Love Quotes for Letters & Messages
The right line at the top of a love letter does half the work for you. Here are 100 of the most quotable things ever written about love — from Shakespeare to modern voices. Copy any of them for a card or message, or use one to open a letter and finish it in your own words.
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How to use a love quote without sounding borrowed
A quote at the top of a love letter is a doorway, not the room. It works when it earns you the first three seconds of attention and then hands over to something only you could have written. It fails when it does the whole job — a letter made entirely of other people's sentences reads as a card, however beautiful the sentences are. Use one line, attribute it if you know the source, and then get specific fast.
Which quotes actually suit a letter
Short declarative lines survive being lifted out of context; elaborate ones rarely do. Shakespeare and the Romantics wrote gorgeously, but a dense four-line passage at the top of a letter asks the reader to work before they have any reason to. If you are choosing between two quotes, take the shorter one — and if a quote needs explaining, it is the wrong quote for a letter.
What to write after the quote
The strongest structure is quote, then contradiction of the quote's generality: here is the universal version, and here is what it looks like in our particular case. One concrete memory does this better than any amount of elaboration. If you want the full structure, our guide to writing a love letter walks through the four sections that make one land.
100 love quotes
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
— Nora Ephron
“Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
— Maya Angelou
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
— Lao Tzu
“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.”
— Nicholas Sparks
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
— Victor Hugo
“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
— James Baldwin
“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
— Dr. Seuss
“Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
— Franklin P. Jones
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.”
— William Shakespeare
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
“Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
— Karl Menninger
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
— Morrie Schwartz
“Love is not about how many days, months, or years you have been together. It is all about how much you love each other every single day.”
— Unknown
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
— Jane Austen
“You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep at night, because your life is better than your dreams.”
— Unknown
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”
— Roy Croft
“Take my hand, take my whole life too, for I can't help falling in love with you.”
— Elvis Presley
“I fell in love with you because of the million things you never knew you were doing.”
— Unknown
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
— A. A. Milne
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.”
— Maya Angelou
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
— William Shakespeare
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
— Oscar Wilde
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love. I have found you.”
— Charlotte Bronte
“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”
— Mother Teresa
“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”
— Helen Keller
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
— Mignon McLaughlin
“I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”
— J. R. R. Tolkien
“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age, forever.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
“I swear I couldn't love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.”
— Leo Christopher
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own.”
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
— Ingrid Bergman
“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.”
— Andre Breton
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
— Maya Angelou
“To love is nothing. To be loved is something. But to love and be loved, that's everything.”
— T. Tolis
“The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead.”
— Marilyn Monroe
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
— Sam Keen
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
— Khalil Gibran
“You don't marry someone you can live with, you marry someone you cannot live without.”
— Unknown
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.”
— Paulo Coelho
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