41 of Literature’s Greatest Sex and Love Quotes of All Time

By Iva-Marie Palmer | Your Tango

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

Love, that attention-seeking pain in the ass, has never been content to just drive the, ahem, layperson crazy. It sashays around, all pretty and confounding, until writers just have to try to explain it. That's when the trouble starts, of course.

Literature has quotes for days on that four-lettered blessing or curse, but I've seen one too many articles go to the well of the Brontës, Austen, and Sparks. No offense to any of them (in fact, props are due), but hopefully this list shines some light on writings you haven't seen before, and maybe there's something that rings true for whatever kind of love you're in. Or not in, if that's the case.

Related Article: 50 Great Sex Quotes That Will Make You Smile, Laugh or Get Turned On

Crushes, attraction, dating and waiting:

1) “Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.” —William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing”

2) “The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.” —Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables”

3) “Beautiful things don't ask for attention.”—James Thurber, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

4) “He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds; he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together.” —Virginia Woolf, Orlando

5) “I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it's a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.” —Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

Lust, desire and wanting:

6) “Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can't strike them all by ourselves.”—Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

7) “We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.” —Marquis de Sade, Aline et Vacour

8) “…As long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.” —Marguerite Duras, Blue Eyes, Black Hair

9) “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

10) “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Related Article: The 69 Greatest Quotes About Sex

Sex and passion:

11) “Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.”—Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

12) “To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth — I count that as something of a miracle.” —Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

13) “I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.” —Neil Gaiman, American Gods

14) “Lift your hips for me, love.” —Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

15) “And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.”—Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

16) “License my roving hands, and let them go/Before, behind, between, above, below.” —John Donne, “To His Mistress Going to Bed”

Related Article: Want a Great Sex Life? This One Thing Is More Important Than You Think

Love:

17) “Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean, so get yourself a little loving in between.” —Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems

18) “The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.” —Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

19) “Love isn't soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.”—Stephen King, The Body

20) “You cannot save people, you can only love them.” —Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume Two

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE…