Shakespeare: Love Quotations

Old Will was a perceptive guy, and his observations don't seem to have lost their relevance over the years. Here's what he had to say about that old devil called Love:

Love goes toward love.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.

My bounty is as deep as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

I'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly washed with dew.

And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

They do not love that do not show their love.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.

For thy sweet love remember’d such Wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

I'll follow you and make a heaven out of hell, and I'll die by your hand which I love so well.

In thy face I see honor, truth and loyalty.

Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or Bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs,
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,
Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

For thou hast given me in this beauteous face
A world of earthly blessings to my soul,
If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.

Love is a spirit of all compact of fire.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

My heart is ever at your service.

So they lov’d as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distinct, divisions none.

Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist.

One half of me is yours, the other half yours-
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours!

Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.

When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old.
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.

Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all.

We know what we are, but know not what we may become

A friend is one who knows who you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still gently allows you to grow.

So dear I love him that with him, all deaths I could endure. Without him, live no life.

Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.

There was a star danced, and under that was I born.

"This above all: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. And it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.