In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

–Marc Chagall, Newsweek, 1985

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

 –Erica Jong

The most beautiful make-up of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.

   —fashion designer Yves St Laurent

Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.

 –Maurice Chevalier

Love doesn’t make the world go ‘round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.

 – Franklin P. Jones

I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We will live here together always in my house. I will bring you the best fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of jungle hunters. I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of jungle fighters. You are Jane Porter, I saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.

 –Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, 1914

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

 –Groucho Marx

Before I went off to summer camp, which is what fourteen-year-old girls in suburban Pennsylvania did to mark time, my boyfriend, whom my parents did not approve of (wrong religion) and had forbidden me to see, used to walk five miles across town each evening, and climb through my window to kiss me. These were not open-mouthed “French” kisses, which we didn’t know about, and they weren’t accompanied by groping. They were just earth-stopping, soulful, on-the-ledge-of-adolescence kissing, when you press your lips together and yearn so hard you feel faint.

–Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses

 

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

 –Dorothy Parker

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

 – Joan Crawford

I truly was humbled in the time you were gone to realize that not time nor distance, nor the demands of family or of jobs or school could diminish the power and the peace of our life together, but that something has been set on its natural course. It’s like the river born of a small spring. Water, the most soft and yielding of elements, can never be denied. Once it is sent on its way toward the sea, it will grow in power and purpose. Rocks, even mountains may rise up before it to block its way, and it will, in the end, be the flowing water that wins out, wearing them away simply by taking its natural course.

—from a contemporary love letter submitted anonymously

To love another person is to see the face of God.

 –Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

 

To love one who loves you, / To admire one who admires you, / In a word, to be the idol of one’s idol, / Is exceeding the limit of human joy; / It is stealing fire from Heaven.

   —French novelist Delphine de Girardin (1804-1855)

 

Marriage is not a matter of creating a quick community of spirit by tearing down and destroying all boundaries, but rather a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude… Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them no less than one another.

–Rainer Maria Rilke

We have a good time together, even when we’re not together.

–Yogi Berra about his wife, Carmen

By and large, love is easier to experience before it has been explained – easier and cleaner. The same holds true of passion. Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out; no more does one experience the feeling of perilous adventure, the misgivings, the diverting little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false starts, the glorious insecurity. All is smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is lost.

–James Thurber and E.B. White, Is Sex Necessary? 1929

 

The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife.

–Will Durant, on his 90th birthday, 1975

Two such as you with such a master speed / Cannot be parted nor be swept away / From one another once you are agreed / That life is only life forevermore / Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

–inscription on the gravestone of Robert Frost and his wife, Elinor

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)