1. “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
– Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. “You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”
– Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
3. “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
– BrokeBack Mountain by Annie Proulx
4. “I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.” – The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
5. “You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”
– Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
6. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
– Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
7. “Now, I’m not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn’t matter to me. And it’s not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I’ll do anything you say.”
– Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
8. “He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
– The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. “You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marringe, you could draw me to any good – every good – with equal force.”
– Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
10. “It has made me better loving you … it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.”
– The Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James
11. “Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
– The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
12. “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.” – – Winnie The Pooh by A.A. Milne
13. “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”
– Adam Bede by George Eliot
14. “She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.”
– David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
15. “Is it that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved – turned this way and that, examined, considered.”
– The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
16. “Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”
– The Clod And The Pebble by William Blake
17. “Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.”
– The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
18. “The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.”
– The Amber Gods by Harriet Prescott Spofford
19. “Each time you happen to me all over again.”
– The Age Of Innocence by Edith Wharton
20. “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”
– Adam Bede by George Eliot
21. “She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
– Beloved by Toni Morrison
22. “He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.”
– Stop All The Clocks by W.H. Auden
23. “Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”
– The Road by Cormac Mccarthy
24. “Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.”
– Maurice by E.M. Forster
25. “All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.”
– Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
26. “I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.”
– Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez
27. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”
– Persuasion by Jane Austen
28. “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
– Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
***************************************************************
Here are some great quotes from our #14daysofvalentines via @WorldsBestStory on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram…
Vincent Salera
Founder @ World's Best Story™ amplifier of creativity & fun!
