English Love Sayings
and Love Proverbs
English love sayings and proverbs listed on this page tell much about the attitude of English people to love.
Although love is a universal concept present in cultures of all nations, the idea of love has its own peculiarities in each culture.
Researcher O.K. Tsyukh has aimed to find out what English people think about love. To this end, the researcher has analyzed English love sayings and proverbs. Why sayings and proverbs? Because they precisely describe the mentality and norms of behavior of people.
To research the concept of love in the English language, love sayings and proverbs were taken from the following dictionaries: The Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs by G. L. Apperson, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs by Rosalind Fergusson, and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
The full English love sayings research report in Russian is available here.
If you do not read in Russian, below is a summary of this original linguistic research in English.
On the basis of the English love sayings and proverbs listed below, the researcher assumes that for English people:
1. Love is all-powerful, irrational; nothing and nobody can resist it. Love provides a stimulus to forgive, trust, worry about the destiny of the loved one; love transforms a person. It is impossible to love on order or at will; also, it is impossible to hide love.
2. Love distorts the perception of reality. It is inexpressible in words and is maddening. New love expels an old one; separation kills love in some people and increases in the other. Love is a blessing; it is connected with hatred; it can be real and false.
3. One can't buy love, but love depends on the material wealth and age. Choosing an object of love is unmotivated, but at the same time the internal, intuitive motive of the choice is evaluated positively. There are corresponding methods to get into graces of the object of adoration. Marriage is fatal for love.
4. Love is present in family relationships.
These assumptions have been made by the researcher based on the following love sayings and proverbs:
- Love rules his kingdom without a sword - Love makes the world go round - Love makes all men equal - Love laughs at locksmiths - Love will find a way - Love will go through stone walls - Love is as strong as death. [Song of Solomon 8:6] - Love and leprosy few escape. [Chinese proverb] - Love will creep where it may not go - No herb will cure love - Where love's in the case, the doctor is an ass - Love is above King or Kaiser, lord or laws - Love conquers all | Nothing can resist love; nothing can escape love |
- Love cannot be forced - Love is not fair – one may fall for a bugbear - A man has choice to begin love, but not to end it - Time, not the mind, puts an end to love - Love and a cough cannot be hid - Love and pease-pottage are two dangerous things - Love and pease porridge will make their way - Love is not fair – one may fall for a bugbear - Love is free | Love cannot be stirred up intentionally and it cannot be hidden |
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- Where love fails, we espy all faults - Faults are thick where love is thin - In love is no lack - Love covers many infirmities
| Love motivates people:to forgive |
- Love asks faith, and faith asks firmness - Where love is, there is faith - Where there is no trust there is no love - Love locks no cupboards
| to trust |
- Love is full of fear | to worry about the fate of the loved one |
- Love makes a wit of the fool - Love makes all hard hearts gentle - Labor is light where love doth pay - Love makes one fit for any work - He that has love in his breast, has spurs in his sides - Love and business leach eloquence - Love makes men orators
| to change |
- Next to love, quietness - When love is greatest, words are fewest - Whom we love best, to them we can say least
| Love cannot be expressed in words |
- Love sees no faults - In the eyes of the lover, pock-marks are dimple - If Jack's in love, he's no judge of Jill's beauty - No love is foul, nor prison fair - Love makes a good eye squint - Love is blind
| A person in love takes a rose-colored view of the world |
- Sound love is not soon forgotten - The course of true love never did run smooth (Shakespeare) - True love never grows old
| The authenticity and sincerity of love is appreciated |
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- Hatred is blind, as well as love - They that too deeply loved too deeply hate - Love and hate are blood relations - He that cannot hate cannot love - The greatest hate springs from the greatest love
| Love is closely connected with other feelings and emotions such as: hatred |
- Love is never without jealousy - Love being jealous, makes a good eye look asquint | jealousy |
- The new love drives out the old love - Old love will not be forgotten - One love expels another - It is best to be off with the old love before you are on with the new - Old love does not rust | an old flame |
- Love and lordship like no fellowship - When love puts in, friendship is gone | friendship |
- Love is the touchstone of virtue - The love of the wicked is more dangerous than their hatred | virtue |
- Love is the true reward of love - Love begets love - Love is the loadstone of love - Love is neither bought nor sold - Love is not found in the market - The love of money is the root of all evil - Love without end has no end - Love is the true price of love | Love is not for sale |
- Love lasts as long as money endures - Money is the sinews of love as well as of war - When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window - Love does much, money does everything /but money goes all | Monetary wealth is important |
- Love is lawless - Love is without reason - Love is without law - One cannot love and be wise - Affection blinds reason - No folly to being in love - Love and pride stock Bedlam - Lovers are madmen - Who may give law to a lover? - Love and knowledge live not together - Of soup and love the first is the best | The unmotivated choice of the object of adoration is evaluated negatively: love is blind |
- Love speaks, even when the lips are closed - Though love is blind, yet 'tis not for want of eyes - Love needs no teaching | Intuition, which is attributed to love, is evaluated positively: love does not need teachers |
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- He that woos a maid, must seldom come in her sight; but he that woos a widow must woo her day and night - A man may woo where he will, but he will wed where his hap is - Sunday's wooing draws to ruin - Praise the child, and you make love to the mother - Happy is the wooing that is not long a-doing - The last suitor wins the maid - When petticoats woo, breeks may come speed - Biting and scratching is Scots folk's wooing - He that would the daughter win, must with the mother first begin | Love relationship include: - A successful courtship with the object of adoration |
- Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage - Marriage is the tomb of love - Love is a fair garden and marriage a field of nettles - Love is a flower which turns into fruit at marriage - Who marries for love without money, has good nights and sorry days - Marry first, and love will follow - It is unlucky to marry for love | - Marriage, which is hardly compatible with love |
- Calf love, half love; old love, cold love - To woo is a pleasure in a young man, a fault in an old - Lad's love's a busk of broom, hot awhile and soon done - Love of lads and fire of chats is soon in and soon out - No love like the first love | - Age and age differences, which have an influence on love relationship |
- If you love the boll, you cannot hate the branches - A mother’s love never ages - No love to a father’s; Love the babe for her that bare it - A mother’s love is best of all - He that loves the tree loves the branch | Love between family members is an important aspect of love |
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