Last night, Karen and I snuggled up on the sofa with a soft throw and a cat named Boo while watching a Hallmark movie, “I do, I do, I do,” a plagiarized revisiting of the movie, “Ground Hog Day.” Here’s the plot.
An architect heads to the altar with her fiancé, unsure of her marriage and their future. She relives her disastrous wedding day, put together by her fiance’s overbearing mother, over and over until, with the help of her fiancé’s brother, she begins to face her biggest fears and discover what she really wants in herself and in her life.
I don’t consider this wasted time because it was spent with my lovely wife, but afterward, I felt the need to baptize myself in the redeeming waters of better writing.
Which reminds me of the most romantic line uttered by someone I know who wasn’t in a movie or book. My brother-in-law toasted his wife at their wedding with these heart warming words, “I love you as much as my dog Toby.”
In honor of Toby, here are some other pretty good all-time romantic quotes.
“If you ever have need of my life, come and take it.”
Anton Chekhov, The Seagull
“If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.”
Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
“The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn’t stop each other on the street to say I love you.”
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” Jane Austen, Emma
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
A Woman of No Importance, by Oscar Wilde
“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.” Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.”
–The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare – there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.”
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;/ I have spread my dreams under your feet;/Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
–“He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” by W.B. Yeats
“I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm.”
–The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
Bespoke 