Happy Tuesday everyone! As it is Tuesday, it is time for a Top Ten Tuesday update. Top Ten Tuesday is an original blog meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and is currently being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s given topic is Love/Valentine’s Day Freebie

This week’s prompt is a freebie. Since it is the proverbial (and celebrated) heart’s day, I have decided to list some of my favorite quotes about love taken from some of my favorite books. I am not really a fan of the day, especially with how it has been turned into a commercial and artificial enterprise. Nevertheless, I believe that this day exists not only to remind us about romantic love but also to remind us of its vast spectrum, that there are different types of love. And lest we forget, we should, above all, learn to love ourselves. While Valentine’s Day is just one day, we must keep on filling our world with love every single day. Anyway, I hope you had a day full of love. With this, here are some of my favorite quotes about love. Happy Tuesday and happy reading!

“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.“

~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am 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 I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

~ Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“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 for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“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

“Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?”

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

“Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.”

~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.”

~ Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same . . . If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”

~ Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.“

~ Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they  emerged and quested about her consciousness.”

~ Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.“

~ Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

And, of course: 

“Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  

~ 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

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