35 Best Romantic Sayings and Messages for Him and Her

As the old adage goes, love is a many splendored thing. That’s precisely why it can be so hard to capture in words—especially when it comes to significant romantic milestones such as marriage proposals, wedding vows, and even major anniversaries.

How do you wrap up dozens of thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a few sentences? Lucky for you, more than a few brilliant minds have made the attempt, and their words can serve as a guiding light when yours don’t feel quite up to the task. Beyond your vows, you can also incorporate these words of affection into your wedding decor. Personalize your nuptials by displaying a romantic quote on a banner, entry sign, or photo backdrop. Cocktail napkins and wedding favors can also be printed with sentimental sayings for a touch of old-world romance. Better yet, tap your favorite calligrapher to bring your favorite passage or quote to life on a draped tablecloth.

From classic literature to the depths of Tumblr and back to the newest Netflix shows, here are 35 romantic sayings for him and her to inspire your own declarations.

1. “I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. ... There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death, I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.” —author Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love
2. “I want him to know what it clearly seems to me: that if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.” —author Amy Hempel, The Most Girl Part of You
3. “Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?” ―author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
4. “I wasn’t sure this day would ever come, but you were. I wasn’t sure love could survive everything we put it through, but you were. You were always strong and always sure. And now I know I want you to stand beside me for the rest of my life. That’s what I’m sure of.” —The character Topanga Lawrence on TV show Boy Meets World
5. “I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think that God made you for me.” —author Sally Rooney, Normal People
6. “I am not the first person you loved. You are not the first person I looked at with a mouthful of forevers. We have both known loss like the sharp edges of a knife. We have both lived with lips more scar tissue than skin. Our love came unannounced in the middle of the night. Our love came when we’d given up on asking love to come. I think that has to be part of its miracle.” —poet Clementine von Radics, “Mouthful of Forever”
7. “Now I know what I want: a relationship that will fill me with dopamine and steady my heartbeat when he entwines his fingers with mine.” —writer Melissa Hill, “Can Tylenol Help Heal a Broken Heart?”
8. “It’s not like in the movies. It’s better because it’s real.” ―author Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before
9. “If you’re looking for the word that means caring for someone beyond all rationality and wanting them to have everything they want no matter how much it destroys you, it’s love. And when you love someone you just don’t stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy. Even then. Especially then. You just don’t give up, because if I could give up, that wouldn't be love. … That would be some other disposable thing that is not worth fighting for.” —the character Ted Mosby on TV show How I Met Your Mother
10. “It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors.” ―author Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
11. “I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” —author John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
12. “It’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day.” —the character Noah Calhoun from the movie The Notebook
13. “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.” —author Michelle Hodkin, The Evolution of Mara Dyer
14. “Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.” ―author Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
15. “The love I felt for her ... had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons—it was systemic and it was complete.” —author Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
16. “I love you and I like you.” —the character Leslie Knope on TV show Parks and Recreation 
17. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you directly without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.” —poet Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: "XVII" (excerpt)
18. “To meet a beautiful woman is one thing, but to meet your best friend in the most beautiful of women is something entirely apart.” —the character Simon Basset on the Netflix show Bridgerton
19. “But really, it’s because you lift my heart. You make me insanely happy to be alive. So I don’t know what happens after this ... but that’s why you need to know. I’m fucking out-of-my-mind crazy about you.” —author Stephen Markley, Ohio
20. “Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.” —author David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary
21. “When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No … don’t blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away.” ―author Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin
22. “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” —author F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
23. “I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss of her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.” —the character Seth in the movie City of Angels
24. “You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.” —poet E.E. Cummings
25. “Never say love is ‘like’ anything. It isn’t.” ―author Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
26. “Love is always patient and kind. It is never jealous. Love is never boastful or conceited. It is never rude or selfish. It does not take offense and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins, but delights in the truth. It is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.” —1 Corinthians 13:4-7
27. “Love is like the wind, you can't see it but you can feel it.” —author Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
28. “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.” —the character Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice
29. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” —the character Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights
30. “In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” —American memoirist Maya Angelou
31. “I will never stop trying. Because when you find the one... you never give up.” —the character Cal Weaver from Crazy Stupid Love
32. “I wasn’t expecting you. I didn’t think that we would end up together. The single most extraordinary thing I’ve ever done with my life is fall in love with you. I’ve never been seen so completely, loved so passionately and protected so fiercely.” —the character Beth Pearson from This Is Us
33. “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together… and I knew it.” —the character Sam Baldwin from Sleepless in Seattle
34. “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.” —author Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
35. “It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” —novelist Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita