Dating Follies: Good Old Fashioned Love Quotes
By Fay A.
The feeling of spring has returned to the air. With it comes the blossoming of not just flowers, but of romance, as well. Maybe it’s the birds and the bees chirping and buzzing respectively with such fervor, or maybe a touch of the British Monarchy hoopla has gotten to me, but my brain is all twisted up in the old world displays of romantic love.
There is a nostalgic part of me that likes to dream of a time when romance was an actual art form: the days of true poetry, when words in the form of love letters that could comfort you and keep you warm. When someone’s feelings were so delicately described, there was no question that you were the only thing on their minds.
For most people, when they think of the romantics, their first thought is Shakespeare. “So dear I love him that with him, all deaths I could endure. Without him, live no life.” Or, “Love is not love which alters when it alteration find.” With sentiments such as these, it’s easy to understand why he has become the go-to guy for romantic prose. As for myself, I like to get lost in the love letters and poetry of some of the other great writers. I will share a few of my favorites:
“’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.” –Lord Byron
“True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.” –William Yates
“Life is one fool thing after another where as love is two fool things after each other.” –Oscar Wilde
“All love is sweet given or returned, common as light is love, and it’s familiar voice wearies not ever.” –Percy Shelley
To live in a time where falling in love was accompanied by pages filled with words so deeply thought out and so strategically placed as these seems magical. It’s not that romance has disappeared. I hear stories all the time that give me the warm fuzzies, and when you hear them, you can almost always see the twinkle in the eyes of whoever is telling it. Something as simple and sweet as a home-cooked meal on a Sunday evening, complete with candles, perfectly dimmed lights, and thoughtfully picked music in the background can be enough to make you smile for days or even weeks. It’s all in the details, and finding someone who pays attention to them.
So if you have yet to find someone who makes you breathe deep and smile like a blushing idiot every time you close your eyes and think of them, what’s out there as an alternative?
The new trend that I see everyone putting their “harlequin romance faces” on for is texting. And to be honest, it seems a bit ridiculous to me. It blows my mind that 160 characters of brash drivel can have people swooning. Yet I see it all the time; people staring at their phones, batting their eyes and giggling to themselves at whatever lame one-liner has just been sent to them.
Oftentimes it is crude, yet somehow the outcome is the same. Girls assume the air of Jane Austen’s heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, who’s brooding leading man, Mr. Darcy, has finally come to profess his love to her.
All the while, the reality is usually closer to a semi-random guy telling her that her ass looked hot in that skirt last night, or some other slack attempt at seduction. This is not everyone, mind you. I have seen some really sweet and well thought-out texts that actually deserve a bit of a sigh and tingle when read. But it seems that the younger generation is trending away from that.
With all of the uninspired pop-culture trash that surrounds us these days, I suppose it only makes sense that those just coming of age are totally lost in the ways of old-fashioned romance. They have been taught that producers in Hollywood can find your true love in just a few weeks with the help of competitive dating and cameras all around. They watch The Real World and Jersey Shore and think that it is an acceptable way to behave and interact with the opposite sex. It’s a bit of a tragedy to think that the art of love letter writing and grand gestures could be lost to something as soulless and bromidic as any of today’s reality TV examples.
I guess that leaves us, the slightly older generation, to teach them: those of us who used to read books as kids for entertainment, not just homework; those of us who referenced actual encyclopedias and cited real books when we wrote papers for school. It will be us who set the example for what romance looks, feels, and sounds like when people put real time and effort into making it beautiful.
We can show them that there is a lot more to learn from Dr. Seuss than all of the places you will go after graduation, and what the star bellies mean to the Sneetches; for it was Dr. Seuss himself who gave us great insight on recognizing love:
“You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” -Seuss
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