(perfect song for valentine's day 2014, no?)
ah, love quotes. love quotes are the greatest thing in the world, except for a nice MLT -- mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, when the mutton is lean and the tomato is ripe. they're so perky. I love that.
today, messieurs et mademoiselles, is a commercial holiday promoting spending money. we, however, are going to defy the culture and improve our minds (reading love quotes like these, from Good Books).
I've
posted before about the perfect proposal. today I'm focusing solely on my favorite love-related words; featuring people like winnie foster, john chivery, and george knightley.
get ready.
- - -
And then Ness came and put her thin brown hands on his shoulders and said, as though she knew what he was thinking, "Have you regretted it?"
"Why should I regret it?" asked Aquila, and put his hands over hers.
(lantern bearers)
"For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you -- ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn -- the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!"
(a tale of two cities)
"It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal. … What nonsense I have talked -- how abstract and remote! And I have made you cry! Dear girl, forgive my prosiness; marry my boy. When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love -- Marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made."
(a room with a view)
"I can be miserable alone, I can be cut up by myself; why should I also make miserable, and cut up one, that I would fling myself off that parapet to give half a moment's joy to! Not that that's much to do, for I'd do it for a twopence."
(little dorrit)
He fell upon the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
(les misérables)
The Tucks untangled themselves and turned to her. One by one, as the rain began, they drew her to them and kissed her. One by one she kissed them back. Was it rain on Mae's face? Or Tuck's? Or was it tears? Jesse was last. He put his arms around her and hugged her tight, and whispered the single word, "Remember!"
(tuck everlasting)
"I cannot make speeches, Emma," -- he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing, -- "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am. -- You hear nothing but truth me. -- I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it."
(emma)
My steadfast aim is now to follow in my mother's footsteps; to imitate her cheerfulness, her benevolence, her bright, inspiring ways; and never rest until in place of my selfish nature I become as full of Christ's love as she became. I am glad she is at last relieved from the knowledge of all my cares; and though I often and often yearn to throw myself into her arms and pour out my cares and trials into her sympathizing ears, I would not have her back for all the world. She has got away from all the turmoil and suffering of life; let her stay!
(stepping heavenward)
"I am very grateful to you. I feel that you make Cosette happy. If you knew, Monsieur Pontmercy, her beautiful rosy cheeks were my joy; when I saw her a little pale, I was sad. There is a 500-franc bill in the bureau. I have not touched it. It is for the poor. Cosette, do you see your little dress, there on the bed? do you recognize it? Yet it was only ten years ago. We have been very happy. My children, do not weep, I am not going very far, I shall see you from there. You will only have to look when it is night, you will see me smile."
(les misérables)
George: Emily, I'm going to do my best. I love you, Emily. I need you.
Emily: Well, if you love me, help me. All I want is someone to love me.
George: I will, Emily. Emily, I'll try.
Emily: And I mean for ever. Do you hear? For ever and ever.
(our town)
They were sitting side by side, leaning up against a rock, and he had rested his aching head on her shoulder. She certainly now deserved the name of "the happiest woman in Europe."
"It is a case of the blind leading the lame, sweetheart, is it not?" he said with his good-natured smile of old. "Odd's life! but I do not know which are the more sore -- my shoulders or your little feet." … And his arms, still vigorous in spite of fatigue and suffering, closed round Marguerite's poor, weary body, and lifted her as gently as if she had been a feather.
(the scarlet pimpernel)
[and I would be remiss if I did not include something from The Ultimate Romance Manual.]
"You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever."
Elizabeth…gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on this occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be expected to do.
(pride and prejudice)
- - -
oh -- wuv; twoo wuv. beautiful, isn't it?
