Valentine's Day

Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944): from ‘Wind, Sand and the Stars’

There once was an old man of Lyme
Who married three wives at a time,
When asked 'Why a third?'
He replied, 'One's absurd!
And bigamy, sir, is a crime!'
William Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901)

The register of St Werburgh's Church in Derby records the marriage of Dr Samuel Johnson, one of England's greatest literary figures, to the widow Elizabeth 'Tetty' Porter on 9th July 1735. At the time of the wedding he was 25, and she was 46. When Elizabeth first met Dr Johnson she described him as 'the most sensible man I ever met', and despite the age difference Dr Johnson called the marriage 'a love-match on both sides'. A re-enactment of their wedding takes place in the Johnson Chapel of the church each year, on the anniversary of the event.

'A marriage … makes of two fractional lives a whole; it gives to two purposeless lives a work, and doubles the strength of each to perform it; it gives to two questioning natures a reason for living, and something to live for; it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, a new fragrance to the flowers, a new beauty to the earth, and a new mystery to life.'
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

'And she was fayr as is the rose in May.'
Geoffrey Chaucer (c1342-1400): from 'The Legend of Good Women: Cleopatra'

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
   By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
   There never was a better bargain driven:
      My true love hath my heart and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
   My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
   I cherish his because in me it bides:
      My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

An old legend linked with marriage concerns St Keyne's Well in Cornwall, situated a little way down a lane from the village of St Keyne, near Liskeard. The Celtic princess St Keyne bestowed a special power on the well, to the effect that whichever one of a newly married couple drank its water before the other would be the master of the marriage. The legend was immortalised by the 19th-century poet Robert Southey in 'The Well of St Keyne', in which a newly-married husband rushed to the well straight after his wedding ceremony only to find that he had been out-manoeuvred by his quick-witted wife - she had already drunk from a bottle of well water she had taken with her to the church!

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.
Augustine 'Og' Mandino (1926-1996)

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): from 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'

'Holding hands at midnight
'Neath a starry sky,
Nice work if you can get it,
And you can get it if you try.'
Ira Gershwin (1896-1989): from the song 'Nice Work If You Can Get It'

Love and marriage, love and marriage,
Go together like a horse and carriage,
This I tell ya, brother,
Ya can’t have one without the other.
Sammy Cahn (1931-1993): from the song 'Love and Marriage'

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all those kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): from 'Love's Philosophy'