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.

Shared everywhere as Oscar Wilde's, but Quote Investigator finds it first in print anonymously in CosmoGirl!: Words to Live By (2006), no trace of it in Wilde, and the Wilde credit only from about 2013.

More Love Quotes

You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.

Rhett Butler · Clark Gable's blockade runner in Gone with the Wind (1939) · Rhett to Scarlett in the Paris bonnet scene, a line written for the film by Sidney Howard and not found in the novel.

I firmly believe that love [of a subject or hobby] is a better teacher than a sense of duty—at least for me.

Albert Einstein · From a 1940 draft letter to his friend the physicist Philipp Frank; the shared "Love is a better teacher than duty" is a shortening, and the bracketed gloss is the editor's.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Attributed to Oscar Wilde · Recorded by Harold Mellor, a friend who travelled with Wilde in 1898 to 1900, and printed only in 1949 in the Marquess of Queensberry's Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas; Quote Investigator finds it plausible but resting on one man's memory half a century on.

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We Value Your Opinion Comments

“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.”

“You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.”

“I firmly believe that love [of a subject or hobby] is a better teacher than a sense of duty—at least for me.”

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”

We Value Your Opinion Comments

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.

You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.

I firmly believe that love [of a subject or hobby] is a better teacher than a sense of duty—at least for me.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.