Whether it will be through the flutter of the butterflies in the stomach or the tears of a broken heart, we all have those moments when we ponder over the meaning of love.
And you know you’ve had those moments of doubt or assurance when you knew exactly how love feels, hurts, or becomes a purpose of life.
So, what is the definition of love?
From all the writings, wars, and songs that have been created and lived through in the name of love… what is Love?
My definition of love might be different from those around me, and yours too. Because love to all of us has different meanings yet covers the same readiness to live for it and through it.
Today, I’ve put together 100 timeless “definition of love” quotes with the same purpose – to give us yet another look at the feeling that rules the world.
Below you will enjoy some of the most beautiful deep, and truly heart-touching quotes on love from the classics we grew up with. And while back in the days we were reading these books, we didn’t really understand what love is; today, you might realize you read the same rows with different eyes. And you might accidentally understand what love means to you.
100 Definition of Love Quotes
1. “Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy; it does not boast; it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” – Holy Bible
2. “I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. -Valerie” – Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)
3. “Because you aren’t just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can’t imagine giving that up again.” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “You might not understand, but I gave you the best of me, and after you left, nothing was ever the same.” – Nicholas Sparks (The Best of Me)
4. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”— Dr. Seuss
5. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” – Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
6. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” – Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
7. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” – Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
8. “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” – George Orwell (1984)
9. “I finally understood what true love meant…love meant that you care for another person’s happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.” – Nicholas Sparks (Dear John)
10. “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” – Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
“Real Meaning of Love” Quotes
11. “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” – Jane Austen (Pride And Prejudice)
12. “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
13. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
14. “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
15. “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” – Arundhati Roy (The Cost of Living)
16. “Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” – Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
17. “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. (…) But I lacked the courage, and she had a boyfriend, and I was gawky, and she was gorgeous, and I was hopelessly boring, and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” – John Green (Looking for Alaska)
18. You don’t love someone for their looks or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” – Oscar Wilde
19. “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)
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Deep Quotes on Love | Definition of Love Quotes
21. “I don’t trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.’ … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” – Maya Angelou
22. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.” – Kahlil Gibran
23. “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die, and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’ rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?” – Mother Teresa
“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.”
Falsely yours – Kinky Friedman
25. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” – Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
26. “I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long; I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death, I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression, and I am braver than Loneliness, and nothing will ever exhaust me.” – Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia)
27. “The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.” – Ernest Hemingway (Men Without Women)
28. “I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her, and it is the beginning of everything.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. “Find what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski
“Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you
If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land”
Pablo Neruda (Selected Poems)
Love Quotes on Meaning Of True Love
31. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” – Federico García Lorca (Blood Wedding and Yerma )
32. “Maybe there’s something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters.” – John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
33. “If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn’t be filled?” – Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes)
“Do not fall in love with people like me
I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.”
Caitlyn Siehl
35. “They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to miss me as much as I’m missing you right now” – Edna St. Vincent Millay
36. “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” – Mary Oliver
37. “I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
38. “Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!” – Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
39. “If she’s amazing, she won’t be easy. If she’s easy, she won’t be amazing. If she’s worth it, you won’t give up. If you give up, you’re not worthy. … Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley (Guitar Chord Songbook – Bob Marley (Guitar Chord Songbooks))
“Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. ”
Pablo Neruda
Quotes on Purpose of Love
41. “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” – John Green
42. “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.” – Anais Nin
43. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis
44. “I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
45. “I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect, and I loved you even more.” – Angelita Lim
46. “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too. – Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”
48. When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew. – Arrigo Boito
49. The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. – Victor Hugo
50. ‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. – Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
51. “Our love is like the wind. I can’t see it, but I can feel it.” – A Walk to Remember Nickolas Sparks
52. “We loved with a love that was more than love.” — Edgar Allen Poe
53. “If I had to choose between breathing and loving you, I would use my last breath to tell you I love you.” – DeAnna Anderson
54. “Your hand touching mine. This is how galaxies collide.” ― Sanober Khan
”Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
The History Of Love
Happiness and Love…
56. “There is a madness in loving you, a lack of reason that makes it feel so flawless.” — Leo Christopher
57. “You may hold my hand for a while, but you hold my heart forever. If I know what love is, it is because of you.” Hermann Hesse
58. “There is only happiness in life, to love and to be loved.” – George Sand
59. “When I look into your eyes, I know I have found the mirror of my soul.” – Joey W. Hill
60. “To the world, you may be one person, but to one person you are the world.” – Dr. Seuss
61. “Sometimes I can’t see myself when I’m with you. I can only just see you.” – Jodi Lynn Anderson
62. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu
63. “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” – Victor Hugo
64. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” – Orson Welles
65. “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” – Henry Van Dyke
66. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
67. “Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.” – Leo Buscaglia
68. “Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says, ‘I need you because I love you.’ – Erich Fromm
69. “True love cannot be found where it does not exist, nor can it be denied where it does.” – Torquato Tasso
70. “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” – David Viscott
71. “I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.” – Vladimir Nabokov
72. “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.” – Honore de Balzac
73. “Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” – Lucille Ball
74. “I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” – Robert Fulghum
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Quotes That Show The True Meaning Of Love
76. “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way, his breaths came, and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.” – Madeline Miller
77. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.” – Madeline Miller
78. “But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.” – Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
79. “Come sleep with me: We won’t make Love, Love will make us.” – Julio Cortázar
“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
Sarah Williams (Twilight Hours: A Legacy Of Verse)
81. “From childhood’s hour, I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.” – Edgar Allan Poe
82. “I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.” – Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
“In the end these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?”
Jack Kornfield (Buddha’s Little Instruction Book)
84. “I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.” – Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
85. “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Last Definition of Love Quotes
86. “You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. – Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
87. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” – Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
88. “Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that – I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much – so very much to learn.” – Sylvia Plath (The Journals of Sylvia Plath)
89. “Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” – François de La Rochefoucauld (Maxims)
90. “I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. ” – Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
91. “Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.” – Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
92. “I love her. I am so lucky to love her. (..)You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.” – John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
93. “This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.” – Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
94. “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything – what a waste!” – André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
95. “My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.” – André Breton (What Is Surrealism?: Selected Writings)
96. “If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.” – Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
97. “You don’t love a girl because of beauty. You love her because she sings a song only you can understand.” – L.J. Smith (Secret Vampire (Night World, #1))
98. “Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: – you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.” – E.E. Cummings
99. “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.” – Haruki Murakami
100. “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)
Pin this for later
100 Timeless Definition Of Love Quotes
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.