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30 Quotes That Will Make You Rethink What “Love” Means

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your health or burn down your house you can never tell. 
Jane Drinkard
July 11, 2016
“That’s when I finally got it. I finally understood. It wasn’t the thought that counted. It was the actual execution that mattered, the showing up for somebody. The intent behind it wasn’t enough. Not for me. Not anymore. It wasn’t enough to know that deep down, he loved me. You had to actually say it to somebody, show them you cared. And he just didn’t. Not enough.”
— Jenny Han, It's Not Summer Without You
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“Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed.”
— Tiffany Madison
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“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
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“For many, love is a two-sided coin. It can strengthen or stifle, expand or enfeeble, perfect or pauperize. When love is returned, we soar. We are taken to heights unseen, where it delights, invigorates, and beautifies. When love is spurned, we feel crippled, disconsolate, and bereaved. Polish the coin and you will see only requited love on both sides. I was destined to love you and I will belong to you forever.”
— Colleen Houck
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“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
— Anaïs Nin, Parted Lips: Lesbian Love Quotes Through the Ages
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“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater…The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that’s the key. It’s like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”
— Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
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“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”
— Joan Crawford, Interview, Hollywood Reporter (1954)
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“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. And that’s what you’ve given me. That’s what I’d hoped to give you forever.”
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
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“I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.”
— Shana Abe
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“Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.”
— David Byrne
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“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”
— Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil
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“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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“When love is not madness it is not love.”
— Pedro Calderón de la Barca
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“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being ‘in love’, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
— Louis de Bernieres, Captain Corelli's Mandolin
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“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”
— C.S Lewis, God In The Dock
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“Sometimes love means letting go when you want to hold on tighter.”
— Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
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“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time.”
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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“I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, I love you. There is an African saying which is: 'Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.'”
— Maya Angelou, The Distinguished Annie Clark Tanner Lecture, 16th-annual Families Alive Conference, Weber State University, May 8, 1997
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“For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.”
— Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss
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“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
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“You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think that because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right — that his judgement and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, beacuse the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he. You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.”
— Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
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“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, this is the problem I want to have. I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way. Let our scars fall in love.”
— Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe
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“Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.”
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil And Miss Prym
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“Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”
— Deborah Reber, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul
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“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
— Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1
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“Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel
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“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
— D. H. Lawrence, Pomegranate
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“They say a good love is one that sits you down, gives you a drink of water, and pats you on top of the head. But I say a good love is one that casts you into the wind, sets you ablaze, makes you burn through the skies and ignite the night like a phoenix; the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire and you can’t stop running simply because you keep on burning everything that you touch! I say that’s a good love; one that burns and flies, and you run with it!”
— C. Joybell C.
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“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
— Blaise Pascal, Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point
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