Top 100 Romantic Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best romantic quotes ever written, picked out of the full romantic archive on QuoteForever. You will find Rufus Wainwright, Alain De Botton, Emma Watson and Arthur Frederick Saunders among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

My heart to you is given: Oh, do give yours to me; We'll lock them up together, And throw away the key.

2

Is that romantic fantasy real? Um, after kids, no. Take the kids away, I don't know. Depends.

3

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

4

I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still... I can feel a sunshine stealing into my soul and making it all summer, and every thorn, a rose.

5

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

6

Your lips are my persuasion, your love will be my cure.

7

She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it?

8

I will always be the hopeless romantic, more often pathetic than heroic.

9

I am not a perfectionist, but still I seek perfection. I am not a great romantic, but yet I yearn 4 affection

10

As a kid I quite fancied the romantic, Bohemian idea of being an artist. I expect I thought I could escape from the difficulties of maths and spelling. Maybe I thought I would avoid the judgement of the establishment.

11

Ooh, it's too ­embarrassing to share my innermost romantic secrets - although I have written Danielle the odd poem. If anything they are more comedic than romantic. They used to be well ­received but that was before she started studying Shakespeare at drama college. Now I feel so ­inept.

12

Don't leave my embrace for here in my arms is your place.

13

I think a nice romantic dinner should be saved for when you and the girl you're dating or seeing have something special and it's a more special occasion.

14

I'm very romantic. I've emptied flower shops.

15

It's easy to get wrapped up in sharing everyday life with a partner. It's fun to get lost in love and romance. It's the best. But holding on to yourself while doing that is the most important thing.

16

Latin men are the most passionate men in the world - they may not be the most aggressive, but they are very passionate, very romantic.

17

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

18

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

19

Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness.

20

The more we are filled with thoughts of lust the less we find true romantic love.

21

I was married when I was 17. I knew nothing. I was full of romance.

22

The romantic embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.

23

I'm a horrible romantic!

24

I'm better with my hands, and I always loved the slightly romantic idea of starting with bits of wood and being able to create something to sit on, to eat from, to store your clothes in.

25

It's been such a deep and amazing journey for me, getting close to John Keats, and also I love Shelley and Byron. I mean, the thing about the Romantic poets is that they've got the epitaph of romantic posthumously. They all died really young, and Keats, the youngest of them all.

26

People love to be listened to and represented, and they love it when they feel like you have some of the same problems that they do. Everybody deals with things like romantic difficulties in relationships and death and cancer and abuse.

27

Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock do romantic comedies. I do dark dramas. I do these movies well.

28

I think that taking night trains or meeting someone on the road is pretty romantic. I've done a couple of things like that. I've surprised someone in Paris. And hopefully, when you surprise someone, they're happy to see you.

29

There's something about marriage that is not as intensely romantic or interesting as a couple's first meeting.

30

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

31

I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.

32

Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.

33

I don't want to be pigeonholed into doing just romantic comedies. But they're fun, and especially for women, it's nice to go to see them and enjoy that breath of fresh air.

34

Neutrinos alone, among all the known particles, have ethereal properties that are striking and romantic enough both to have inspired a poem by John Updike and to have sent teams of scientists deep underground for 50 years to build huge science-fiction-like contraptions to unravel their mysteries.

35

The American is wholeheartedly for love and romance at any cost.

36

Romantic lovers require from each other at least the facade of reason: We desire to be what romantic love makes us appear in the other's eyes. We want to imagine we are deserving of the love we inspire.

37

I want to do more action adventures and more romantic comedies.

38

I think one of the downsides of the sort of obsession with romantic love and personal fulfillment is that the plain fact of the matter is that those feelings don't last for ever and so they better be replaced and reinforced by things that do.

39

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

40

My vanity is I'm terribly romantic! But being married is lovely.

41

I believe I can even yet remember when I saw the stars for the first time.

42

A beautiful woman delights the eye; a wise woman, the understanding; a pure one, the soul.

43

Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop.

44

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

45

I have a great wife and it's very easy to be romantic because it makes her happy and then my life is so much better when she's happy.

46

I used to try to draw my girlfriends. I think one of the most romantic things that anybody can do is draw a portrait of the person you love.

47

Be brave, young lovers, and follow your star.

48

I know most people use their phones to tell time, but there's something very romantic and beautiful about a timepiece.

49

Falling in love, romance, matters of the heart - when you fall in love, on some biochemical level you know there is a chance it won't work out. It's ingrained in us that if you take such an enormous risk on someone with your heart that it might not pay off. I gamble all my chips and I might actually lose everything.

50

I'm a dreadful romantic. No matter what I go through in life, I want to fall in love with a man.

51

I confess I am a romantic. I love romance, and I think it's really fun and delicious and some of my favorite films are love stories. I think that you just get a chance to fall in love with the characters so much and you get to explore their lives so deeply.

