61. A Fevered Dream
Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers.
(Edgar Lee Masters, "Love Is a Madness," 1916)
62. A Madness
Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too."
(Rosalind in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1599?)
63. A Madness
Love is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life.
(Mark Twain, "The Memorable Assassination," 1898)
64. A Mental Disease
Love is a grave mental disease.
(Plato)
65. Mental Illness
Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.
(Fran Lebowitz, in an interview with Jon Winokur, 2007)
66. A Sickness
Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
(Samuel Daniel, "Love Is a Sickness Full of Woes," 1607)
67. A Disease
I thought love would be my cure
But now it's my disease.
(Alicia Keyes, "Love Is My Disease," The Element Of Freedom, 2009)
68. A Disease
Is it natural for a man to fall in love? Love is a disease and disease knows no laws.
(Ivan Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man, 1850)
69. A Disease
Love is a disease that kills nobody, but one whose time has come.
(Marguerite de Valois, 1552)
70. A Disease
Love is the only disease that makes you feel better.
(attributed to Sam Shepard)
71. An Addiction
We are smart enough not to buy into the oldest bit running: love. An addiction created by people to keep them from jumping out of windows.
(Gordon Gekko, Wall Street, 1987)
72. A Migraine
Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.
(Robert Graves, "Symptoms of Love")
73. A Fever
[Love] is a fever which tests our strength, and too often leads to perdition.
(George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859)
74. A Vaccination
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.
(Honoré de Balzac, The Member for Arcis)
75. A Debt
It is a dangerous experiment to call in gratitude as an ally to love. Love is a debt, which inclination always pays; obligation, never.
(Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think, 1820)
76. A Bubble
Love is a golden bubble, full of dreams,
That waking breaks, and fills us with extremes.
(George Chapman, Hero and Leander, 1598)
77. A Dessert
Love is only the dessert of life. The minute you try to live on dessert, you get sick of it, and you can get sicker of love than you can of anything else in the world.
(Dorothea Dix, quoted by Harnett Thomas Kane in Dear Dorothy Dix: The Story of a Compassionate Woman, 1952)
78. A River, a Razor . . .
Some say love, it is a river
that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
and you its only seed.
(Amanda McBroom, "The Rose," 1979)
79. A Crocodile
Love is a crocodile in the river of desire.
(Bhartṛhari, Śatakatraya, 5th century)
80. A Deep Blue Sea
Cause my love, my love is a deep blue sea
So deep, so deep that I'll never be free.
(Holly Golightly, "My Love Is," 2004)
81. An Ocean
Love is an ocean of emotion entirely surrounded by expenses.
(Sir Thomas Robert Dewar)
82. A Pearl
Love is a pearl; I, the diver; the sea, the tavern:
I dove in there--where will I come up with air?
(Hafez, "Forty," 14th century; translated by Reza Ordoubadian, 2006)
83. A Hole in the Heart
Love is a hole in the heart.
(Ben Hecht, Winkelberg, 1950)
84. A Mask
Love is a mask, with death behind.
(William Bell, "To a Lady on Her Marriage")
85. A Thread
"No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with only a single thread."
(Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621)
86. A Rope
Love is a Rope, for it ties
and holds us in its yoke
(Dutch poet Hadwijch, 1235- 1265)
87. A Razor
Love is a razor
So much stronger than me.
It sliced up the eraser
I was saving for your memory.
(Benji Hughes, "Love Is a Razor," 2008)
88. A Foreigner
Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1849)
89. Baited Hooks
Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
(Thomas Wyatt, "Renouncing of Love")
90. A Cage
Love is a cage she's glad to be free of.
(Susan Mitchell, "Lost Parrot")
91. A Piano
Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window,
And you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
(Ani DiFranco, "Two Little Girls," 1998)
92. A Snowmobile
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra; suddenly it flips over, pins you underneath, and at night the ice weasels come.
(Matt Groening's interpretation of Nietzsche's view of love, Love Is Hell, 1985)
93. A Rocket Ship
I'm a space bound rocket ship and your heart's in the moon
And I'm aiming right at you
Right at you
250 thousand miles on a clear night in June.
And I'm aiming right at you
Right at you
Right at you.
(Eminem, "Spacebound," 2010)
94. A Dunghill
"Love is a dunghill," said Harry. "And I'm the cock that gets on it to crow."
(Ernest Hemingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," 1936)
95. A Deep Well
Love is a deep well from which you may drink often, but into which you may fall but once.
(Ellye Howell Glover, Dame Curtsey's Book of Novel Entertainments, 1907)
96. A Time Machine
Love is a time machine,
Up on the silver screen.
It's all in my mind.
Love is a litany,
A magical mystery,
And all in good time . . ..
(Noel Gallagher of Oasis, "The Shock of the Lightning," 2008)
97. A Fart
Love is the fart
Of every heart;
It pains when 'tis kept close;
And others doth offend, when 'tis let loose.
(John Suckling, "Love's Offence," 1640)
98. A Jewel
Youth's for an hour,
Beauty's a flower,
But love is the jewel that wins the world.
(Moira O'Neill, "Beauty's a Flower," 1900)
99. A Smoke, a Fire, a Sea, a Madness
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears;
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
(Romeo in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1597)
See also: 100 Sweet Similes
