How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · The opening of sonnet 43 of Sonnets from the Portuguese, the poems she wrote in secret for Robert Browning during their courtship and showed him only after they married.

If thou must love me, let it be for nought except for love's sake only.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · Sonnet 14 of Sonnets from the Portuguese, asking to be loved for no passing quality, not a look, a smile or a way of speaking, so that the love will not pass with them.

I love you better than myself by the whole width of the Heavens.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning · The source reads: “Which proves that I love you better than myself by the whole width of the Heavens; the sevenfold Heavens.” · Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning on Sunday evening, 30 March 1846, six months before they eloped to Italy; the sentence in the letter begins "Which proves that" and ends "the sevenfold Heavens."

More Love Quotes

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

W. Somerset Maugham · Philip Carey to Norah, who has just said she always knew he loved her less than she loved him.

To get rid of an enemy, one must love him.

Leo Tolstoy · The source reads: “To get rid of an enemy, one must love him, as it is also said in the "Teaching of the twelve apostles."” · A diary entry of 14 September 1896 at Yasnaya Polyana, citing the early Christian Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.

Vladimir Nabokov · The source reads: “I think it's all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.” · Answering a BBC interviewer at Zermatt in July 1962 who asked whether writing a memory down makes it fade.