Love Quotes From Classic Novels: 7 Lines Checked Against the Books
Seven love lines from Austen, Brontë, Dickens, Doyle and Hugo, checked against the full texts with chapter and speaker, plus 5 popular fakes to avoid.
Updated
This page used to carry fifteen lines from classic novels, many of them unsourced. Several were film dialogue, paraphrases or sentences that appear in no text we could open. Below are seven that held up, each checked against a full text on Project Gutenberg, with the chapter, the speaker and the moment that gives the words their weight. After them comes a short table of famous "classic novel" lines that failed the same check, and a guide to using a line from a novel in a card or letter without borrowing a false citation.
Novels are a good place to look for love language because the writers had to make a character say it aloud, under pressure, in a scene. That is also why the lines work best when you know the scene. If you want letters actual people wrote, our pages on Keats and Fanny Brawne and on Shakespeare's love lines cover that ground.
Proposals and confessions: three lines spoken out loud
If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
Jane Austen, Emma, 1815, volume III, chapter 13 (Mr Knightley)
Knightley says it as he proposes, just after asking Emma to tell him at once whether he has a chance. He opens with "I cannot make speeches, Emma", and the sentence is his apology for being plain-spoken. It is the best line in the book for anyone who finds declarations awkward, because it turns the awkwardness into the proof. A short card is enough: the line, then your name.
I ask you to pass through life at my side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847, chapter 23 (Mr Rochester)
This is Rochester's proposal in the orchard at Thornfield, and it comes at a price: in the same scene Jane tells him he is playing a farce, because she believes he is about to marry someone else. Read in that light the words are an argument, not a flourish. He is not offering passion; he is offering a partnership of equals, "second self" and "companion", which is why the line suits a wedding card better than a romance one. Just know that the speaker in the book has not yet told Jane the whole truth.
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847, chapter 27 (Mr Rochester)
Chapter 27 has Rochester explaining why he does not hate his wife Bertha, who is mad: he says that if Jane were mad, his arms would confine her, "and not a strait waistcoat". The sentence goes on, "Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still". Taken whole it is a promise about illness and loyalty, and it is the Brontë line to choose for a long marriage or a hard season. Quote the first sentence only if you are happy for readers who know the book to recall the scene.
Longing in the narration and in a letter
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861, chapter 29 (Pip, looking back)
Pip is not speaking to Estella here; he is telling the reader how he loved her, and he continues, "Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it". It is a confession of unhappy love, not an invitation, and the full list matters: shortened to "against reason, against promise" it loses the sting of "against hope, against happiness". Use it for a letter about a love that did not make anyone comfortable, or for a story you are telling in hindsight.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. ... I have loved none but you.
Jane Austen, Persuasion, published December 1817 (title page 1818), chapter 23 (Captain Wentworth's letter)
Wentworth writes this note at the White Hart in Bath and leaves it for Anne Elliot instead of saying it aloud. The ellipsis stands for a few sentences of the letter, which also contains "I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago" and "Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant." It is the original of the modern love letter after a long silence: it names the delay, owns the fault and then asks. The page on how to start and end a love letter uses the same shape.
Two lines that surprise people
You are of such value to me ... that all else has become nought. You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company, 1891, chapter 13 (Alleyne to Lady Maude)
It is rare to find a detective writer on a love-quote list, but Conan Doyle's medieval adventure has a real declaration. Alleyne speaks it at a castle window as the soldiers muster to leave for the wars, telling Lady Maude that he is poor and lowly and cannot leave without a word of love. She answers coldly, "This is over sudden". The line is sincere, old-fashioned and slightly breathless, which makes it a fair fit for a first confession.
The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, 1862, Fantine, Book Fifth, chapter 4 (Isabel Hapgood's translation)
Hugo is not describing a couple at all. The passage is about the aged Bishop Myriel, who went blind and was cared for by his sister, and it ends, "One does not lose the sight when one has love." The popular wording "the greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" is a looser paraphrase, so quote Hapgood if you want to put it inside quotation marks. It is a good choice for a note to a parent, a sibling or a partner who has looked after you.
Lines that look classic but are not in the text
We searched the full Gutenberg texts of these books for each wording below. The table says what we found and what to do instead.
| Line as shared | Usual credit | What the sources show |
|---|---|---|
| "My heart is, and always will be, yours" | Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility | The phrase is absent from Austen's novel (Gutenberg #161). UK press pieces about Valentine's polls attribute it to Edward Ferrars in the 1995 film, which has Emma Thompson's screenplay. Credit the film, or use Wentworth's letter above. |
| "I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone" | J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring | Spoken by Arwen in the 2001 film. We found no source placing it in Tolkien's own text, so give the film as the source. |
| "You have made a place in my heart where I thought there was no room for anything else" | George Eliot, Middlemarch | Not in the novel (Gutenberg #145). The only match for "place in my heart" is the blackmailer Raffles saying he has "a soft place in my heart" for his victim, a very different speaker. |
| "I love her, and that's the beginning and end of everything" | F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby | No such sentence in the novel's text (Gutenberg #64317); the nearest "I love her" is Tom Buchanan's, about Daisy, in a scene of quarrel. |
| "The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" | Victor Hugo | Paraphrase of the passage above. Hapgood's translation reads "supreme happiness" and "one is loved". |
The same habit of a famous speaker and no page number shows up in the English-language lists we traced in misattributed love quotes.
Using a line from a novel in a card or letter
- Cite the chapter, not just the book. "Emma, volume III, chapter 13" lets the reader find the page, and it shows you did not copy the line from a poster.
- Choose by speaker. Knightley's line suits a shy writer, Wentworth's a letter after a quarrel or a long gap, Pip's a wistful look back, Rochester's second line a long marriage.
- Keep the whole sentence. Several of these (Dickens, Hugo, Wentworth) are lists or runs that lose their meaning when cut at the first comma.
- Mind the scene. Knowing that Rochester is concealing a wife, or that Pip's love was unrequited, can change how a well-read recipient hears the line. If that matters, pick Knightley or Wentworth, whose scenes end well.
- Add one sentence of your own. A line in quotation marks followed by a plain sentence about the person ("You are the reason I ...") carries more than the quote alone. Pride and Prejudice fans can find more on that novel in our Pride and Prejudice love quotes.
Questions about love quotes from classic novels
Is "My heart is, and always will be, yours" in Sense and Sensibility?
Not in the novel. The wording does not appear in the Project Gutenberg text of the book, and press pieces about the line name the 1995 film as its source. For a line that is in an Austen novel, use Mr Knightley in Emma or Captain Wentworth's letter in Persuasion.
Which Jane Austen love quote is the most reliable to use?
Wentworth's letter in Persuasion, chapter 23. It is a real letter inside the novel, short enough to quote in part, and "I have loved none but you" is exactly as Austen wrote it.
Is the Arwen "one lifetime" line from the book?
We found no source placing it in Tolkien's text. It is spoken in the 2001 film, so cite the film if you use it.
Sources
Texts read on Project Gutenberg: Jane Eyre (#1260), Great Expectations (#1400), Emma (#158), Persuasion (#105), The White Company (#903), Les Misérables in Isabel F. Hapgood's translation (#135), and, for the absent lines, Sense and Sensibility (#161), Middlemarch (#145) and The Great Gatsby (#64317). Film attributions for Sense and Sensibility (1995) come from UK press coverage of romantic-quote polls and from the film's credits; we did not review the screenplay itself.
