101 Love Quotes That Are Begging to Star in Your Most Romantic Insta Captions

If I were a betting woman, I’d wager my next paycheck that you’ve Googled “quotes about love” or “quotes about friendship” (or even “bad ass feminist quotes”)—something in order to find the just the right Instagram caption. I’m not judging—I’ve done it myself. But if you’ve been searching for perfect love quotes to no avail, don’t worry; I got you.

I mean, I keep a note on my phone full of song lyrics that I consult when I can’t think of anything pithy or interesting to caption a photo—no joke. There’s no shame in wanting the perfect accompaniment to the perfect photo. And, because love seems to be one of the biggest themes in all of literature, movies, television—you get the picture—it only makes sense that there are an abundance of love quotes just waiting to make the caption on your Instagram post both thoughtful and poignant.

I compiled 101 (yeah, like the Dalmatians) quotes about love so that you can no longer worry about what to caption that photo of you and BAE (or you and your BFF) (or you and your mom) (or you and your dog). Look, whatever the photo is, there’s a love quote for it. Hell, you could use one of these quotes for a picture of a really good cheeseburger. There are endless possibilities (well, 101 possibilities). So bookmark this page, babes, because you now have a stockpile of quotes for every occasion. From Lady Gaga to Oscar Wilde, there’s wisdom waiting to be found in everyone. Whether you’re a bibliophile or just a big fan of romantic movies, there’s a quote for you.

 

101. “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.” —Alfred Tennyson

100. “We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.” —Tom Robbins

99. “Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.” —Lady Gaga

98. “We love the things we love for what they are.” —Robert Frost

97. “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” —Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)

96. “You deserve love, and you’ll get it.” —Amy Poehler

95. “People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.” —Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

94. “I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).” —ee cummings

93. “Give in to love, or live in fear.” —Jonathan Larson (“Rent”)

92. “You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” —Oscar Wilde

91. “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 

90. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” —Lao Tzu

89. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” —Robert A. Heinlein

88. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” —Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

87. “To love at all is to be vulnerable. 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 safe 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

86. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.” —Khalil Gibran

85. “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.” —Mahatma Gandhi

84. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” —Pablo Neruda

83. “If music be the food of love, play on.” —William Shakespeare

82. “Love is a promise. Love is a souvenir. Once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.” —John Lennon

81. “In vain have I 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.” —Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

80. “So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” —Paolo Coelho (The Alchemist)

79. “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” —A.A. Milne

78. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” —Oscar Wilde

77. “The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that’s what you’ve given me. That’s what I’d hoped to give you forever” —Nicholas Sparks 

76. “We loved with a love that was more than love.” —Edgar Allen Poe

75. “Love is something sent from heaven to worry the hell out of you.” —Dolly Parton

74.”There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

73. “I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.” —Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

72. “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” —André Gide

71. “What is love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.” —Victor Hugo

70. “Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” —William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

69. “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I have loved none but you.” —Jane Austen

68. “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

67. “What’s meant to be will always find a way” —Trisha Yearwood

66. “Men are a luxury. Not a necessity.” —Cher

65. “Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” —François de La Rochefoucauld

64. “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

63. “To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return.” —Madonna

62. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

61. “I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald (on his wife, Zelda)

60. “Piglet: ‘How do you spell ‘love’?’ Winnie the Pooh: ‘You don’t spell it…you feel it.'” —A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

59. “They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.” —Tom Bodett

58. “Don’t settle for a relationship that won’t let you be yourself.” —Oprah Winfrey

57. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” —Maya Angelou

56. “For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a person. And we are finally home.” —Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss)

55. “My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.” —André Breton (What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings)

54. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” —Kurt Vonnegut

53. “Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.” —Elinor Glyn

52. “You could have had anything else in the world, and you asked for me.” —Cassandra Clare (City of Glass)

51. “About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won’t like you at all.” —Rita Mae Brown

50. “The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.” —Tom Robbins

49. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” —Elizabeth Gilbert

48. “This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.” —Paulo Coelho

47. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” —James Baldwin

46. “There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.” —Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife)

45. “You only learn to love again when you fall in love again.” —Adele

44. “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” —Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

43. “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.” —Thomas Carlyle

42. “It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. ” —Agatha Christie

41. “Do not seek the because—in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” —Anais Nin

40. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” —Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)

39. “You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It’s not overrated. There’s a reason for all those songs.” —Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby)

38. “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” —Margaret Atwood

37. “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” —Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally)

36. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” —Helen Keller

35. “Love liberates. It doesn’t bind.” —Maya Angelou

34. “I believe there are some things in life you can’t deny or rationalize, and [love] is one of them.” —Cate Blanchett

33. “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” —Audrey Hepburn

32. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” —Zora Neale Hurston

31. “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

30. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” —Robert Frost

29. “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

28. “The giving of love is an education in itself.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

27. “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

26. “You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.” —Barbara de Angelis

25. “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” —Carl Sagan

24. “Love is unpredictable, and it’s frustrating, and it’s tragic and it’s beautiful.” —Taylor Swift

23. “If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.” —Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

22. “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” —Zelda Fitzgerald

21. “You can’t put a price tag on love, but you can on all its accessories.” —Melanie Clark

20. “Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.” —J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

19. “If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.” —Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

18.”Love is being stupid together.” —Paul Valery

17. “Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

16. “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” —Peter Ustinov

15. “When we are in love, we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.” —Blaise Pascal

14. “Look after my heart—I’ve left it with you.” —Stephanie Meyer (Eclipse)

13. “I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” —Marilyn Monroe

12. “Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

11. “Happiness isn’t getting what you want, it’s wanting what you got.” —Garth Brooks

10. “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” —David Viscott

9. “Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.” —Saint Teresa of Avila

8. “Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.” —Fulton J. Sheen

7. “Happiness [is] only real when shared” —John Krakauer (Into the Wild)

6. “Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.” —David Byrne 

5. “Soul mate: two little words, one big concept. A belief that someone, somewhere, is holding the key to your heart.” —Carrie Bradshaw (Sex and the City)

4. “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” —Albert Einstein

3. “Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.” —Iris Murdoch

2. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” —Pablo Nerudo

1. “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” —Joan Crawford

 

A version of this article was originally published in February 2016.