There is almost nothing in life that we crave more than love. It is the connection we hope to feel in every relationship we have in this life.
If you take a step back and evaluate everything you do – there is some connection to the receiving or giving of love at the root of it. It is what drives us. It is what satisfies us. It is of the most basic human strivings.
But love isn’t merely represented by happiness, and there isn’t only one type of love.
Inherent in the concept of love is the broad range of human emotion, hard work, sincerity, and sacrifice.
We also have a number of different relationships – with ourselves, significant others, friends, family, children, enemies, and animals. Each one of these relationships inherently provides for a unique opportunity to love and to be loved.
The 50 quotes listed here express the range of emotion and action that we each experience in the quest for, and maintenance of love in our lives.
The 50 Best Love Quotes You’ll Ever Hear
Love of Self
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like there’s nobody listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.”
William W. Purkey
“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
Rita Mae Brown
“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you. What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.”
JoyBell C.
“Don’t sacrifice yourself too much, because if you sacrifice too much there’s nothing else you can give and nobody will care for you.”
Karl Lagerfeld
“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”
Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
“Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself – what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.”
Warsan Shire
“Did your mom ever tell you, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything’? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you’re talking to yourself, even inside your head.”
Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
James Baldwin
“We can’t be so desperate for love that we forget where we can always find it; within.”
Alexandra Elle
“Don’t doubt yourself, that’s what haters are for.”
Turcois Ominek
Love of a significant other
“Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was by choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control.”
“If I had to choose between loving you and breathing, I would use my last breath to say I love you.”
“I realized I was thinking of you, and I began to wonder how long you’d been on my mind. Then it occurred to me: Since I met you, you’ve never left.”
“When in a relationship, a real man doesn’t make his woman jealous of others, he makes others jealous of his woman.”
Steve Marabol
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you the strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
Lao Tzu
"The difference between sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it."
Woody Allen
“Three things I want in a relationship: Eyes that won’t cry, lips that won’t lie, and love that won’t die.”
Wiz Khalifa
“We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”
Seuss
“Love is a promise; love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
John Lennon
Love of your neighbor
“If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least fair to love yourself as your neighbor.”
Nicholas de Chamfort
“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
C.S. Lewis
“But don’t allow yourself to be used. Love. But don’t allow your heart to be abused. Trust. But don’t be naïve. Listen. But don’t lose your own voice. If you don’t love your fellow man, women, person, then you don’t have anything. If you don’t treat your neighbor as you would want to be treated that to me is the fundamental message.”
Denzel Washington
“A good neighbor sometimes cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Everybody needs you, but you need you first. Don’t help everyone else and neglect yourself. Love your neighbor as you love yourself, not instead of yourself.”
“Once I start disliking someone, everything they do is irritating to me.”
“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast with a scientific and technological abundance. We’ve learned to fly the air as birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas as fish, yet we haven’t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.”
Plato
“If I see you neglecting to pick up your dog’s poop, I’m going to throw it at you. I have good aim. It will probably get in your mouth.”
The sign on the tree outside.
Love of your enemy
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
Abraham Lincoln
“It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“If you have enemies, good. That means you stood up for something.”
Eminem
“No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don’t knock your friends. Don’t knock your enemies. Don’t knock yourself.”
Alfred Tennyson
“Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.”
“It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.”
Gautama Buddha
“Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.”
Tim Fargo
“The life of the enemy. Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy’s staying alive.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“I smile to myself knowing that they may be dead.”
Emilie Autumn
Love of Friends
“Friendship is not about people who act true to your face. It’s about people who remain true behind your back.”
“True friends don’t judge each other. They judge other people… together.”
“Maybe I can’t stop the downpour, but I will always join you for a walk in the rain.”
Vicky Smith
“If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you’re okay, who watches out for you and wants the very best for you, don’t let them go. Keep them close and don’t take them for granted. People like that are hard to find.”
“A friend is someone who comes to find you when no one else knows you're missing.”
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; They make the latitudes and longitudes.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”
Elie Wiesel
“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”
William Shakespeare
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success.”
Oscar Wilde
“Friendship is as delicate as a glass, once broken it can be fixed, but there will always be cracks.”
Waqar Ahmed
I’ll leave you with one final quote:
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.”
E.E. Cummings