love

See Also: FRIENDSHIP; LOVE, DEFINED; MEN AND WOMEN

1. Absence in love is like waters upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it —Hannah More
2. All loving emotions, like plants, shoot up most rapidly in the tempestuous atmosphere of life —Jean Paul Richter
3. Amorous as Emma Bovary —James G. Huneker
4. Could love forever run like a river —Lord Byron
5. Falling in love is something you forget, like pain —Nina Bawden
6. Felt love like a lottery prize —Geoffrey Wolff
7. First and passionate love, it stands alone, like Adam’s recollection of his fall —Lord Byron
8. The force of her love … is bulky and hard to carry, like a package that keeps untying —Louise Erdrich
9. Going through life without love is like going through a good dinner without an appetite; everything seems flat and tasteless —Helen Rowland
10. Her love was like the swallow’s, whose first thought is for its nest —Italo Svevo
11. If love were what the rose is, and I were like the leaf, our lives would grow together —Algernon Charles Swinburne
12. I love you as New Englanders love pie —Don Marquis
13. Infatuation like paralysis, is often all on one side —Helen Rowland
14. It [love] could, like grief, grow forgetful and weary and slowly wear away —Alice Mc Dermott
15. Knew as much about love as a pig knows about St. Valentine’s Day —Harry Prince
16. Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much —Wendell Berry

    This line from a poem entitled The Country of Marriage is followed by: “We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst we cannot have it all, or want it all.”

17. Love as an old man loves money, with no stomach —William Shakespeare
18. Love burst out … all over our bodies, like sweat —Yehuda Amichai
19. Love can die of truth as friendship of a lie —Abel Bonard
20. Love … comes as a butterfly tipped with gold —Algernon Charles Swinburne
21. Love comes into your being like a tidal wave … sometimes it withdraws like a wave, till there isn’t such a thing as a pool left, and every bit of your heart is as dry as seaweed beyond the wave’s reach —Phyllis Bottome
22. Love comforts like sunshine after rain —William Shakespeare

    The original simile as used in Venus and Adonis had the word ‘comforts’ spelled as ‘comforteth.’

23. Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new —Ursula K. Le Guin
24. Love … entered the room like a miracle —Milan Kundera
25. Love had seized her as unexpectedly as would sudden death —Elizabeth Taylor
26. (Our cook is in love.) Love hangs on the house like a mist —Phyllis McGinley
27. Love hung still as crystal over the bed —Louis MacNeice
28. Love is fierce as death —The Holy Bible/Song of Songs
29. Love is flower-like —Samuel Taylor Coleridge
30. Love is … fresh as dew when first it is new —British folk song, “The Water Is Wide” (The Good Times Songbook, Abingdon Press, 1974)

    The complete refrain includes yet another simile: “Oh, love is sweet and love is fair, fresh as the dew when first it is new, but love grows old and waxeth cold, and fades away like morning dew.”

31. Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases —Joseph Alexandre Pierre Segur
32. Love is … lone as the sea, and deeper blue —Dorothy Parker
33. Love … it makes him [the lover] fluent as a tin whistle, as limber as a boy’s watch chain, and as polite as a dancing master —Josh Billings

    Parts originally in the Billing phonetic dialect: ‘whisseF and ‘perlite’ as a ‘dansing.’

34. Loveless as the multiplication table —Sylvia Plath
35. Love life … just about as interesting as the love life of the desert horned toad —William Saroyan
36. Love, like a tear, rises in the eye and falls upon the breast —Publius Syrus
37. Love like chicken salad or restaurant hash, must be taken on blind faith or it loses all its flavor —Helen Rowland
38. Love, like death, a universal leveller of mankind —William Congreve
39. Love, like death, changes everything —Kahlil Gibran
40. Love, like fire, cannot subsist without constant impulse; it ceases to live from the moment it ceases to hope or to fear —Francois, due de La Rochefoucauld
41. Love, like money, is probably best kept in the family —William Gaddis, New York Times Book Review, May 24, 1987

    Gaddis used this simile to conclude his review of Saul Bellow’s novel, More Die of Heartbreak.

42. Love passed between them like a field of light —Ellen Gilchrist
43. Love … pricks like a thorn —William Shakespeare
44. Love … roots up the will like a leaf —Gustave Flaubert
45. Lovers are always in a hurry … like a racing river —Ben Ames Williams
46. Lovers fail like seasons —F. D. Reeve
47. Love’s dominion, like a king’s, admits of no partition —Ovid
48. Love sometimes is like the flower of the wild poppy: you can’t carry it home —Jaroslav Seifert
49. Love was a treadmill, like churchgoing —Elizabeth Hardwick
50. Love washes on me like rain on a dead man’s shoes —Ellen Gilchrist
51. Love without grace is like a hook without bait —Anne de Lencos
52. Love without respect is cold as a boa constrictor —Marge Piercy

    In her poem, Witnessing a Wedding, Piercy continues with its caresses as choking.

