Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Love
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
Solomon’s Song, Chap. viii. Ver. 7; Herrick, Hesperides against Love, No. 127.
Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,
Thou would’st as soon go kindle fire with snow,
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
Shakespeare.—Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Scene 7. (Julia to Lucetta.)
O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day;
Which now shews all the beauty of the sun,
And, by and by, a cloud takes all away!
Shakespeare.—Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Scene 3. (Proteus alone.)
Banish that fear; my flame can never waste,
For love sincere refines upon the taste.
Colley Cibber.—The Double Gallant, Act V. Scene 1.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds—
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.
Shakespeare.—Sonnet, CXVI.
Fie, fie! how wayward is this foolish love,
That, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse,
And presently all humbled, kiss the rod!
Shakespeare.—Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Scene 2. (Julia alone.)
Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Shakespeare.—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Scene 1. (Lysander to Hermia.)
O love! unconquerable in the fight.
Buckley.—Sophocles, Antigone, Page 188.
But he who stems a stream with sand,
And fetters flame with flaxen band,
Has yet a harder task to prove—
By firm resolve to conquer love!
Scott.—Lady of the Lake, Canto III. Stanza 28.
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
Pope.—Epi. to Eloisa, last Lines.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
Shakespeare.—Merchant of Venice, Act II. Scene 6. (Jessica to Lorenzo.)
Love is the salt of life; a higher taste
It gives to pleasure, and then makes it last.
Buckingham.—Ode on Love, Verse 5.
O death, all eloquent! you only prove
What dust we doat on, when ’tis man we love.
Pope.—Eloise to Abelard, Line 355.
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
Shakespeare.—Twelfth Night, Act III. Scene 1. (Olivia to Viola.)
Like Dian’s kiss, unask’d, unsought,
Love gives itself, but is not bought.
Longfellow.—Endymion, Verse 4.
All hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself,
And trust no agent.
Shakespeare.—Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Scene 1. (Claudio alone.)
Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
David, King of Israel, lamenting Saul and Jonathan; 2 Samuel, Chap. i. Verse 26.
Love! who lightest on wealth, who makest thy couch in the soft cheeks of the youthful damsel, and roamest beyond the sea, and ’mid the rural cots, thee shall neither any of the immortals escape, nor men the creatures of a day.
Buckley’s Sophocles, Antigone, Page 188.
Alas! the love of women! it is known
To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
And if ’tis lost, life hath no more to bring
To them but mockeries of the past alone,
And their revenge is as the tiger’s spring,
Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
Torture is theirs, what they inflict they feel.
Byron.—Don Juan, Canto II. Stanza 199.
In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.
Swift.—A Quotation from Fitzharding the sister of Lady Orkney. (Journal to Stella, Letter 54.)
Oh love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah! why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?
As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers,
And place them on their breast—but place to die;
Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish
Are laid within our bosoms but to perish.
Byron.—Don Juan, Canto III. Stanza 2.
True he it said, whatever man it said,
That love with gall and honey doth abound;
But if the one be with the other weighed,
For every dram of honey therein found
A pound of gall doth over it redound.
Spenser.—Fairy Queen, Book IV. Canto X., and Eclogue III. March.
Stony limits cannot hold love out;
And what love can do, that dares love attempt.
Shakespeare.—Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 2. (Romeo to Juliet.)
In peace, love tunes the shepherd’s reed;
In war, he mounts the warrior’s steed;
In halls, in gay attire is seen;
In hamlets, dances on the green.
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove;
And men below, and saints above;
For love is heaven, and heaven is love.
Scott.—Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto III. Verse 2.
True Love’s the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven.
Scott.—Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto V. Stanza 13.
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,
’Tis woman’s whole existence: man may range
The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart;
Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange
Pride, fame, ambition, to fill up his heart,
And few there are whom these cannot estrange;
Men have all these resources, we but one,
To love again, and be again undone.
Byron.—Don Juan, Canto I. Stanza 194.
I cannot love thee as I ought,
For love reflects the thing beloved;
My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.
Tennyson.—In Memoriam, Line I. Verse 1.
Love will find out the way.
Anonymous.—3 Percy Reliques, 294. (A Song.)
Love on the picture smiled! expression pour’d
Her mingling spirit there—and Greece adored!
Campbell.—Pleasures of Hope, Part II.
There is no other remedy for love, O Nicias, either in the way of salve, as it seems to me, or of plaster, except the Muses.
Buckley’s Theocritus, Page 58.
Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure.
Pope.—Pastoral II., Summer, Line 12.
Love is not to be reason’d down, or lost
In high ambition or a thirst of greatness.
Addison.—Cato, Act I. Scene 1.
Ambition is no cure for love.
Scott.—Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I. Verse 27.
There is a beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.
Shakespeare.—Antony and Cleopatra, Act I. Scene 1. (Antony to Cleopatra.)
Why did she love him? Curious fool!—be still——
Is human love the growth of human will?
Byron.—Lara, Canto II. Verse 22.
Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?
Marlow.—Hero and Leander, First Sestiad; quoted by Shakespeare.—As You Like It, Act III. Scene 5.
Love will still be lord of all.
Scott.—Lay of Last Minstrel, Canto VI. Verse 11.
How to know a man in love—your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.
Shakespeare.—As You Like It, Act III. Scene 2. (Rosalind to Orlando.)
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak. It serves for food and raiment.
Longfellow.—The Spanish Student, Act I. Scene 5.