Shernaz collects quotes on love from writers, poets, scientists, satirists, comedians, actors, singers, artists with gratitude to internet sources. We see the myriad shades of love, as part of Special Feature on Valentine’s Day, exclusively in Different Truths.

Love is a subject of perennial interest to all; an emotion everyone knows. Today, it will be eulogised in writing, song, gifts, cards, dinners and in some real crazy ways. There will also be mushiness galore.

So I too decided to jump into the fray with some quotes from ‘them’ – writers, poets, scientists, satirists, comedians, actors, singers, artists… with gratitude to internet sources.

This one from Jay Leno fits the bill accurately –

Today is Valentine’s Day – or, as men like to call it, Extortion Day!

Just love Albert Einstein’s humour –

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.

Dr. Seuss –

We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

Dolly Parton –

Love is something sent from Heaven to worry the Hell out of you.

Ernest Hemingway wipes off the myth of self-sacrifice in love with his balanced view –

The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.

(yes, you are very special and don’t let a lustreless Valentine’s day tell you anything else)

E. M. Forster sounds happily defeated by love –

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

But lovers, Erich Segal rings out a warning –

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked. (Ha, ha)

And according to François de La Rochefoucauld –

True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is philosophical –

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

George Burns does not deny love –

Love is a lot like a backache, it doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.

Can we hope for less than humour from Groucho Marx? –

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

Isn’t George Carlin’s realism heart-warming? –

Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.

Satirist Henry Louis Mencken –

To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia. (Senses or sense knocked out?)

Jules Renard’s simile –

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

Joan Crawford warns –

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart or burn down your house, you can never tell.

Centuries ago Plato said –

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. (Facebook and the internet are proof enough)

I am not saying this. Lao Tzu is –

Love is a serious mental disease.

Ouch! Paulo Coelho says –

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.
Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.

And to wind up here are five delightful gems from unknown sources –

1. Love at first sight is always cured by the second look.
2. Love is grand; divorce is a hundred grand.
3. I love you a lottle, it’s like a little but a lot.
4. Love is blind… marriage is the eye-opener.
5. Life is one dumb thing after another; love is two dumb things after each other.

Hope each of your days is blessed with love because no matter what kind of love it is, it’s an ongoing process. Romantic love too needs nurturing. So enjoy your day but remember what Erich Segal says if you hear bells ringing!

Visuals by Different Truths, Picture Design: Anumita Roy

Shernaz Wadia

To Shernaz Wadia, reading and writing poems has been one of the means to embark on an inward journey. She hopes her words will bring peace, hope and light into dark corners. Her poems have been published in many e-journals and anthologies. She has published her own book of poems “Whispers of the Soul” and another titled “Tapestry Poetry – A Fusion of Two Minds” with her poetry partner Avril Meallem.