ATONEMENT

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

THE MAP OF LOVE

Is it that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved - turned this way and that, examined, considered.

IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO

He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.

THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring

THE ENGLISH PATIENT

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

DAVID COPPERFIELD

She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.

THE AMBER GODS

The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Each time you happen to me all over again.

THE WHITE COMPANY

You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

JANE EYRE

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

MY LUVE IS LIKE A RED RED ROSE

O, my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June.

ADAM BEDE

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

ROMEO AND JULIET

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

BELOVED

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

WINNIE THE POOH

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

HAMLET

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

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.

VANITY FAIR

It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS

h the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close.

THE ROVER

One hour of right down love is worth an age of dully living on

THE ROAD

Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

It has made me better loving you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.

POSSESSION

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marringe, you could draw me to any good - every good - with equal force.

IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.

Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.

THE GREAT GATSBY

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

MAURICE

Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

NORTH AND SOUTH

All this gladness in life, all honest pride in doing my work in the world, all this keen sense of being, I owe to her!" And it doubles the gladness, it makes the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till I hardly know if it is pain or pleasure, to think that I owe it to one - nay, you must, you shall hear" - said he, stepping forwards with stern determination - "to one whom I love, as I do not believe man ever loved woman before

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS

Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

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.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

In vain I have 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.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

CLARISSA, OR THE HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY

By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her

PERSUASION, Jane Austen

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

THE GOOD-MORROW

"I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?"

CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No ... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!"

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell

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

TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

Flood by James Joyce

 

Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.

Sometimes with One I Love, by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for    fear I effuse unreturn'd love, But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay    is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was    not return'd, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260) Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!

Dreams, by Edgar Allan Poe

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! My spirit not awakening, till the beam Of an Eternity should bring the morrow. Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, ’Twere better than the cold reality Of waking life, to him whose heart must be, And hath been still, upon the lovely earth, A chaos of deep passion, from his birth. But should it be—that dream eternally Continuing—as dreams have been to me In my young boyhood—should it thus be given, ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven. For I have revell’d when the sun was bright I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light, And loveliness,—have left my very heart In climes of mine imagining, apart From mine own home, with beings that have been Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen? ’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour From my remembrance shall not pass—some power Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind Came o’er me in the night, and left behind Its image on my spirit—or the moon Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass. I have been happy, tho’ [but] in a dream. I have been happy—and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality which brings To the delirious eye, more lovely things Of Paradise and Love—and all our own! Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Leaves of grass

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway