The 37 Best Quotes About Love for More Fulfilling Relationships

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From loving yourself, to your pets, romantic relationships, and even your community, here are the 27 best quotes about love we could find.

Love is not one-size-fits-all, but there are some things about it that seem almost universally relatable. The best quotes about love illuminate and show us that we’re not alone in our doubts, questions, and joys. Reading other people’s thoughts can even inspire us to approach love in our own lives with new vigor.

Why Quotes About Love Matter

Because love is so universal, the quotes we’re most drawn to help deepen our understanding of who we are and how we love.

Science has shown that inspirational quotes motivate us because we’re psychologically hardwired to look to role models for guidance. Quotes about love work the same way: they give us a source of wisdom from people who we admire.

Read on for the best quotes about self-love, romantic love, community love, and more

Quotes on Loving and Accepting Yourself

The closest relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself, and the positive results of self-love are scientifically proven. People who practice self-love suffer less from anxiety and depression. They tend to view life through rosier lenses, and can even be more physically healthy.

These quotes about love remind you to never neglect the person you’re with every second of every day: yourself.

1. “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
― C.G. Jung

2. “When a woman becomes her own best friend, life is easier.”
― Diane Von Furstenberg

3. “If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.”
― Charles Bukowski

4. “It’s all about falling in love with yourself and sharing that love with someone who appreciates you, rather than looking for love to compensate for a self-love deficit.”
― Eartha Kitt

5. Charlie Chaplin’s 70th Birthday Poem on Self Love

“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is ‘AUTHENTICITY.’

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it ‘RESPECT.’

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it ‘MATURITY.’

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it ‘SELF-CONFIDENCE.’

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it ‘SIMPLICITY.’

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is ‘LOVE OF ONESELF.’

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is ‘MODESTY.’

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worrying about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it ‘FULFILLMENT.’

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection ‘WISDOM OF THE HEART.’

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know ‘THAT IS LIFE!’

― Charlie Chaplin

Learning from Love

Love affords us an amazing opportunity to learn new things about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. These quotes show the love discoveries other people have made. Now, get inspired to make some discoveries of your own.

6. “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
— Victor Hugo

7. “All, everything that I understand, I only understand because I love.”
— Leo Tolstoy

8. “You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them.”
—Iyanla Vanzant

Family Love

Your family might be large or small, static or constantly changing. Some families are blood-related, others are tied by other bonds. No matter what, though, it’s not really family without love.

9. “I sustain myself with the love of family.”
― Maya Angelou

10. “You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”
― Frederick Buechner

11. “When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you’re with me always.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Story Sisters

12. “You need to make time for your family no matter what happens in your life.”
― Matthew Quick

Friend Love

Friendship can be among the most powerful love of all. After all, friends are the family we choose.

 13. “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”
― Muhammad Ali

14. “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

15. “How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it. How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it. How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give ’em.”
― Shel Silverstein

16. “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
― Aristotle

17. “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

Romantic Love

Romantic love is at once the most complex and the most simple kind of love we ever encounter. As these quotes about love show, romance may not always make perfect sense, but it still feels right.

18. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

19. “There’s no substitute for a great love who says, ‘No matter what’s wrong with you, you’re welcome at this table.'”
— Tom Hanks

20. “The heart wants what it wants. There’s no logic to these things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that’s that.”
— Woody Allen

21. “I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”
— Lord of The Rings

22. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

23. I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

24. “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

Quotes about Love for Animals and Pets

Your pet can be your best friend, your family member, or your closest companion, and the unconditional love of a pet is an incredible thing to experience.

25. “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”
― Anatole France

26. “My philosophy when it came to pets was much like that of having children: You got what you got, and you loved them unconditionally regardless of whatever their personalities or flaws turned out to be.”
― Gwen Cooper, Homer’s Odyssey

27. “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, The Four Loves

28. When I look into the eyes of an animal I do not see an animal. I see a living being. I see a friend. I feel a soul.”
― A.D. Williams

29. “A dog…is a bond between strangers.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Quotes about Love: Loving Your Community

It’s not enough just to love the people and animals close to us. Love must also extend to the communities around us, if we’re going to have our greatest impact. These quotes about love come from some of the world’s most influential leaders and artists.

30. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”
— Helen Keller

31. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

32. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

33. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
― William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

34. “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”
― Coretta Scott King

35. “We become human only in the company of other human beings. And this involves both opening our hearts and giving voice to our deepest convictions. …When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.”
― Paul Rogat Loeb

36. “I think tolerance, acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.”
― Lady Gaga

37. “Each of us is a living system within a greater living system, connected to each other in more ways than we can fathom. ”
― Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson

We hope that these quotes about love are useful to you, and inspire you to better, deeper love. First, love of yourself. Don’t forget you deserve love from you, too.

Featured Image: CC0 Creative Commons Engin_Akyurt via Pixabay.