“If we’d never met, I think I would have known that my life wasn’t complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn’t know who I was looking for.”
“He’s like a drug for you, Bella… I see you can’t live without him now. It’s too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.”
″...she was a woman with a million happy memories, who knew what it was like to experience true love and who was ready to experience more life, more love and make new memories.”
“The word ‘boyfriend’ had me chewing on the inside of my cheek with a familiar tension while I stirred. It wasn’t the right word, not at all. I needed something more expressive of eternal commitment...”
“They were best friends, lovers and soul mates destined to be together, everyone thought. But as it happened, one day destiny greedily changed its mind.”
“Finding someone you love and loves you back is a wonderful feeling. But finding a true soulmate is an even better feeling. A soulmate is someone who understands you like no other will be there for you forever no matter what.”
“I will love you with no regard to the actions of our enemies or the jealousies of actors. I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents or the boredom of certain friends. I will love you no matter what is served in the world’s cafeterias or what game is played at each and every recess.”
“I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.”
“I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness in the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged print of the document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.”
″ I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”
“I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.”
“This and much more Denver heard her say from her corner chair, trying to persuade Beloved, the one and only person she felt she had to convince, that what she had done was right because it came from true love.”
“The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised, firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; .... The first question I ask about these promises is: “Why any of them except the first?” Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ? For it must be true, as an old writer says, that he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
“He leaned closer, their faces drawing near, and he could feel the heat of her breath mingling with his. He closed his eyes against the memory of a thousand other kisses and touched his lips to hers. He felt a kind of spark, and all at once he felt her slowly coming back to him. She was the arm that held him close in times of trouble, she was the whisper on the pillow beside him at night.”
“The two of you, there’s something uncanny about the way you two are with each other. I mean everything--the way you look at each other, the way she relaxes when you put your hand on her back, the way you both seem to know what the other is always thinking, it’s always struck me as extraordinary. That’s another reason I keep putting marriage off. I know I want something like what you two share, and I’m not sure I’ve found it yet. I’m not sure I ever will. And with love like that, they say anything’s possible, right?”
“Finally in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.”
“Love is spiritual. It’s about self-sacrifice and commitment. And discipline. You cannot have true love without discipline. And respect. When you lose the respect of your spouse, you’ve lost everything.”
“Yes, I would become upset when you forgot to take out the garbage, but that is not a real argument. That is nothing. It passes like a leaf blown by the window. It is over and done and it is forgotten quickly.”
“Suddenly, a new image had risen up before me, a lofty and cherished image. And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me as the craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice….”
“All men CAN change, but that doesn’t mean that all men WILL change. There’s only one woman whom we will change for. If a man is not willing to change, it means that you aren’t the one.”
“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”
“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they’re dead and gone.”
″...she herself had been whipped for her peccadilloes within an inch of her life, Miss Heliotrope caring now not two hoots whether Maria liked her or not, if only she could make the child a fine and noble woman. This is true love and Maria had known it;”
“For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love?
“I forgot you were rich when I said ‘Yes’. I’d have married you if you hadn’t a penny, and I sometimes wish you were poor that I might show how much I love you.”
How great is the power of a woman who has made so courageous a resolution! What devotion does she deserve from him for whom she has sacrificed everything! How ought she really to be supremely loved!
“Twenty-four years ago I returned, proud and joyful, to my country. I had a betrothed, Albert, a lovely girl whom I adored, and I was bringing to my betrothed a hundred and fifty louis, painfully amassed by ceaseless toil.”
Albert, this money, which was formerly designed to promote the comfort and tranquillity of the woman I adored, may now, through strange and painful circumstances, be devoted to the same purpose.
“If I loved a man, as she loves the Admiral, I would always be with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else.”