Valentine's Day is the time to pull out all the stops for your sweetheart.
Perhaps, that means capping it off with a homemade dinner for two. Or showering your lover with all the cliches — red roses, heart-shaped chocolates and teddy bears, of course.
But if words of affirmation is their love language (and hey, even if not), take some time to put your feelings into words.
And sure, it may be hard — impossible, even — to sum up a love as big and beautiful as yours, but here's to trying. If you're at a loss, then turn to these Valentine's Day quotes from authors, musicians and notable figures for inspiration.
Below, we've rounded up all the best romantic musings from popular love songs, rom-coms and classic books.
Find just the right words to say "I love you" to him or her, ranging from romantic (and a tad sexy) to downright funny. Prefer to keep things short, sweet and to the point? We included a few quotes that cut to the chase ("To me, you are perfect," for example),
Pick your favorites and write them in a Valentine's Day card to your significant other, galentine or anyone else who makes your heart skip a beat And while you're at it, save one quote to use as your Valentine's Day Instagram caption, so you can spread the love even further on Feb. 14.
Best Valentine's Day quotes
- "I love that you are my person and I am yours, that whatever door we come to, we will open it together.” — A.R. Asher
- "I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope and every dream I’ve ever had." — Nicholas Sparks, "The Notebook"
- "I swear I couldn’t love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.' — Leo Christopher
- "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." — Aristotle
- "You are the best thing that’s ever been mine." — Taylor Swift, "Mine"
- “We loved with a love that was more than love.” — Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
- “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” — Nora Ephron, “When Harry Met Sally”
- “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” — Zelda Fitzgerald
- “When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.” — Jodi Picoult, “My Sister’s Keeper”
- “Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.” — Paulo Coehlo, “Aleph”
- “I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything.” — Virginia Woolf, “Night & Day”
- “Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” — Victor Hugo
- “Valentine’s Day is the poet’s holiday.” — Ted Koosner
- “Loving ourselves truly so we can truly love others is the real valentine, and experiencing what I’m calling a Valentine Life, is available to everyone.” —Sark
- “Where there is love there is life.”— Charles Spurgeon, “The Complete Works of C.H. Spurgeon”
- “To me, you are perfect.” — Richard Curtis, “Love Actually”
- “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.” — Julius Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, “Casablanca”
- “Valentine’s Day is just another day to truly love like there is no tomorrow.” — Roy A. Ngansop, “I Choose Nina, My Tomboy”
- “Never knew I could feel like this / Like I’ve never seen the sky before / I want to vanish inside your kiss / Every day I love you more and more.”—Rudy Amado Perez, Kevin M. Gilbert and David Francis Baerwald, “Come What May”
- “Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is; / All the air is thy diocese, / And all the chirping choristers / And other birds are thy parishioners.” — John Donne, “An Epithalamion”
- “If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” — Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina”
- “Swoon. I’ll catch you.” — Anthony Minghella and Michael Ondaatje, “The English Patient” screenplay
- “The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.” — Leigh Bardugo, “Six of Crows”
- “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Over and over / I choose you.” —Author Unknown
- “Oh, did you expect me to play fair?” Cupid laughed. “I am the god of love. I am never fair.” — Rick Riordan, “The House of Hades”
- “The people you love deserve to hear it.” — Malanda Jean-Claude
Romantic Valentine's Day quotes
- "True love stories never have endings." — Richard Bach
- "There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved." — George Sand
- "One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving." — Paulo Coehlo
- "In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine." — Maya Angelou
- “In one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.” — Nicholas Sparks, “The Notebook”
- “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”
- “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou
- “Look after my heart — I’ve left it with you.” — Stephenie Meyer, “Eclipse”
- “True love is rare, and it’s the only thing that gives life real meaning.” — Nicholas Sparks, “Message in a Bottle”
- “Being married is like having somebody permanently in your corner. It feels limitless, not limited.” — Gloria Steinem
- “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.” — Alfred Tennyson
- “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”
- “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind / And therefore is wing’d Cupid blind.” — William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
- “Love is a rose but you better not pick it / Only grows when it’s on the vine / Handful of thorns and you’ll know you’ve missed it / Lose your love when you say the word mine.” — Neil Young, “Love Is a Rose”
- “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. / I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight / For the ends of being and ideal grace.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)”
- "You complete me.” — Cameron Crowe, “Jerry McGuire”
- “The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.” ― Guy de Maupassant, “A Tress of Hair”
- “Wanna hear your beating heart tonight / Before the bleeding sun comes alive.” — Ellie Goulding, “Beating Heart”
- “I love you / Because no two snowflakes are alike / And it is possible / If you stand tippy-toe / To walk between the raindrops.” — Nikki Giovanni, “Resignation”
- “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” — François de La Rochefoucauld
- “Make me immortal with a kiss.” ― Christopher Marlowe, “Doctor Faustus”
- “O my Luve is like a red, red rose / That’s newly sprung in June; / O my Luve is like the melody / That’s sweetly played in tune.”—Robert Burns, “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose”
- “There’s a place for us, a time and a place for us / Hold my hand and we’re halfway there / Hold my hand and I’ll take you there.” —Stephen Sondheim, “Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)”
- “It’s your love / It just does something to me / It sends a shock right through me.” — Stephony Smith (performed by Tim McGraw), “It’s Your Love”
- “I was in love with loving.” — St. Augustine, “The Confessions”
- “Music I heard with you was more than music / And bread I broke with you was more than bread.” — Conrad Aiken, “Bread and Music”
- “Love isn’t love till you give it away.” — Oscar Hammerstein, “Love Isn’t Love”
- “You are the sunshine of my life / That’s why I’ll always be around / You are the apple of my eye / Forever you’ll stay in my heart.” —Stevie Wonder, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”
- “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.” — Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus”
- “Sure there is music even in the beauty, and in the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.” — Sir Thomas Browne, “Religio Medici”
- “Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself.” —Boethius, “De Consolatione Philosophiae”
- “Love is the answer / At least for most of the questions in my heart.” — Jack Johnson, “Better Together”
- “I tell you this / To break your heart / By which I mean only / That it break open and never close again / To the rest of the world.” — Mary Oliver, “Lead”
- “Even after all this time The sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.” — Hafiz
- “You came along when everything was wrong and put a song in my heart.” — James F. Hanley (performed by Judy Garland), “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”
- “Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt the truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.” — William Shakespeare
- “Don’t forget: I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” — “Notting Hill”
- “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.” — A. A. Milne
- “Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.” — Arthur W. Piner
Funny Valentine's Day quotes
- "Love is something sent from heaven to worry the hell out of you." — Dolly Parton
- "Without Valentine’s Day, February would be, well, January." — Jim Gaffigan
- "Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!" — Jane Austen, "Emma"
- “You can’t buy happiness but you can buy chocolate, and that’s kind of the same thing.” — Author Unknown
- “You’re my funny valentine / Sweet comic valentine / You make me smile with my heart.” — Richard Rodgers and Hart Lorenz
- “How much better is thy love than wine!” — Song of Solomon 4:10
- “Love Valentine’s Day, love New Year’s Eve, love taking the SATs, just love high pressure situations and extreme expectations in general.” — B.J. Novak
- “I look / At you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world / Except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick.” — Frank O’Hara, “Having a Coke with You”
- “There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.” — Linda Grayson
