Drakus's blog: "Quotes"

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
Alan Watts

To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
Anne-Sophie Swetchine

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904)

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 19

Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Charles M. Schulz (1922 - 2000), Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott, How to Live with Another Person, 1974

There's a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, First Snow, 1993

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967), Not So Deep as a Well (1937), "Comment"

All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, O Magazine, February 2004
Love is everything it's cracked up to be…It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
Erica Jong, O Magazine, February 2004
When love is in excess it brings a man no honor nor worthiness.
Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC), Medea, 431 B.C.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), "On Reading and Writing"
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900)
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.
Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862), Journal, July 25, 1839
Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, February 16, 2004
Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.
Ice T, The Ice Opinion
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999)
We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999), O Magazine, February 2004
'Light fuse and get away' may work for a Roman candle, but not so much for the wrath of a woman scorned.
J. Jacques, Questionable Content webcomic, #678, 08-02-06
When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, 2005
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey
I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Mansfield Park
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
Jean Anouilh (1910 - 1987)
Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
Jeanne Moreau
Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Altered Egos, 1993
True love brings up everything - you're allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.
Jennifer Aniston, O Magazine, February 2004
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
John Barrymore (1882 - 1942)
'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.
John Sheffield
Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's not any gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?
Josh Brand and John Falsey, Northern Exposure, The Pilot, 1990
How we treasure (and admire) the people who acknowledge us!
Julie Morgenstern, O Magazine, Belatedly Yours, January 2004
To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
Karen Sunde
Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999
When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign, 1999
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
Lynda Barry
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
M. Scott Peck, O Magazine, February 2004
To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.
Madonna (1958 - ), O Magazine, January 2004
Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.
Margaret Cho, weblog, 01-15-04
Think about a woman. Doesn't know you're thinking about her. Doesn't care you're thinking about her. Makes you think about her even more.
Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman, Northern Exposure, The Bumpy Road to Love, 1991
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening (1954 - ), "Life in Hell"
Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
Michael Masser and Linda Creed
Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face.
National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich (1886 - 1965), O Magazine, February 2004
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)
Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), Address on The Method of Nature, 1841
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
Randy K. Milholland, Something Positive Comic, 12-09-05
I believe love is primarily a choice and only sometimes a feeling. If you want to feel love, choose to love and be patient.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, December 16, 2002
I don’t think anyone can DO anything that would make him worthy of love. Love is a gift and cannot be earned. It can only be given.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 20, 2003
You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, October 20, 2003
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Rita Rudner
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)
Some relationships start with fights... But, usually only in romantic comedies. Life's not the movies.
Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005
Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
Toni Morrison (1931 - ), Beloved
Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park, Chef Aid, 1998
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Moon and Sixpence
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), 'Of Human Bondage', 1915
Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
William Penn (1644 - 1718)
But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 6
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), Sonnet cxvi
Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "All's Well That Ends Well", Act 1 Scene 1

Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.
A. Sachs

When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure.
Aaron McGruder, Boondocks, 07-04-04

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), Agamemnon

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1956), The Mother, 1932

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.
Bhagavad Gita (250 BC - 250 AD), Chapter 2

He not busy being born is busy dying.
Bob Dylan (1941 - )

I'd rather get my brains blown out in the wild than wait in terror at the slaughterhouse.
Craig Volk, Northern Exposure, A-Hunting We Will Go, 1991

The killing was the best part. It was the dying I couldn't take.
Craig Volk, Northern Exposure, A-Hunting We Will Go, 1991

Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon.
David Assael, Northern Exposure, It Happened in Juneau, 1992

A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre-flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift-off?
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, All is Vanity, 1991

Death is the enemy. I spent 10 years of my life singlemindedly studying, practicing, fighting hand to hand in close quarters to defeat the enemy, to send him back bloodied and humble and I am not going to roll over and surrender.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, First Snow, 1993

I am going to concentrate on what's important in life. I'm going to strive everyday to be a kind and generous and loving person. I'm going to keep death right here, so that anytime I even think about getting angry at you or anybody else, I'll see death and I'll remember.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Do The Right Thing, 1992

It's no accident that the church and the graveyard stand side by side. The city of the dead sleeps encircled by the city of the living.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Lost and Found, 1992
 
The fact that we don't know this man, isn't important really. Cause his experience is our experience, and his fate is our fate. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass, says the preacher. All is vanity I think that's a pretty good epitaph for all of us. When we're stripped of all our worldly possessions and all our fame, family, friends, we all face death alone. But it's that solitude in death that's our common bond in life. I know it's ironic, but that's just the way things are. Vani tass, vani tatum, et omni i vani tass. Only when we understand all is vanity, only then, it isn't.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, All is Vanity, 1991

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana (1863 - 1952), Soliloquies in England, 1922, "War Shrines"

Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
Horace (65 BC - 8 BC), Odes

I am not dying, not anymore than any of us are at any moment. We run, hopefully as fast as we can, and then everyone must stop. We can only choose how we handle the race.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog comments, 06-11-04

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
Johnny Carson (1925 - 2005)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745)

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity, 2002

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD - 180 AD), Meditations

The report of my death was an exaggeration.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), New York Journal, June 2, 1897

Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!
Matt Frewer, as Dr. Mike Stratford in "Doctor, Doctor"

I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), upon being told the cost of an operation

It's sad when our daddies die. Makes us one less person inside.
Pamela Ribon, Why Girls Are Weird, 2003

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?
Plato (427 BC - 347 BC), Dialogues, Phaedo

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Moral Sayings, First Century B.C.

The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

The fact that when we die we are nothing more than worm meat---I just don't think about it.
Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, Grosse Pointe 48230, 1993

As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.
Rodney Yee

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)

There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930)

Death is not the worst; rather, in vain
To wish for death, and not to compass it.
Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC), Electra

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
William Goldman, "The Princess Bride"
 
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
Wilson Mizner (1876 - 1933)

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen (1935 - )

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
Woody Allen (1935 - )

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
Woody Allen (1935 - )

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Woody Allen (1935 - )

"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay."
-- Brian Aldiss (b. 1925)