53. Loving someone that much younger is like taking a trip to a foreign country —Ellen Gilchrist
54. Making love to a woman too many times is like scratching a place that doesn’t itch any more —Anon, Playboy, 1965
55. A man in love may behave like a madman but not like a dunce —Francois, due de La Rochefoucauld

    Man has been substituted for gentleman to give the simile a more modern tone.

56. The man who is not loved hovers like a vulture over the sweetheart of others —Victor Hugo
57. My heart simmered with angry love like chicken soup on grandma’s stove —James Atlas
58. My love is like foliage in the woods. Time will change it as winter changes the trees —Emily Bronte

    The love described is Cathy’s for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

59. Once love is purged of vanity it is like a feeble convalescent, hardly capable of dragging itself around —Sebastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort
60. Our love is like our life; there’s no man blest in either till his end —Shackerley Marmion
61. Our love is like the misty rain that falls softly … but floods the river —African proverb
62. (What I want … is something organic … ) potato love, natural as earth, scruffy and brown, clinging to your roots, helping you grow fit and firm —Daphne Merkin
63. Romance, like a ghost, eludes touching —G. W. Curtis
64. Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed but must not be swallowed to become necessary —Edgar Z. Friedenberg
65. Romantic love is ephemeral and occasionally unavoidable … like the viral flu —Marcia Froelke Coburn, New York Time Book Review, September 14, 1986
66. A rush of love swamped her heart … like a tide —Vita Sackville-West
67. The science of love demands delicacy, perseverance, and practice, like the piano —Anatole France
68. The simple accident of falling in love is as beneficial as it is astonishing —Robert Louis Stevenson
69. (She was long married … but she had recently) stepped out of the country of love; briskly, and without a backward glance, as if she had spent too much time in its steamy jungles —John Cheever
70. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes —Ernest Hemingway
71. Threw herself into love like a suicide into the river —Guy De Maupassant
72. To love a woman who scorns you is like licking honey from a thorn —Welsh proverb
73. To talk of honour in the mysteries of love, is like talking of Heaven or the Deity in an operation of witchcraft, just when you are employing the devil: it makes the charm impotent —William Wycherley
74. Trapped in love … like a great tortoise trapped in a heavy death-like shell —Joyce Carol Oates
75. It [being loved by affectionately possessive wife] was like being loved by a large moist sponge —Phyllis Bottome
76. Without love our life is … unprofitable as a ship without a rudder … like a body without a soul —Sholom Aleichem
77. With true loves as with ghosts: everyone speaks of them, but few have seen them —Francois, due de La Rochefoucauld
78. (I) wore my heart like a wet, red stain on the breast of a velvet gown —Dorothy Parker

get under [someone’s] skin See IRRITATION.

heartthrob A lover, paramour, or sweetheart; a romantic idol. This common expression describes the exhilarating cardiac pulsations that supposedly accompany every thought, sight, or touch of one’s true love. Heartthrob may also refer to a celebrity of whom one is enamored.

hold one’s heart in one’s hand To offer one’s love to another; to make an open display of one’s love. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest (III, i), Ferdinand offers his hand to Miranda, to which she responds in kind:

Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, also used this expression.

look babies in the eyes To gaze lovingly into another’s eyes; to look at closely and amorously. Two unrelated theories have been advanced as to the origin of this expression. One states that the reference is to Cupid, the Roman god of love, commonly pictured as a winged, naked baby boy with a bow and arrows. The other maintains that the phrase originated from the miniature reflection of a person staring closely in the pupils of another’s eyes. In use as early as 1593, the term, now obsolete, was used to describe the amorous gaze of lovers:

love-tooth in the head A propensity to love. This obsolete expression implies a constant craving for romance.

rob the cradle To date, marry, or become romantically involved with a significantly younger person. This self-explanatory expression, often substituted by the equally common term cradlesnatch, usually carries an implication of disapproval.

take a shine to To take a liking or fancy to, to be fond of, to have a crush on. This colloquialism of American origin dates from the mid-19th century. Perhaps shine refers to the “bright and glowing” look often attributed to love.

wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve To make no attempt to hide one’s lovesickness; to plainly show that one is suffering from unrequited love; to publicly expose one’s feelings or personal)? wishes. This expression is said to come from the practice of a knight wearing his lady’s favor pinned to his sleeve when going into combat. In Shakespeare’s Othello (I, i), the duplicitous lago says: