Poignant Love Quotes & Sayings

A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I'll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding - Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. — May Sarton

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart ... The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence ... When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy. — James Martineau

Make love to me," she whispered. "If you make love to me then it is two of us. There is just one of him when he takes my blood, but we are two." "We are two and more than two," he whispered in her ear, and then he lifted her and carried her to the bed. — Louise Murphy

A poignant paradox is that sometimes the very desire to be a good mother or father will lead the parent to mistake duty for love. — William Watson Purkey

Humans and other animals experience love and fear, and form deep emotional bonds with cherished companions. We mourn when a close friend dies, and so do other animals, as Barbara King's poignant book illustrates in compelling detail. How Animals Grieve helps us to connect and to better understand the complex social lives of other animals and of ourselves. — Gene Baur

She remembered something she overheard at a dinner party -- Everyone loses their mind at least once in this lifetime. Everyone. — Lawren Leo

A SIZEABLE LEGACY HE LEFT her. It was a legacy of beautiful memories, of love and passion, of desire and ecstasy, of nearness and the myriad means of communication two lovers could find. It was a legacy of experience, both private and public, personal and professional, encompassing all she'd learned from their brief liaison. It was a legacy of pain, of hurt and heartache, of humiliation and distrust, of frustration and disillusionment, of the sheer hell of a loneliness made worse by comparison with what might have been. And, finally, there was the small gold heart she wore constantly, ruby-eyed and shining, a poignant reminder of that part of her own heart which was, now and forever, lost. — Barbara Delinsky

I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness. — Wilbur Smith

Of all the agonies in life, that which is most poignant and harrowing
that which for the time annihilates reason, and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart
is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love. — Bill Vaughan

My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise.
In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means "person who trains bats." The audience may feel a prick of fear, as if sharp pins are hidden in thier hats.
My co-star lives on what we call a brae. His solitude might not be just an act. A piece of mail fails to arrive one day. This poignant melodrama's based on fact.
The curtain falls just as the knot unties; the silence is broken by the one who dies. — Lemony Snicket

As a twenty-one-year-old college student, Daisy Richmond's answer to the question "If you knew you were going to die in one month, what would you do?" was full of adventure and travel to exotic lands. As a twenty-seven-year-old woman who is faced with a recurrence of breast cancer, her answer is very different. Before I Go is the poignant story of Daisy's journey to navigate the unexpected twists and turns of life, and the painful process of letting go of everything but love. — Colleen Oakley

Inevitable. The characters we've come to know and love are no longer part of our lives. This can leave us with a certain longing. Perhaps we'll open the book again and skim through it, searching out favorite passages to kindle again those powerful emotions. But the passion is never stirred quite as strong the second time around. So it is with life. We rush through the days that we're given, eager to engage in the conflicts and passions, to push through and conquer and see how it all ends. When suddenly the end is in sight, we're surprised. We stall, frantically savoring each moment. The sun shines brighter, the smiles appear more tender and we listen for words of love with an urgency that would be poignant if it were — Mary Alice Monroe

The illusions of paternal love are perhaps no less poignant than those of the other kind; many daughters regard their fathers merely as the old men who leave their fortunes to them. — Marcel Proust

Delirium: "What's the name of the word for the precise moment when you realize that you've actually forgotten how it felt to make love to somebody you really liked a long time ago?"
Dream: "There isn't one."
Delirium: "Oh. I thought maybe there was. — Neil Gaiman

At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him. — Dorothy Dunnett

Songs are great. I love songs. I sing them in the shower sometimes. They can be poignant or cheery or angry, and they can have catchy and satisfying melodies. There's nothing wrong with songs. — Russell Smith

It was an unexpected kiss and terribly poignant, because in it there wasn't a promise of love but a farewell.
Morwen felt the salty tears slide down the sides of the cheeks, while her lips moved in unison with those of Galadir. The Prince was holding her close, stroking her black hair. He wanted to keep her for life. He wished that moment would last forever, but it was too late. — Chiara Cilli

In the movies there are always these poignant moments when people work out their misunderstandings, their miscommunications. But that's not real life. In real life it's hard to tell someone you don't love them anymore. It's harder to tell your father you don't know how to live another day. My grief has stolen my voice -Audrey — Suzanne Young

Names.
What's in a name, really? I mean, besides a bunch of
letters or sounds strung together to make a word. Does a
rose by any other name really smell as sweet? Would the
most famous love story in the world be as poignant if it was
called Romeo and Gertrude? Why is what we call
ourselves so important? — Julie Kagawa

The memories of long love gather like drifting snow, poignant as the mandarin ducks who float side by side in sleep. — Murasaki Shikibu

Hadn't heard either of them move, but they were standing toe to toe, and Archer was touching her cheeks with only the tips of his fingers as he gazed into her eyes. There was something sort of poignant about the moment. Yeah, I sounded like I'd be writing love sonnets by the end of the year, but in a moment of empathy and maturity I really hadn't realized I was capable of, I didn't lose my cool. She needed this - she needed Archer, — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Cover mine eyes, O my Love!
Mine eyes that are weary of bliss
As of light that is poignant and strong
O silence my lips with a kiss,
My lips that are weary of song!
Shelter my soul, O my love!
My soul is bent low with the pain
And the burden of love, like the grace
Of a flower that is smitten with rain:
O shelter my soul from thy face! — Sarojini Naidu

People should go see 'Premium' because it's a great story about love and the person who shaped us as the people we eventually become. There are a bunch of laughs as well as poignant thinking moments. It's a story about the human experience, and so many people can relate to it. Plus we need the money! — Dorian Missick

