
Love is holy because it is like grace; the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
Marilynne Robinson · The old minister John Ames, writing to his small son.
True love quotes: what lasting love is, in the words of those who lived and studied it.

Marilynne Robinson · The old minister John Ames, writing to his small son.

Attributed to Amy Bloom · Popular under Amy Bloom's name, and just as often under the humorist Sam Levenson's; no book or interview has been found for either.

Gabriel García Márquez · The source reads: “Fermina, he said, 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.” · Florentino Ariza to the newly widowed Fermina Daza on the night of her husband's funeral, fifty-one years, nine months and four days after she rejected him; she orders him out of the house. The English is Edith Grossman's 1988 translation, and the record's sentence opens "Fermina, he said".

Søren Kierkegaard · The title and thesis of one of his discourses on 1 Corinthians 13:7.


Edgar Allan Poe · The source reads: “But we loved with a love that was more than love— / I and my Annabel Lee;” · From "Annabel Lee," his last complete poem, written for his wife Virginia, who had died two years before.

Erich Fromm · His definition of love as an activity rather than a feeling; the sentence continues "Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."

Arwen · Liv Tyler's elf in The Lord of the Rings films (2001 to 2003) · The immortal elf Arwen to Aragorn on the bridge at Rivendell, choosing a mortal life with him; a line written for the film by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, not in Tolkien's text.

Rachel Kushner · From the novel; the sentence before it says the harder people are to love, the more you are driven to love them.

F. Scott Fitzgerald · The source reads: “I love her, and that's the beginning and end of everything.” · Written of Zelda, and shared ever since as I love you. From a letter of 26 February 1920 to a friend, Isabelle Amorous, defending his engagement to Zelda Sayre five weeks before the wedding: "I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect."

Thomas Aquinas · The source reads: “To love is to wish good to someone.” · Aquinas's definition of love in the Summa Theologica, which he credits to Aristotle's Rhetoric; the familiar form is a modern paraphrase.


Max Frisch · The source reads: “When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again surprised, at how different they are from what you expected.” · The Swiss novelist's diary, in the familiar shortened form.

Jerome K. Jerome · The source reads: “Nothing, so it seems to me, is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life.” · The Stranger's line in his play about a lodger who changes a boarding house.

M. Scott Peck · The psychiatrist's definition, the one bell hooks built All About Love on.

Héloïse · From the first letter Héloïse wrote to Abelard from the convent of the Paraclete, some fifteen years after their secret marriage and his castration; Betty Radice's Penguin translation of the Latin "Nihil umquam, Deus scit, in te nisi te requisivi, te pure non tua concupiscens."

Propertius · The Roman elegist's advice, from the first poem of his first book, on Cynthia.

Helen Keller · The source reads: “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. A sunset, a mountain bathed in moonlight, the ocean in calm and in storm—we see these, love their beauty, hold the vision to our hearts. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” · From her small book of consolation for the grieving, written in 1929; the record has it as three sentences, and the one-sentence form everyone shares first appeared in a 1990 book on coping with the loss of a baby.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · One of the maxims published after his death.


Nicholas Sparks · The last line of Noah's letter to Allie.

A widely shared anniversary line with no known author.

Jodi Picoult · Julia to Campbell, late in the novel, after his seizure in court.

W. B. Yeats · From "When You Are Old," written at 27 for Maud Gonne, asking her to picture herself old and remember the one man who loved more than her beauty.
That is every quote on the shelf, all 87 of them.
87 quotes, dealt in a fresh order every day, so the page reads differently each morning, and every quote keeps its own page.
Every quote on GKBook is traced to the book, speech, letter or interview it came from before it is published. A famous line that cannot be traced is kept because people search for it, but it is labelled "Attributed to", and a line that belongs to someone else is labelled "Often credited to" with the real origin beside it.
The first pill opens the author's page with every quote of theirs on GKBook; the others open the categories the quote belongs to, such as Love Quotes or Wisdom Quotes.
Tap the quote to open its own page, which carries a share button and, where a quote card has been made, a Download button for the full-size picture.
Every general-knowledge topic and the A-to-Z lists.
The world A to Z: flags, countries, the sciences, places, people, subjects.
We Value Your Opinion Comments