52

Fall 2013 was inspired by the 1970s equestrian lifestyle. I wanted to incorporate the moody and romantic - intricate baroque detailing and classic menswear elements - with something tougher and edgier in a nod to London's rock n' roll underground.

53

The Germany I was enthused with was more old fashioned and kind of romantic. I just got there, and the next thing you know, I had this huge gilded album. It was kind of an amazing experience because I didn't intend it to be that way.

54

I'm very much a romantic. I'm highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We're not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.

55

There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time.

56

'Romeo And Juliet' is the classic love story. When two lovers are separated and trying to get back to one another, that's fiercely romantic and something you become glued to.

57

A shiny ring isn't romantic to me. I think thought and love into what you do for the person you're in love with - that's romance.

58

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.

59

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

60

I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it's easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin' man and the loner.

61

You know, the man of my dreams might walk round the corner tomorrow. I'm older and wiser and I think I'd make a great girlfriend. I live in the realm of romantic possibility.

62

Kiss me and you will see how important I am.

63

So the lover must struggle for words.

64

I have always been a romantic, one of those people who believes that a woman in pink circus tights contains all the secrets of the universe.

65

I had my first real kiss at Magic Mountain on a park bench. Not the most romantic thing ever.

66

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art.

67

I broke my nose in gym when a ball hit me. I took a girl to her debutante ball the next week wearing a tux and a big, honking bandage. Not the romantic night she had in mind.

68

My dearly beloved if I am to die today and never see the sweet face of you I want you to know that I am no great man and am lucky to have such a woman as you.

69

There are two births: the one when light, First strikes the new awakened sense; The other when two souls unite, And we must count our life from thence, When you loved me and I loved you, Then both of us were born anew.

70

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

71

Romance is dead - it was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece.

72

I'm a romantic, but I'm not a romantic in the traditional sense. I like to romanticize what happens to me. Whatever happens to me - you could quantify it as good or bad - I romanticize it. I think along the lines of 'When that thing happened, it made me who I am.' That kind of thing. It's a different way of being romantic.

73

The connection to place, to the land, the wind, the sun, stars, the moon... it sounds romantic, but it's true - the visceral experience of motion, of moving through time on some amazing machine - a few cars touch on it, but not too many compared to motorcycles. I always felt that any motorcycle journey was special.

74

The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you're gonna spot some things that kinda need to be mentioned. But often the romantic view is to say, 'If you loved me, you wouldn't criticise me.' Actually, true love is often about trying to teach someone how to be the best version of themselves.

75

When most people set out to change their lives, they often focus on all the external stuff, like a new job or a new location or new friends or a new romantic prospects and on and on. The reality is that changing your life starts with changing the way you see everything in your life.

76

When I started dating I had this kind of Romeo and Juliet, fateful romantic idea about love which was almost that you were a victim and there was a lot of pain involved and that was how it should be.

77

My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.

78

Love is friendship set on fire.

79

A lot of times, in our culture and our society, we put romantic love somehow on a higher plane than self-love and friendship love. You can't do that. You have to honor and really fully invest in all these different loving relationships.

80

I do feel like guys feel pressure to be funny with me, which is kind of annoying. It's a turn-off if someone's trying hard to be funny because it feels like they're auditioning for a comedy job or something. It doesn't feel romantic to me. I get so much comedy from my life that, from a guy, I'm more looking for something sweet or romantic.

81

Being a black woman, there's so many different sides of us. We are funny, silly, romantic, professional, smart, and we have good jobs.

82

The whole westward expansion myth is seen as romantic. But it's a joke, a blot on American history.

83

Havana, for all its smells, sweat, crumbling walls, isolation, and difficult history, is the most romantic city in the world.

84

The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.

85

Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.

86

When I was a kid, I really loved watching 'Cinderella.' It's a fantasy, and every girl knows that real life isn't always like these movies, but as a child, I just really loved the story of 'Cinderella.' I found it to be so romantic and just a beautiful movie to watch.

87

It was a time after 'Lady Sings the Blues' and 'Mahogany' and all those romantic movies: I became this romantic figure on the street in a very special way.

88

We're all just animals. That's all we are, and everything else is just an elaborate justification of our instincts. That's where music comes from. And romantic poetry. And bad novels.

89

We only part to meet again.

90

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.

91

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

92

When the heart speaks, its language is the same under all latitudes.

93

When I give I give myself.

94

I'm a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering, encompassing love - and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.

95

Words of love, are works of love.

96

If I loved all the world as I do you, I shouldn't write books to it: I should only write letters to it, and that would be only a clumsy stage on the way to entire telepathy.

97

There's nothing more romantic than Italian food.

98

I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy - I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.

99

You can tell a lot about a man from his hands. If they don't have any scars or calluses on them, you might as well assume they cry at romantic comedy films, too.

100

I am a romantic fool, no doubt about that.

More Romantic quotes

This is the short list. The full romantic quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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