250+ Love Quotes that Answer What Love is and How to Truly Love

Last Updated January 3, 2024

What is true love? What does it mean to love others and yourself? How to love someone? These questions have troubled many over the years, from scientists to people of the Arts. Trying to explain love has been a task that many have wanted to accomplish. Everyone comes up with a different answer. This is to be expected, though, because love occurs differently in everyone’s mind. This is our input on the meaning of love and what it means to truly love someone. Check these 250 love quotes to help you answer what love is and understand how you really feel.

Romantic Quotes on Love

Sometimes new love comes between old friends. Sometimes the best love was the one that was always there.
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty dies.
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.
How satisfied would we be if we presented someone with vintage wine? Upon asking his opinion of it, he replied, I’m drinking it, aren’t I?
All his faults are such that one loves him still the better for them.
Whenever you have the truth, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
To love something is to give it room enough to grow.
Love is something eternal; the aspects may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there are an unlighted lamp and one burning. The lamp was there, and it is a good lamp, but now it is shedding light, too, and that is its real function.
Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love.
In real love, you want the other person’s good. In romantic love, you want the other person.

A man is already halfway in love with a woman who listens to him.
True love is the outward demonstration of inward conviction.
There is a passion of reverence, almost of pity, mingling with the love of an honest man for a pure girl, which makes it the most exquisite, perhaps, of all human sentiments.
When you love somebody, you should follow your heart. Sometimes when you are with the person you love the most, you feel confused. You don’t know who you are or what you want, but that is totally understandable. It is natural to let go of a part of yourself to be with that person, but the important part is that you don’t lose your own identity in the process!
We may give without loving, but we cannot love without giving.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you.
Who that loves believes the impossible.
As you look back upon your life, you will find that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.
Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends, and preserves. Its eternal goal is life. Smiley Blanton
We learn to love that to which we give our time.
Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you who you are.

Perfect Love Quotes to Describe How You Feel

If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.
At one time, through love, all things come together into one; at another time, they are borne of them apart through strife’s hatred.
To love is to transform; to be a poet.
When the one man loves the one woman, and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy.
It is impossible to love and be wise.
Love should be a vehicle allowed to travel without limitations.
Love is the most potent force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
Love at the lips was touch, As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.
You have to walk carefully at the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip.
If music is the food of love, then play on.
Love is for fools wise enough to take a chance.
When one has once wholly entered the realm of love, the world, no matter how imperfect, becomes rich and beautiful; it consists solely of opportunities for love.
Love is what is left in a relationship after all the selfishness has been removed.
Children need love, especially when they don’t deserve it.

Love is acceptance. When you love someone . . . You take them into your heart, and that is undoubtedly why it hurts so much when we lose someone we love because we lose a part of ourselves.
The passion in a kiss gives it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
The true revolutionary is guided by an incredible feeling of love.
He who remembers from day to day what he has yet to learn and what he has learned already may be said to have a love of learning from month to month.
I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.
Love is the only flower that grows and blossoms without the aid of seasons.
To love and win is the best thing; to love and lose is the next best thing.
I could never love where I could not respect.
The value of compassion cannot be overemphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No more significant burden can be born by an individual than to know no one cares or understands.
A poet without love is a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
A woman who pretends to laugh at love is like a child who sings at night when he is afraid.
And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.
Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass.
A part of you has grown in me; together forever, we shall be never apart, maybe in the distance, but not in heart.
No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than he deserves.

The Greatest Love Quotes

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood.
I love everything old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.
Without love, intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence, love is not enough.
Make love, not war; get married and do both!
Never judge someone by who he’s in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people.
The best smell is bread; the best saver, salt, the best love, that of children.
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
You needn’t love your enemy, but you are doing well enough if you refrain from telling lies about him.
Love is what dreams are made of.
Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them.
Like the rabbit at the dog track, romance is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward that keeps us running and thinking in safe circles for the benefit and amusement of our masters.
By not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.

It is kindness in a person, not beauty, that wins our love.
The ability to make love frivolously is the thing that distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
The heart that loves is always young.
Love still needs expression between those who share it.
To be loved is to live forever in someone’s heart.
In dreams and in love, there are no impossibilities.
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
My life is an indivisible whole. All my activities run into one another: and they have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.
I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. The same goes for true love.
Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower, or winged air.
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
You have achieved success if you have lived well, laughed often, and loved much.
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.

Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever.
How does one measure time? No, not in days, months, or years. It is measured by the most precious of all things: Love. Without which all beings and things, whether brave and/or beautiful, would perish.
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
In her first passion, a woman loves her lover; in all the others, all she loves is love.
No, this trick won’t work. . . . How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an island somewhere in the ocean 5,000 years ago. . . . Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the Soul. This is the Center, the Self.
To learn and never be filled is wisdom; To teach and never be weary is love.
Love is like measles, all the worse when it comes late in life.
Love is so much better when you are not married.
I used to think that being nice to people and feeling nice was loving people. Now I know it isn’t. Love is the most immense unselfishness, and it is so big I’ve never touched it.
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eye.
For you see, each day I love you more, today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.
True love is when your heart and your mind are saying the same thing.
A lady sweet and kind, Was never face so pleased my mind; I did but saw her passing by, yet I love her till I die.
Your love shines in my heart as the sun shines upon the earth.
Nobody can fully understand the meaning of love until he’s owned a dog. He can show you more honest affection with a flick of his tail than a man can gather through a lifetime of handshakes.

Respect for sovereignty, for privacy, for total independence. Gentle alliances against loneliness, they were excellent, rational love-affairs without the love.
My need is not to be on the outside glaring in; it’s to be in the center with you. To be loved is nice but not essential. To love someone, that’s what makes life worth living.
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he’s finished.
Of course, he replies. I’ve been married to you for twenty years, haven’t I?
If you have respect and consideration for one another, you’ll make it.
Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
You’ve got to dance like no one’s watching and love like it’s never going to hurt.
Love, you know, seeks to make happy rather than to be happy.
Love is eternal as long as it lasts.
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.
If you fear nothing, you love nothing. If you love nothing, what joy can there be in life?
Immature love says, I love you because I need you. Mature love says I need you because I love you.
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
But love is many things, none of them logical.
Romance is about the little things.
In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity, love. And the story of love is not essential; what is necessary is that one is capable of love.
Love not what you are, but what you may become.
The love of study, a passion that derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day and hour with an endless source of independent and rational pleasure.
No bed is big enough to hold three
We can do no great thing, only small things, with great love.
One of my theories is that men love with their eyes; women love with their ears.
I do love I know not what; Sometimes this, and sometimes that.
To live is like love; all reason is against it, and all healthy instincts for it.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is more vital than evil triumphant.
Love, such as in society, is only the exchange of two fantasies and two bodies’ contact.
I like not only to be loved but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

The last time I tried to make love to my wife, nothing happened, so I said to her, ‘What’s the matter? You can’t think of anybody either?’
No happiness is like unto it, no love so great as that of man and wife, no such comfort as a sweet wife.
Remember that great love and great achievements involve high risk.
If you love someone, let them go. If they return to you, it was meant to be. If they don’t, their love was never yours, to begin with.
Where we love is genuinely home, a home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
No disguise can hide love for long where it exists or simulate it where it does not.
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Our first and last love is self-love.
We must love one another. Only [by doing] so can our long years of toil and struggle reach the full reward, and we are crowned with life everlasting.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
Respect is love in plain clothes.
If people are allowed to love life, then they should also be allowed to hate it.
That is the true season of love when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us and that no one will love in the same way as us.
The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.
If one judges love by most of its effects, it is more like hatred than friendship.
Love and toothache have many cures, but none infallible, except possession and dispossession.
Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time . . . It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
Someone has written, love is a verb. It requires doing, not just saying and thinking. The test is what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than others’ opinions.
Find someone to love . . . And, oh, someone to love you.
A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring each and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
Without loving acts, loving words are meaningless.
Give love and unconditional acceptance to those you encounter, and notice what happens.
No cord or cable can draw so forcibly or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread.
The best proof of love is trust.
Love may conquer all, but it needs time as its field general.
What force is more potent than love.
In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
Life without love is like a tree without blossom and fruit.
I did not hear the words you said. Instead, I heard love.
The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.
It’s much easier to turn a friendship into love than love into friendship.
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
Love, at first sight, is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.
To love is to approach each other center to center.
Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.
No man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Sincere love is something that sacrifices, not something that indulges itself. Sincere love is responsible. It would never knowingly hurt but would heal.
Nobody can fully understand the meaning of love unless he’s owned a dog. He can show you more honest affection with a flick of his tail than a man can gather through a lifetime of handshakes.
The money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones as the wind blows out candles and fans fire.
The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
The secret of love is seeking variety in your life together and never letting routine chords dull your romance’s melody.
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
For two people to please one another, they must be very nearly alike to understand each other and slightly different from having something to know in each other.
Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it, everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, never . . . Never forget it.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.
He who tries to forget a woman never loved her.
No matter how love-sick a woman is, she shouldn’t take the first pill that comes along.
You don’t pick who you fall in love with. There are so few people to love. It’s hard for one adult even to like another. Almost impossible.
The person who has earned love the least needs it the most.
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
Love thou the rose, yet leave it on its stem.
When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.
Love is, above all, the gift of oneself.
The best and most beautiful things in the world can not be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart. We should do everything within reason to save a good relationship. But if we are constantly trying to save it, it’s probably not a good relationship.
We are all born for love. . . . It is the principle of existence and its only end.
Things are beautiful if you love them.
Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.
Love is a game that two can play, and both win.
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or instead loved despite ourselves.
Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
It is a beautiful necessity of our nature to love something.
Love comes from blindness, friendship from knowledge.
Sometimes I wish I were a little kid again; skinned knees are easier to fix than broken hearts.
A love that defies all logic is sometimes the most logical thing in the world.
Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible. It cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment and offer you more joy than any material possession could.
Love and eggs are best when they are fresh.
Can there be a love that does not make demands on its object?
Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.
Love, I find, is like singing. Everyone can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
Poets are all who love, feel great truths, And tell them; the truth of truths is love.
With love and patience, nothing is impossible.
Love is the greatest gift that one generation can leave to another.
We love the things we love for what they are.
Love is not blind; it sees more, not less; But because it sees more, it chooses to see less.
If we deny the love given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
It’s an extra dividend when you like the girl you’re in love with.
A self-centered man admitted: Sure, I know that the Bible says to love our neighbors as ourselves. But frankly, I don’t believe that my neighbors can stand all that affection.
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Love me or hate me, but spare me your indifference.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all
Love is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
The more I think about it, the more I realize nothing more artistic to love others.
There is only one sort of love, but there are a thousand copies.
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Love has nothing to do with what you expect to get; it’s what you are expected to give, which is everything.
Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.
Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.
There are two sorts of constancy in love. One arises from continually discovering in the loved person new subjects for love. The other arises from our making a merit of being constant.
Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
Love is like measles; we all have to go through it.
It is better to have loved and lost than to have hated and won.
After observing the loved and the unloved, we found the loved ones rarely tried to manipulate others.
I was nauseous and tingly all over. . . . I was either in love, or I had smallpox.
Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.
Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.
When you find a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
It’s easy to halve the potato where there’s love.
My father always told me, Find a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
To understand your parents’ love you must raise children yourself.
France is the only place where you can make love in the afternoon without people hammering on your door.
Among those I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
Learn to love good books. There are treasures in books that all the world’s money cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
Pains of love are sweeter far than all other pleasures are.
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.
Love can cure heartbreaks, misfortune, or tragedy. It is the eternal companion.
Love of country is like a woman’s love; he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

