Are you struggling to write your vows? Are you and your partner both lovers of fine literature? Why not sample from some of the greats? (Bonus: Most of them are gender-neutral!)
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here… You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self – my good angel; I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you – and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“I’ve always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, just as he or she is, and not as you would like them to be.”
Atonement by Ian McEwan
“I’ve never had a moment’s doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.”
Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
“Now, I’m not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn’t matter to me. And it’s not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I’ll do anything you say.”
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
“We would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows opens and the stars bright.”
The Odyssey by Homer
“There is nothing more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house … confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
“Love is that condition where another person's happiness is essential to your own.”
True Love by Robert Fulghum
“We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.”
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
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