Whether you’re happily attached, looking for love or mending a broken heart, the L word may be occupying your thoughts this month. Here, our favorite words of wisdom on the all-consuming topic.
1. “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” —Maya Angelou
2. “Love is friendship set to music.” —Jackson Pollock
3. “Love is not finding someone to live with. It’s finding someone you can’t live without.” —Rafael Ortiz
4. “Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love—I rose in it.” —Toni Morrison
5. “I have learned not to worry about love, but to honor its coming with all my heart.” —Alice Walker
6. “If it is right, it happens; the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” —John Steinbeck
7. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” —Dr. Seuss
8. “Immature love says, ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says, ‘I need you because I love you.’ ” —Erich Fromm
9. “There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement and acceptance.” —John Lennon
10. “Being vulnerable [with someone] is the only way to allow your heart to feel pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate.” ―Bob Marley
11. “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
12. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” ―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
13. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” —Helen Keller
14. “At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” —Plato
15. “The heart wants what it wants. There’s no logic to these things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that.” —Woody Allen
16. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
17. “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” —Billy Crystal, When Harry Met Sally
18. “To love is to recognize yourself in another.” —Eckhart Tolle
19. “It was brave. It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.” —Laini Taylor