What Love is and How to Truly Love

Loving Yourself Before Loving Others.

Before you learn to love anybody else, you must first learn to love yourself. Suppose you are not happy about who you are and are unconfident about you as a person. In that case, it will show to the outside world. You will start projecting it to your significant other, ultimately finding yourself unable to love them.

Selflessness

Once you have learned to love yourself, you must understand that it is not always about you. Love is something that requires sacrifice from both participants to work. Otherwise, the one-sidedness will be intolerable. If you for-go your needs and start thinking about the best way to take care of your partner, and they do it too, then a beautiful relationship will flourish.

Having a Positive Attitude

Negativity is the killer of all things marvelous. Suppose you engulf yourself in the flame of your negative emotions based on a slight defect from what you thought was perfect. In that case, everything will be over before it even started. You see, if there is one thing required for you to love someone truly, it is the faith that no matter what happens, everything will be alright. This is the key to an everlasting relationship because it will give you the courage to work things out when they get rough.

Commitment

When you truly love someone, you have to give 150% for the relationship to work. In other words, you must commit. You cannot start going around doing the things that please you and not care about the other person. Otherwise, as we said before, the one-sidedness of the relationship will be intolerable. For a relationship to flourish, it is required that you are both committed to taking care of one another.

Never Expect Perfection

A significant percentage of the relationships that do not succeed is not because of the things that truly happen, but because of the ones that we expected to happen and ended up not happening. It is our head that is the enemy of every relationship because when we start expecting things from others, and they end up not delivering, we start becoming delusional. This does not mean to tolerate everything and does not expect the basics of love, but you should not expect everyone to love you in the same way as you love them. This does not mean that they love you less, they just express it differently.

Dialogue is Key

Love generally is an emotion that comes from the heart, but for it to truly work, it needs the help of the brain in the form of dialogue. Let’s be real; problems will occur in every form of relationship. Nothing is perfect in this world, and we have to expect it. So, the best way to solve these types of problems and allow your love to keep growing is actually to talk about them. Don’t let the negative emotions grow inside of you, because when they burst it’s going to be a lot worse than it would be if you had briefly talked about them when they first started nurturing inside of you.

You Learn Something Every Day

You can’t expect to know everything about love from the get-go. It’s something that can never be conquered because, like the human brain, it is always expanding and always differs from one another. So, you must always be on the lookout for opportunities to learn something new every day that goes by, because it’s the small things that make a relationship between two people beautiful.

Failure is Just an Opportunity

It is better to try and do something about your loved one and ultimately failing than never trying at all. Because trying shows, you care, and failure gives you the tools never to fail again. So, combining this with what was previously said about the small things making all the difference, you should always try and do something for the one you love. Even if they fail, just get a laugh out of it and try again.

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