With February 14th fast approaching this weekend, we can turn our eyes to the masters of love: authors, poets and playwrights, to give us the best lines for our Valentine’s Cards. Although these lines aren’t the most famous in literature, for me, these five quotes stood out as some of the most touching I’d read to date.
1.“Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in.” — Carol Ann Duffy, You
If you haven’t read Duffy’s Rapture you ought to. This beautiful line comes from the poem You in this collection. The intrigue about these poems is the uncertainty of who they are addressed to… Maybe this collection is almost like a secret admirer Valentine’s Card in itself. Her poems will create feelings you never knew you had!
2. Gatsby “looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every young girl wants to be looked at” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Without a doubt every girl who has read Gatsby wishes a man would dream about them like Gatsby does. Who wouldn’t want a guy that shaped his whole life style in order to impress you, whilst he waits for you to be his? Gatsby is a heartthrob, if only Daisy wasn’t so money orientated…
3.“I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?” — William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Good ol’ Will never fails to impress. Taken from Much Ado About Nothing, this line would make any lover weak at the knees and potentially could be a great line for a card!
4.“I knew little about Keats or his poetry, but I thought it possible that in his hopeless situation he would not have wanted to write precisely because he loved her so much.” — Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
If even Keats would struggle to write a poem for this chick, McEwan’s narrator hasn’t got a chance in hell of expressing his true emotions. This quote makes me think of the awkwardness of writing in a Valentines card… what do you write? How do you express how you feel about this person? Maybe it’s best to simply write “To” and “From”. These simple small words are perhaps the way hopeless romantics will express love, which is clearly a difficult thing to do!
5.“Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.” — Honoré de Balzac, Mémoires de Deux Jeunes Mariées
Balzac never writes anything pointless. Love may or may not exist, but if it does, it shouldn’t be a small thing at all. Maybe he believed love shouldn’t be brief… however, a small Valentines Card is proof that big things come in small packages!
Jessica Rushton
Image credit: Scarlett White & Jessica Millott
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