And now she was thinking of her own death, with her heart gripped not by fear but by the excitement of a great discovery, the feeling that she was about to learn what she had been unable to learn from her brief experience of love. What she thought about death was childish, but what could never have touched her in the past now filled her with poignant tenderness, as sometimes a familiar face we see suddenly with the eyes of love makes us aware that it has been dearer to us than life itself for longer than we have ever realized. — Georges Bernanos

The love you have for your kids is so overwhelmingly powerful that it alters your perspective. The dark things going on in the world become very poignant and vivid. — James Mercer

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences. — Antony Beevor

She'd made life poignant for the Irish. The terror she inspired gave peace its serenity; the pain she caused gave health its lustre; her failure to love made me grateful for my ability to do so, and I realized, far too late, that though I never did or could have loved her as she might have wished, I should have loved her more. — Kevin Hearne

Come, sir, come,
I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love.
Look, here I have you, thus I let you go,
And give you to the gods. — William Shakespeare

Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night. — Sybil Adelman

Love grows more tremendously full, swift, poignant, as the years multiply. — Zane Grey

The most heartbreakingly poignant modern love story ever written. — Raymond Queneau

A few words which he wanted to emphasize were put into brackets or set off by quotation marks. My first impulse was to point out to him that it was ridiculous to put slang words and expressions between quotation marks, for that prevents them from entering the language. But I decided not to. When I received his letters, his parentheses made me shudder. At first, it was a shudder of slight shame, disagreeable. Later (and now, when I reread them) the shudder was the same, but I know, by some indefinable, imperceptible change, that it is a shudder of love- it is both poignant and delightful, perhaps because of the memory of the word shame that accompanied it in the beginning. Those parentheses and quotation marks are the flaw on the hip, the beauty mark on the thigh whereby my friend showed that he was himself, irreplaceable, and that he was wounded. — Jean Genet

Oh, I know, I know that heart, that wild but grateful heart, gentlemen of the jury! It will bow before your mercy; it thirsts for a great and loving action, it will melt and mount upwards. There are souls which, in their limitation, blame the whole world. But subdue such a soul with mercy, show it love, and it will curse its past, for there are many good impulses in it. Such a heart will expand and see that God is merciful and that men are good and just. He will be horror-stricken; he will be crushed by remorse and the vast obligation laid upon him henceforth. And he will not say then, 'I am quits,' but will say, 'I am guilty in the sight of all men and am more unworthy than all.' With tears of penitence and poignant, tender anguish, he will exclaim: 'Others are better than I, they wanted to save me, not to ruin me! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Life has to end. Love doesn't. — Mitch Albom

I assure that I should breathe my last without pain and almost with joy if I were certain of leaving to the friends who love me, not poignant regrets, but a gentle, affectionate, somewhat melancholy remembrance of me. — Frederic Bastiat

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. "You are my country, Desdemona." Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. "My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining."
She gasped.
His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. "You'll never hear old Blake say something like that."
She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation?
"Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose. — Connie Brockway

Alison's grandfather told her,'To err is human, to forgive divine — Diane Griffith

Poignant, earthy, intensely human, Letters From A Stranger is a love story that is as unusual and courageous as its characters. — Elizabeth Lowell

Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes. — Andromeda Romano-Lax

the details of anything you love are
always what is most thrilling, most poignant,
most important.
i loved her as she rose from bed and fell back
against it again, and all she did in-between.
when you love someone you accept them,
you become them in a way, and all they
do forms into you. their mannerisms turn
into truth- the way she holds her favorite coffee mug,
the way she laughs, the way she smells, the way her lips
curl after certain words. all of the simple things
suddenly become gigantic things and light up the world
before you like a flame thrown into the clouds.
what a breathtaking display. the way
the earth begins to dissolve in your periphery
and a human being replaces it.

no matter what they tell you-
a person is a universe when truly
loved and anything less is not
love at all. — Christopher Poindexter

Raw and delicate, poignant and poetic, Shelby Smoak's Bleeder exposes the sorrow and sometimes sweetness of coming to age with HIV. In a world of misunderstanding and stigmas, the young Smoak searches for love and acceptance, and his readers can't help but find themselves becoming emotionally attached to him. His is an observant and encompassing story, noticing the brilliance of existence that others might take for granted. The sunsets written here are more lovely than in life. — Jenny Boully

Forgiveness can be bittersweet. It contains the sweetness of the release of a story that has caused us pain, but also the poignant reminder that even our dearest relationships change over the course of a lifetime. — Sharon Salzberg

But as love turns to grief, and grief becomes anger, so must anger yield to thought, in order to know itself. — Justin Cronin

Love at a distance may be poignant; it is also idealized. Contact, more than separation, is the test of attachment. — Ilka Chase

When he finally broke off the kiss and moved his lips to her neck, then her breast again, sucking her nipples back to hard peaks, Catherine broke from her trance.
"No. I really must go. We haven't time to do this again." She pushed against his
restraining hands and wiggled beneath his body. "Let me up now."
He pulled away from her neck and looked up, his eyes as poignant as a spoken plea.
Her heart wrenched and she wished she could spend the rest of the day with him, making love in their secret nest in the loft.
She sighed. "Don't give me puppy dog eyes. I've got to go. — Bonnie Dee

The Louvre! The Louvre has me in its clutches. Every time I'm there rich blessings rain down upon me. I am coming to understand Titian more and more and learning to love him. And then there is Botticelli's sweet Madonna, with red roses behind her, standing against a blue-green sky. And Fiesole with his poignant little biblical stories, so simply told, often so glorious in their colors. — Paula Modersohn-Becker

A piercing satire, a poignant family drama and an investigation of the competing claims of honesty, loyalty, ambition and love. — A.O. Scott