I’ve searched hundreds of best Valentine’s Day quotes for this post to inspire originality.
I share the deepest, sweetest, and funniest quotes about love for him, her, friends, family, and self.
These positive and uplifting quotes work every day. One day of flowers, chocolate, and poetry will not compensate for 364 days of neglect.
How you’re perceived on Valentine’s Day depends on your daily words and actions.
Inspirational Valentine’s Day Quotes
“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”
∼ Eleanor Roosevelt
“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”
∼Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”
∼Helen Keller
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
∼ Carl Sagan
“You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
∼ Dr. Seuss
“Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ∼Robert Heinlein
“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”
∼ Helen Keller
“A true lover always feels in debt to the one he loves.” ∼ Ralph W. Sockman
“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.”
∼John Lennon
“Distance doesn’t seperate people, silence does.” ∼Jeff Hood
“Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.” ∼ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“There are never enough I Love You’s.” ∼ Lenny Bruce
“The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.”
∼ Henry Miller
“True love is putting someone else before yourself.”
∼Frozen
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” ∼ Aristotle
“Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love.”
∼Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People
“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.”
∼ Stevie Wonder
“The love we give away is the only love we keep.”
∼ Elbert Hubbard
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
∼ Pablo Neruda
“The more one judges, the less one loves.”
∼ Honore de Balzac
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
∼ Oscar Wilde
“If you love a rose, you have to love its thorns too.”
∼ Matshona Dhliwayo
“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.”
∼Leo Tolstoy
“Love has no age, no limit; and no death.” ∼ John Galsworthy
“Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.” ∼ Voltaire
“Some hearts understand each other even in silence.”
∼Yasmin Mogahed
“When you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you…If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.”
∼ Warren Buffett
“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”∼William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“Age has no reality except in the physical world. The essence of a human being is resistant to the passage of time. Our inner lives are eternal, which is to say that our spirits remain as youthful and vigorous as when we were in full bloom. Think of love as a state of grace, not the means to anything, but the alpha and omega. An end in itself.”
∼Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
“It has made me better loving you … it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter.”
∼Henry James,THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
“Your flaws are perfect for the heart that’s meant to love you.”
∼ Trent Shelton
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
∼Lao Tzu
“Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.”
∼Lao Tzu
“Fortune and love favor the brave.”
∼ Ovid
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
∼Charles Dickens, GREAT EXPECTATIONS
“To love is nothing. To be loved is something. But to love and be loved, that’s everything.”
∼ T. Tolis
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
∼ Viktor Hugo
“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“When you are loved, you can do anything in creation.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“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.”
∼ Paulo Coelho
“He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainly that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning. Maktub [which means “It Is Written” or destined, in Arabic], thought the boy.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke – the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen – the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert…”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The Alchemist Quotes With Page Numbers
“Love is not only something you feel, it is something you do.”
∼ David Wilkerson
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
∼Anaïs Nin
“Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”
∼ Wayne Dyer
“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”
∼Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
∼Marilyn Monroe
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
∼Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
∼ Khalil Gibran
“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.”
∼ Andre Breton
“Where there is love there is life.”
∼ Mahatma Gandhi
“The field of the soul must be watered by the rain with tears of love; otherwise it will become a desert.”
∼ Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
“Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.”
∼Rumi
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
∼ Robert A. Heinlein
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
∼ Martin Luther King Jr.
“Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”
∼ Seneca
“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
∼ Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.”
∼ Leo Buscaglia
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”
∼ George Sand
“People call those imperfections, but no, that’s the good stuff.”
∼Good Will Hunting
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
∼ Rumi
“It’s rare to meet someone with a mind that’s just as beautiful as their face.”
∼Anonymous
“You know it’s love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you’re not part of their happiness.”
∼ Julia Roberts
“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song.”
∼Plato
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
∼ Plato
“So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s going to be really hard; we’re gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me… everyday.”
∼The Notebook
“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.”
∼ Erich Segal
“If you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn’t have fallen for the second.”
∼ Johnny Depp
“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”
∼Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
“Love is a better teacher than duty.”
∼ Albert Einstein
“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’”
∼ Erich Fromm
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
∼ Oscar Wilde
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. It is about appreciation.”
∼Osho
“’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
∼ Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”
∼ Vincent Van Gogh
“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
∼ Albert Ellis
“The mind replays what the heart can’t delete.” ∼Yasmin Mogahed
“If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.”
∼ Benjamin Franklin
“Love does not dominate; it cultivates.”
∼ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“She’s worth the trouble if you’re worth the risk.”
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
∼ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.”
∼ Blaise Pascal
“We are most alive when we’re in love.”
∼ John Updike
“The giving of love is an education in itself.”
∼ Eleanor Roosevelt
“There’s a difference between somebody who wants you and somebody who would do anything to keep you.”
