20th Century Love Quotes & Sayings

In this convoluted world where sex has become a party favor rather than a solemn, beautiful part of love between two people, I think virginity is sexy. I don't like promiscuity. Oddly, at the turn of the 20th century, even men were expected to wait until marriage to indulge. I think that's sexy, too. Okay, I'm a dinosaur, I admit it. I don't belong in the modern world. — Diana Palmer

This tough-love, winner-take-all narrative dominating policymaking is far too limited a way to think about how a complex, modern, diverse economy like ours expands and thrives. The strongest periods of economic growth in the 20th century were also times when incomes rose across the board. — John Podesta

To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

After reading Edgar Allan Poe. Something the critics have not noticed: a new literary world pointing to the literature of the 20th Century. Scientific miracles, fables on the pattern A+ B, a clear-sighted, sickly literature. No more poetry but analytic fantasy. Something monomaniacal. Things playing a more important part than people; love giving away to deductions and other forms of ideas, style, subject and interest. The basis of the novel transferred from the heart to the head, from the passion to the idea, from the drama to the denouement. — Jules De Goncourt

One of the things I'm real proud of is I just made a deal with 20th Century Fox, and I've got my own production company now. I'm developing some television and movies for other people because I have a lot of fresh new ideas. To write is what I love the most. — Dolly Parton

The only power that can effect transformations of the order (of Jesus) is love. It remained for the 20th century to discover that locked within the atom is the energy of the sun itself. For this energy to be released, the atom must be bombarded from without. So too, locked in every human being is a store of love that partakes of the divine- the imago dei, image of god ... And it too can be activated only through bombardment, in its case, love's bombardment. The process begins in infancy, where a mother's initially unilateral loving smile awakens love in her baby and as coordination develops, elicits its answering smile ... A loving human being is not produced by exhortations, rules and threats. Love can only take root in children when it comes to them- initially and most importantly from nurturing parents. Ontogenetically speaking, love is an answering phenomenon. It is literally a response. — Huston Smith

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

In today's world, a strong pair of hands is no longer enough for men to succeed just as a beautiful face doesn't guarantee lasting love for women. Times have changed. People now look for values everywhere. From their government to their lovers. From their phones to even the websites they visit. The 21st century game is played around value. It is slightly shifting from the package-era of the 20th century. This is one of the reason for the huge instability that has affected the modern society. From instability in relationships to quick changes in government. Value, in today's world is the difference maker between the things that will stay and the ones that won't. — Emi Iyalla

The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence
rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Dan thought of love as defined by books, cobwebbed and hidden from view by the past. Too bad a love like that didn't actually exist. In the twentieth century one had to fake it. — Dennis Cooper

Just as women needed the help of the law to enter the workplace in the 20th century, men will need the help of the law to love their children in the 21st century. — Warren Farrell

It isn't a case of marriage having been tried and found wanting. In this 20th century world, true marriage is deeply wanted, but largely untried. — Richard Lessor

I've always been in love with the movies. They're the dreams of the 20th Century. — Arne Glimcher

We heard that girls who had left to get married were being deported with their husbands. A girl who had a love affair with a French prisoner was sent to a concentration camp, and the Frenchman was executed. — Edith Hahn Beer

Don't live in the world as if you were renting or here only for the summer, but act as if it was your father's house ... Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea, but people above all. Love clouds, machines, and books, but people above all. Nazim Hikmet, 20th century Turkish poet — Nahid Rachlin