More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. -John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove. -John Boyle O’Reilly, A White Rose

My own opinion is that [love] is felt most completely in marriage, or some comparable attachment of long duration. Love takes time. What are called "love affairs" may afford a wide, and in retrospect, illuminating variety of emotions; not only fierce satisfactions and swooning delights, but the horrors of jealousy and the desperation of parting attend them; the hangover from one of these emotional riots may be long and dreadful. But rarely have the pleasures of love an opportunity to manifest themselves in such riots of passion. Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners. -Robertson Davies

The fact is that love is of two kinds - one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other. -Honoré De Balzac

In how many lives does love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of the grand passion than of a grand opera. -Israel Zangwill

Some men are so full of themselves that when they fall in love, they amuse themselves rather with their own passion than with the person they love. -François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld

...I prefer not to have among my guests two people or more, of any sex, who are in the first wild tremours of love. It is better to invite them after their new passion has settled, has solidified into a quieter reciprocity of emotions. (It is also a waste of good food, to serve it to new lovers.) -M.F.K. Fisher

To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary nature, leaving their mentality untouched, their self-possession intact. They are not burnt by even the red fire of physical passion - far less by the white fire of love. -Mary Webb, The Golden Arrow