Citations:true love

English citations of true love

• 1595–1596, William Shakespeare, Loues Labour's loſt, act I, scene ii

  I shall be forsworn, which is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love

• 1765, “Waly Waly, Love Be Bonny”, as quoted in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets (1905), Thomas Percy (editor)

  I leant my back unto an aik,

  I thought it was a trusty tree;

  But first it bow'd, and fyne it brak,

  Sae my true love did lightly me.

• c. 1780, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, Mirth Without Mischief

  The first day of Christmas

  My true love sent^[sic] to me

  A partridge in a pear tree.

• 1847, Friedrich von Schlegel, The Philosophy of Life, and Philosophy of Language: In a Course of Lectures, page 38

  And as all true love is reciprocal, so also is true love lasting and indestructible; or, to "speak as a man," even because it is the very inmost life of humanity, it is, therefore, true unto death.

• 1875, Sidney Lanier, The Symphony

  When all’s done, what hast thou won

  Of the only sweet that’s under the sun?

  Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh

  Of true love’s least, least ecstasy?

• 1988, Evelyn Mullay, The Artist at Work: Narrative Technique in Chrétien de Troyes, page 88

  For both Thomas and Chrétien true love is identified with the ability to be true to one's commitment, and Fenice is justifiably confident of her ability to be constant.

• 2006 January 26, Linda Morris, “Pope dedicates message to meaning of true love”, The Age, Melbourne

  THE leader of the world's 1 billion Catholics has tried to answer the age-old question of philosophers, playwrights and poets — the meaning of love — and concluded that erotic desire without self-sacrifice and spiritual devotion cannot be true love.