No sweat if you’re not a bookworm – we’ve rounded up our favourite lovey-dovey quotes and passages from famous novels to help you find your inner wordsmith.
About to sit down and pen your vows, but find yourself facing a gigantic brick wall called writer’s block? In times like these, it helps to look for romantic inspiration in the words of literary legends.
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
“It has made me better loving you … it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter.” – Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.” – Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.” – Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege.” – J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister
“Do I love you? My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.” – William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?” – George Eliot, Adam Bede
“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn’t sound very exciting, does it? But it is!” – Louis de Bernières, Captain Correlli’s Mandolin
Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface. – Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms