Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

If I know what love is, it is because of you.
- Herman Hesse (1877-1962)

The first duty of love is to listen.
- Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
- Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)