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Quotations about heart
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn’t breaking. It hurts because it’s getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.
I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
Your golden filaments in fair design
Across my duller fibre.
The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son (17 May 1750)
A generous heart suffers for the misfortunes of others as much as though it had caused them.
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715-1747) French moralist, essayist, soldier
Reflections and Maxims [Réflexions et maximes], #173 (1746) [tr. Stevens (1940)]
Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher (1858)
In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
Letter to Juliette Récamier (5 Oct 1810)
Why do men with little souls have to have big weapons?
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Friday Jones] (1982)
Nothing for preserving the body like having no heart.
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son (21 Jan 1748)
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
Moral Essays 3.153 (1731-1735)
A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.
And is he dead whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?
To live in the hearts we leave
Is not to die!
Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) Scottish poet
“Hallowed Ground” (1825)
The old woman took the umbrella, gratefully, and smiled her thanks. “You’ve a good heart,” she told him. “Sometimes that’s enough to see you safe wherever you go.” Then she shook her head. “But mostly, it’s not.”
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British fabulist
Neverwhere (1996)
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) Algerian-French novelist, essayist, playwright
“Return to Tipasa,” Summer (1954)
‘A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,’ I continued, ‘if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.’
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) British novelist, poet [pseud. Ellis Bell]
Wuthering Heights, ch. 7 [Nelly to Heathcliff] (1847)Full text.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
“Easter 1916” (4), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Four Loves
The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
“The Declaration of Independence” (1876)
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