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lover quotes

  •    Un homme n'a jamais pu e  lever sa ma|"tresse jusqu'a'   lui; mais une femme place toujours son amant aussi haut qu'elle. A man can never elevate his mistress to his rank, but a woman can always place her lover as high as she.

    - Honore   de Balzac
      Physiologie du mariage.

  • L'amoureux qui n'oublie pas quelquefois meurt par exce'  s, fatigue et tension de me  moire (tel Werther). The lover who does not forget sometimes dies from excess, fatigue, and the strain of memory (like Werther).

    - Roland Barthes
      Fragments d'un discours amoureux.

  • And my fause Luver staw my rose, But, ah! he left the thorn wi'me.

    - Robert Burns
      'The Banks o' Doon' (2nd version), stanza 2.

  • Give me a lover bold and free, Not eunuched with formality.

    -John Cleveland
      'The  Antiplatonic'.

  • Beauty is the lover's gift.

    -William Congreve
      Mirabell. The Way of the World, act 2, sc.4.

  • There is no fury like an ex-wife looking for a new lover.

    - Cyril Vernon Connolly
      The Unquiet Grave, pt.1.

  • For here the lover and killer are mingled who had one body and one heart. And death, who had the soldier singled has done the lover mortal hurt.

    - Gavin Douglas
      'Vergissmeinnicht'.

  • All mankind love a lover. 312

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
    Essays: First Series,'Love'.

  • Have I a lover Who is noble and free? I would he were nobler Than to love me.

    - RalphWaldo Emerson
      'The Sphinx', stanza12.

  • And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'The Lesson for Today'.

  • I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.

    - Edward Gibbon
    On his enforced visit to Lausanne, leaving behind Suzanne Curchod. Memoirs of My Life (published1796), ch.4. This passage was inserted (from a draft) by Lord Sheffield.

  •    I would that with sleepy, soft embraces The sea would fold mewould find me rest In luminous shades of her secret places, In depths where her marvels are manifest; So the earth beneath her should not discover My hidden couchnor the heaven above her As a strong love shielding a weary lover, I would have her shield me with shining breast.

    - Adam Lindsay Gordon
    'The Swimmer', stanza 5, collected in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870).

  •    A little season of love and laughter, Of light and life, and pleasure and pain, And horror of outer darkness after, And dust returneth to dust again. Then the lesser life shall be as the greater, And the lover of life shall join the hater, And the one thing cometh sooner or later, And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

    - Adam Lindsay Gordon
    'The Swimmer', stanza10, collected in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870).

  • For a woman to have a liaison is almost always pardonable, and occasionally, when the lover chosen is sufficiently distinguished, even admirable.

    - Robert von Ranke Graves
      Occupation: Writer,'Lars Porsena'.

  • Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validius videtur, dulcius mihi semper exstitit amic× vocabulum; aut si non indigneris, concubin× vel scorti. Ifthename of wifeseemsmore blessed or more binding, always sweeter to me will be the word lover, or if I may, concubine or whore.

    -He  lo|«  se
    c.1135  First letter to Peter  Abelard.

  • Having a lover isn't much to write home about.

    - Robin pseudonym of IrisGuiver Wilkinson Hyde
      The Godwits Fly, ch.17.

  • And thushit passes onfrome Candylmasuntyll Ester, that the moneth of May was com, whan every lusty harte begynnith to blossom and to burgyne. For, lyke as trees and erbys burgenyth and florysshyth in May, lyke wyse every lusty harte that is ony maner of lover spryngith, burgenyth, buddyth, and florysshyth in lusty dedis.

    - SirThomas   d.1471 Malory
    c.1470  Morte d'Arthur, bk.18, ch.25.

  • Nor jealousy Was understood, the injured lover's hell.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.5, l.449^50.

  • William behaved like a bashful girl, who is afraid of her lover's bad reputation and therefore avoids being alone with him.

    -Napoleon I
    Of  William I of Prussia, who invited other German Princes to attend a meeting with Napoleon at Baden-Baden in  June originally intended to be a private discussion on the possibility of a joint alliancewith Russia. Quotedin  A  JP  Taylor Struggle for Mastery in Europe1848^1918 (1954), p.121.

  • Scratch a lover, and find a foe.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
      Not So Deep as AWell,'Ballade of a GreatWeariness'.

  • Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 'Tis sure the hardest science to forget! How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, And love th'offender, yet detest th'offence? How the dear object from the crime remove, Or how distinguish penitence from love? 659

    - Alexander Pope
      'Eloisa to Abelard'.

  •    Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love; I, with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.

    -Will Rogers
      Poem addressed to a dead student. TheWaking,'Elegy for Jane'.

  • A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.

    - Helen Rowland
      A Guide to Men.

  • When I was a young man, I wanted to be three things: I wanted to be the world's greatest horseman, the world's greatest economist, and the world's greatest lover. Unfortunately I never became the world's greatest horseman.

    -Joseph Alois Schumpeter
    s  Attributed, Harvard oral tradition.

  •    Your true lover of literature is never fastidious.

    - Robert Southey
      The Doctor, ch.12.

  • Dear Prue, If a servant I sent last night got to Hampton-court, you received 29 walnuts and a letter from me. I inclose the Gazette; and am, with all my soul, Your passionate lover, and faithful husband,

    - Gertrude Stein
    RICH. STEELE 1708  Letter, 20 Sep (published1787).

  •    Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail?

    - SirJohn Suckling
      Aglaura, act 4, sc.1,'Song'.

  • For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'When the hounds of spring'.

  • I will go back to the great sweet mother, Mother and lover of men, the sea. I will go down to her, I and no other, Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'TheTriumph ofTime'.

  • Quis fallere possit amantem? Who can deceive a lover?

    -Virgil full name Publius Vergilius Maro
    Aeneid, bk.4, l.296.

  • Sir Henry Wotton†was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser of the art of angling; of which he would say,'it was anemployment forhisidletime†a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness; and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it.'

    - Izaak Walton
      The Compleat Angler, pt.1, ch.1.

  • Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,both what they half create And what perceive.

    -William Wordsworth
      'Lines composed a few miles aboveTintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of theWye', l.102^6.

  •   'Tis ashard tobe a good fellow, a good friend, and a lover of women, as 'tistobe agood fellow, agood friend, and a lover of money.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act1, sc.1.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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