∼Anonymous
“To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.”
∼Robert Brault
“Every person has to love at least one bad partner in their lives to be truly thankful for the right one.”
∼ Unknown
“The best proof of love is trust.”
∼ Joyce Brothers
“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”
∼ Honore de Balzac
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
∼ Mignon McLaughlin
“Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.”
∼ Franklin P. Jones
“The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.”
∼ Margaret Atwood
“It is astonishing how little one feels alone when one loves.” ∼ John Bulwer
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” ∼ Robert Browning
“Love is the greatest refreshment in life.” ∼ Pablo Picasso
“This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.” ∼ Aberjhani
“Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.”
∼ Audre Lorde
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
∼Pable Neruda, TWENTY LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR
“Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly that you feel you could die of it.”
∼ Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
“Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.”
∼ Vincent van Gogh
“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not.” ∼ Blaise Pascal
“When love is not madness, it is not love.”
∼ Pedro Calderon de la Brca
“Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.”
∼ Zelda Fitzgerald
“Love is being stupid together.” ∼ Paul Valery
“Finding someone you love and who loves you back is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. But finding a true soul mate is an even better feeling. A soul mate is someone who understands you like no other, loves you like no other, will be there for you forever, no matter what.”
∼P.S. I Love You
“My wish for you
Is that this life becomes all that you want it to
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small
You never need to carry more than you can hold
And while you’re out there gettin’ where you’re gettin’ to
I hope you know somebody loves you”∼My Wish, Rascal Flatts
“And in this crazy life, and through these crazy times
It’s you, it’s you; you make me sing
You’re every line, you’re every word, you’re everything
You’re every song, and I sing along
Cause you’re my everything”∼Michael Bublé, Everything
“Yours is the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
Now I don’t know where I am
I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go”∼Bright Eyes, First Day of My Life
“Cause all of me
Loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections
Give your all to me
I’ll give my all to you
You’re my end and my beginning.”∼John Legend, All of Me
“Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.” ∼ Katharine Lee Bates
“There’s only one thing more precious than our time and that’s who we spend on it”
∼Leo Christopher
“She loves hard because she knows how it feels to be loved so little.”
∼Srashti Gupta
“Your heart is house shaped,
and some have knocked to enter,
some have broken in,
but only a few have ever called it a home.”∼ Nikita Gill<, House Shaped Heart<
“A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.”
∼ Max Muller, Philologist
“If I have no other qualities I can succeed with love alone. Without it I will fail though I possess all the knowledge and skills of the world. I will greet this day with love, and I will succeed.”
~Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World
75 Flower Quotes to Help You See the Beauty in the World
Sweet Valentine Quotes For Him or Her
“If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
~Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
∼ Haruki Murakami
“Why do I dream of you in black and white?” Because we loved in colors that do not yet exist.”
∼Ariana Dancu
“If you ever ask me how many times you’ve crossed my mind, I would say once. Because you came, and never left.”
∼Ritu Ghatourey
“You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.”
∼Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
“I have looked at you in millions of ways and I have loved you in each.”
∼Anonymous
“I will have to tell you: you have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.”
∼Pride & Prejudice
“When I met you, flowers started growing in the darkest parts of my mind.”
∼Anonymous
“Take my hand, take my whole life too.
For I can’t help falling in love with you.”∼Elvis Presley, Can’t Help Falling in Love
“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.”
∼William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“If people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane.” ∼John Green, Looking For Alaska
“To me, you are perfect.” ∼Love Actually
“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.” ∼Gone with the Wind
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” ∼ Emily Bronte
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
∼ Maya Angelou
“You’re the closest to heaven, that I’ll ever be.” ∼Iris, Goo Goo Dolls
“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known and even that is an understatement.”
∼F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Every night I watch the sunset and soak up every last ray of its warmth, and send it from my heart to yours.”
∼Pearl Harbor
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.”
∼ Alfred Tennyson
“When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.”
∼Giuseppe Verdie, FALSTAFF
“And in her smile I see something more beautiful than the stars.”
∼Beth Revis, Across the Universe
“Every love story is beautiful but ours is my favorite.”
∼Anonymous
“In case you ever foolishly forget: I am never not thinking of you.”
∼Virginia Woolf, SELECTED DIARIES
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
∼ A. A. Milne
“When I can’t found you. I close my eyes.”
∼Amartya Daz
“I only ever wrote letters to the ocean, the stars, and you.”
∼Ariana Dancu
“I’ve waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.”
∼Patrick Rothfuss
“I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world…”
∼Frank O’Hara, HAVING A COKE WITH YOU
“And suddenly all the love songs were about you.” ∼ Unknown
“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
∼Nicole Krauss, History of Love
“You could have had anything else in the world, and you asked for me.”
∼Cassandra Clare, CITY OF GLASS
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
∼Jane Austen, EMMA
“You are the friend to whom my soul is attached as to its better half. You are dearer to me than language has the power of telling.
∼Frances Burney, EVELINA
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
∼Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
“You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.”
∼Shakespeare in Love
“Making memories with you is my favorite thing to do.”
∼Jordy Daniel
“Do you think it possible that some people are born to give more love than they will ever get back in return?”
∼Tyler Knott Gregson
“I look for you in everyone I meet.” ∼Gisele Magnin
“I care about your feelings more than my own.”
∼Anonymous
“Your imperfection is perfectly beautiful.”
∼Tablo
“I have looked at you in millions of ways and I have loved you in each.”
∼Anonymous
“Until every last star in the galaxy dies out. You have me.”
∼Anonymous
“You are ripped at every edge, but you are a masterpiece.”
∼Anonymous
“Falling in love with you is the second best thing in the world. Finding you was the first,”
∼Anonymous
“I never expected to fall for you but I’m so glad I did.”
∼Anonymous
“The best kiss is the one that has been exchanged a thousand times between the eyes before it reaches the lips.”
∼Anonymous
“The best love story is when you fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.”
∼Anonymous
“The couples that are meant to be are the ones who go through everything that is meant to tear them apart, and come out even stronger.”
∼Anonymous
“People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look and it’s magic.”
∼ Andy Warhol
Funny Valentine’s Day Quotes
Princess Leia: “I love you”
Han Solo: “I know”
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
∼ Charles Schulz
“I love being married. It’s so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”
∼ Rita Rudner
“I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.”
∼ Walt Disney
“I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?”
∼ Zsa Zsa Gabor
“It’s better to have loved and lost than to have to do forty pounds of laundry a week.”
∼ Laurence J. Peter
“Love is a grave mental disease.” ∼ Plato
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
∼ Ingrid Bergman
“What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.” ∼ Pearl Bailey
“Money can’t buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.” ∼ Christopher Marlowe
“Without Valentine’s Day, February would be…well, January.” ∼ Jim Gaffigan
“If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?” ∼ Lily Tomlin
“Look, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.” ∼ Fernando Pessoa
“Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.” ∼ Jules Renard
“Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.”
∼ Henry Kissinger
“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
∼ Albert Einstein
“Valentine’s Day is the poet’s holiday.”
∼Ted Kooser, Poet
“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness–and call it love–true love.”
∼Robert Fulghum, True Love
“I love you more than I hate everyone else.”
∼Rainbow Rowel, LANDLINE
“I knew you were trouble when you started singing Taylor Swift songs.”
Valentine’s Day Quotes For Friends and Family
“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
∼Jean de La Fontaine
“Friends are medicine for a wounded heart, and vitamins for a hopeful soul.”
∼ Steve Maraboli
“A friend is what the heart needs all the time.”
∼ Henry Van Dyke
“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”
∼ Elie Wiesel
“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.”
∼ Wiliam Shakespeare
“True friends are like diamonds — bright, beautiful, valuable and always in style.”
∼ Nicole Richie
“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
∼ Linda Grayson
“One can pay back the loan of gold, but one dies forever in debt to those who are kind.”
∼Malayan Proverb
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
∼C.S. Lewis
“A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out.”
∼Grace Pulpit
“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.” ∼ Henry Ford
“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.”
∼Bernard Meltzer
“Best friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. Fake friends are like leaves, found everywhere.”
∼Anonymous
“Good friends help you to find important things when you have lost them…your smile, your hope, and your courage.”
∼Doe Zantamata
“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
∼ Elbert Hubbard
“I want to be your favorite place to go when you’ve had a bad day or a good day.”
∼Anonymous
“When you see something beautiful in someone, tell them. It may take seconds to say, but for them, it could last a lifetime.”
∼Anonymous
What is a good quote for Valentine’s Day?
“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
∼Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Tips For Writing a Perfect Valentine
- Write a sincere and appropriate complement based on your relationship.
- Be original. Write something specific about the person. Also, avoid using clichés and overused phrases that lack originality.
- Write out of unconditional love or friendship, not out of expectation.
- Lastly, your message on Valentine’s Day will be more convincing if you are supportive year-round.
Sincere > Appropriate > Original > Cliche > Desperate
Unconditional > Expectational
All Year > >One Day
Effort > >Cost
“Act without expectation.” ∼Lao Tzu
For some interesting Valentine’s Day ideas for families, read 5 Simple Ways to Make Valentine’s Day a Success by Suhey at Dash of Lemonaid.
What are your favorite quotes, lines, or poems for Valentine’s Day?
Recommended Reading:
Keep Your Love On, by Danny Silk
“Discover the Relational Practices of Healthy Boundaries, Communication, and Connection So That You Can Build Thriving Relationships”