February 9: Valentine’s Day is next week…let’s do a Valentine’s Day themed freebie!
This week’s TTT topic is right up my alley. I could be here all day.
In no particular order, here are my Top Ten Favorite Love Declarations in Literature.
1. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
2. “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
―Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.”
-Captain Wentworth in a letter to Anne, Persuasion by Jane Austen….
Can I just take a moment to say, that Jane Austen penned one of the greatest love letters in all of literature when she wrote Persuasion. Okay, moving right along to GWTW…
4. “I want to make you faint. I will make you faint. You’ve had this coming to you for years. None of the fools you’ve known have kissed you like this – have they? Your precious Charles or Frank or your stupid Ashley… I said your stupid Ashley. Gentlemen all – what do they know about women? What do they know about you? I know you.”
― Rhett Butler to Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
5. “I’ve been thinking about you constantly since I left, wondering why the journey I’m on seemed to have led through you. I know my journey’s not over yet, and that life is a winding path, but I can only hope it somehow circles back to the place I belong. That’s how I think of it now. I belong with you.”
Paul to Adrienne, Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks
Personally, I think Nicholas Sparks has made it his mission in life to make his readers cry. I don’t mind it.
6. “I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
Augustus to Hazel, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
Okay, I just have to mention that I literally hugged my copy of TFIOS as I read it. I would read certain passages, stop reading, and hug this book. I looked like a crazy lady.
7. “I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long….”
Pablo Neruda, Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines
8. “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind…”
-Catherine speaking to Nelly about Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
9. “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.”
-Jay Gatsby about Daisy, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
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Those are a few of my favorite romantic lines from literature. What are some of yours?
Enjoy your week!
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disclaimer: Nothing in this post is available for download.
The one from Gone with the WInd is a goodie! My TTT.
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The Poe quote is one of my all-time favorites. ♥
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I have always adored the Persuasion quote
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Looking at this list reminded me how many of the popular love stories end so badly… Except Austen. She was all for the HEA.
My TTT
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Hi Caitlin. Yes, Austen always gave us a HEA. I read somewhere that she said there weren’t too many HEA’s in real life so she wanted to make sure they were in her novels.
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I love these! Jane Austen’s novels, of course! I love both Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. Your quotes are perfect, especially the Persuasion one. I might have swooned just now, reading it again. Almost, anyway. I really enjoyed reading The Fault in Our Stars. There were quite a few good quotes in that one.
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Hi Wendy. Isn’t the Persuasion one just perfect and timeless?
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Your Top Ten ❤ declarations are wonderful, Naida. Excellent quotations!
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This is a great idea for a blog meme and this is a great list.
That quote from The Great Gatsby may be my favorite.
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Great list! I still haven’t read Wuthering Heights! Hopefully will be able to do so this year.
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These are great! You picked one of my favorites – Persuasion! That quote from Gatsby is wonderful. I read that a long time ago and should do a re-read because I think I might have “missed” a lot in the first reading that I would probably appreciate better now.
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Hi Iliana, I’ve just finished Gatsby and enjoyed it.
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Yeah, the one from Persuasion makes me weak in the knees 🙂
Also, there’s a quote I’ll leave here from Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter: “Between some two people every word is beautiful, or might as well be beautiful.”
I’ve been watching a show recently, Parks and Recreation, in which two of the characters (Leslie and Ben) say to each other “I love you, and I like you” in a really sweet way.
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Hi Hila, thanks for sharing that quote, I like it! I’ve heard good things about Parks and Recreation, enjoy it 🙂
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Wow, those are some declarations of love. A tad too mushy for my tastes, I’m obviously not the romantic I thought I was.
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Thanks for your comments all!
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Hi Naida,
I have to agree with Tracy, that I find the classical novels a tad too over the top in the flowery romantic statements and gestures, for my taste.
However, the two more contemporary quotes from Nicholas Sparks and John Green are definitely more palatable.
I have read a couple of Sparks books, but not ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ and John Green is a new to me author. I can’t say that some of his other books have much appeal, however TFIOS has potential for my reading list.
Thanks for sharing, you obviously enjoy a good tear jerker from time to time 🙂
Yvonne
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