With Valentine’s Day around the corner, expressing your love in writing can be a tall order. Luckily, we have compiled a list of romantic quotes offering last-minute inspiration to those of you who would like to add a personal touch to their Valentine’s Day message. Borrowed from the ultimate love stories in literature, these fifteen quotes will help you make your feelings known in the most eloquent way.
Contents
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by William Blake
- A Birthday by Christina Rossetti
- The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
- I Carry Your Heart With Me by E.E. Cummings
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
- Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
- The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

“Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I love her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.”
Read it Free Here Buy it on AmazonSongs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by William Blake

“The modest Rose puts forth a Thorn.
The humble Sheep a threat’ning Horn.
While the Lily white shall in love delight.
Nor a Thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.”
A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

“My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.”
The Mountain Between Us by Charles Martin

“I think when two people really love each other…way down deep…like where the souls sleep and dreams happen, where pain can’t live ’cause there’s nothing for it to feed on…then a wedding is a bleeding together of those two souls. Like two rivers running together. All that water becoming the same water. Mine did that.”
Buy it on AmazonNorth and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be
loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot
cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never
loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts
too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.
But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.”
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”
Buy it on AmazonI Carry Your Heart With Me by E.E. Cummings

I carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

“And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“His heart beat faster and faster as her white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
Read it Free Here Buy it on AmazonThe Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring — once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome… except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners. And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous.
Buy it on AmazonDr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”
Buy it on AmazonPride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

“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.”
Read it Free Here Buy it on AmazonCaptain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

“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!”
Buy it on AmazonWater for Elephants by Sara Gruen

“I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin. I want.”
Buy it on AmazonThe Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals…

Stella
Stella is a Marketing Consultant and has been writing content for Full Text Archive since 2015. When she is not writing, she is meticulously planning our social and e-mail campaigns. Stella holds a bachelor’s degree in English and Russian Literature, which has provided a broad foundation from which she continues to explore the written world.
She spends her free time reading, visiting old castles and discovering new coffee shops. She can be reached at stella