16 Inspiring Quotes About Love That Will Summon Your Inner Romantic

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,” wrote William Shakespeare. “Better to have lost and loved than never to have loved at all,” mused Ernest Hemingway. These are just a couple well-known pieces of wisdom about love, and there are many more where that came from. In fact, some of the most inspiring quotes about love you may have yet to read.

And there’s good reason to seek out such quotes, too. Someone else’s perspective on love may help you to see your relationship in a new light when it's starting to feel a tad stale. Or, it might allow you to discover a newfound optimism after a few disastrous dates. It may even help you begin to heal from a brutal breakup. The point is, everyone has their own unique romantic history to draw from, and those experiences can lead to invaluable wisdom. And the more wisdom you can gather about love, the more you can deepen your understanding of this weird and wonderful universal experience.

Whether you’re in dire need of a little encouragement around dating, are mending a broken heart, or are simply head over heels with your current partner, read on for some super insightful quotes that are sure to turn anyone into a hopeless romantic.

1. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss

2. “Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.” — Loretta Young

3. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle

4. “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” — David Viscott

5. “Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Franklin P. Jones

6. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow — this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

7. “Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.” — Paulo Coelho

8. “Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.” — Andre Breton

9. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu

10. “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” — C. S. Lewis

11. “Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” — Oscar Wilde

12. “Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have a to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.” — Louis de Bernieres

13. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” — James Baldwin

14. “Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” — Sam Levenson

15. “The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention.” — Richard Warren

16. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If any of these quotes resonated with you, consider printing or writing out them out and placing them somewhere super visible, like on your bathroom mirror or your fridge. IMHO, they also serve as phenomenal Instagram captions for when you're boasting about your bond with bae. You could even set reminders on your phone with any of the quotes to give you a daily dose of romantic inspiration. However you choose to use these pearls of wisdom is up to you, but hopefully just reading them gives you a fresh perspective on the remarkable universal feeling that is love.