Love conquers all things

- Virgil

Live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove.
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.

- Shakespeare

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls of, and love is left alone.

- Tennyson

Married couples who love each other tell each other a thousand things without talking.

- Chinese proverb

A song of love

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That Paddles in a halcyon sea;
My hear is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

- Christina Rossetti

Missing You

O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!

- Tennyson

Love is All

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Old Love

For those getting married this month, pledging to have and hold "'til death do us part," it is worth noting that love really does get better over time. As Samuel Butler wrote:

All love at first, like generous wine,
Ferments and frets until 'tis fine;
But when 'tis settled on the lee,
And from th' impurer matter free,
Becomes the richer still the older,
And proves the pleasanter the colder.

Open your heart...

...or as William Purkey suggested, "Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening, and live like it's heaven on earth."

Everybody now...

"Let those love now, who never lov'd before;
Let those who always lov'd, now love the more."

- Anonymous

Crazy with Love

Or as Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It,

"If thou remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not lov'd."

She who has never lov'd, has never liv'd

So wrote John Gay (1685-1732) in The Captives, expressing how essential love is to the human experience.

June Love

In honor of all June brides, this month's words of wisdom will focus on the theme of romantic love, like this quote from Thomas Moore:

No, the heart that has truly lov'd never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose.