Romance Tips

Love in Literature

From the great writers Aguila, Wister, Casanova, and Molière come romance tips that reveal how laughter, curiosity, criticism, and economic reality affect relationships.

This online collection offers ideas on growing love, the value of sensitivity, the wisdom of letting some things go without comment. It remarks upon the damage wrought by jealousy, criticism, or trying to change the beloved. In these pages is sage advice to deal with tragic situations, rejection, or lost love.

How to make love grow?

Pique his curiosity

The woman who shewing little succeeds in making a man want to see more, has accomplished three-fourths of the task of making him fall in love with her; for is love anything else than a kind of curiosity? I think not; and what makes me certain is that when the curiosity is satisfied the love disappears. Love, however, is the strongest kind of curiosity in existence, and I was already curious about Annette.

Jacques Casanova

Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

A truly fine romance tip: Laugh a lot.

Nay, furthermore, being elated far more than all my other companions, how often did I disparage their loves, saying within myself: “No one is loved as I am loved, no one loves a youth as matchless as the youth I love, no one realizes such delights from love as I!” In short, I counted the world as nothing in comparison with my love. It seemed to me that my head touched the skies, and that nothing was lacking to the culmination of my ecstatic bliss. We fell into one another’s arms, and love made us taste all its pleasures. Nevertheless, in the midst of bliss, some tinge of sadness gained upon our souls. Languishing love seems to redouble its strength, but it is only in appearance; sadness exhausts love more than enjoyment. Love is a madcap who must be fed on laughter and mirth, otherwise he dies of inanition.” 

Love requires a generous spirit

Coleridge justly observes, “that it is well ordered that the amiable and estimable should have a fainter perception of their own qualities than their friends have, otherwise they would love themselves.” Now, friendship, or love, permits their doing this unconsciously: mutual affection is a tacit avowal and appreciation of mutual good qualities,--perhaps friendship yet more than love, for the latter is far more an aspiration, a passion, than the former, and influences the permanent character much less. Under the magic of love a girl is generally in a feverish state of excitement, often in a wrong position, deeming herself the goddess, her lover the adorer; whereas it is her will that must bend to his, herself be abnegated for him. Friendship neither permits the former nor demands the latter."

Grace Aguilar

Woman's Friendship

Be more sensitive

A lover undoubtedly acts wisely when he tries to suit his temper to ours; a hundred acts of politeness have less influence than this unison, which makes two hearts appear as if stirred by the same feelings. This similarity firmly unites them; for we love nothing so much as what resembles ourselves.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin AKA Molière

Don Garcie de Navarre

Is there only one certain someone out there for you?

“I’d be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife. Man doesn’t love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry then.”

Owen Wister

Lady Baltimore

How might "self-love" affect a relationship?

A girl who stands alone, without acting or feeling friendship, is generally a cold unamiable being, so wrapt in self as to have no room for any person else, except perhaps a lover, whom she only seeks and values as offering his devotion to that same idol, self.

Grace Aguilar

Woman's Friendship

Love can turn into hate

Hatred and love are the opposite ends of the same rod Love has two faces: tender devotion and bitter aversion Do dearly sell, his right must be contest; What gold compares With that whereon his stamp he hath imprest? And all men know What costeth little that we rate but low. Love resolute Knows not the word “impossibility;” And though my suit Beset by endless obstacles I see, Yet no despair Shall hold me bound to earth while heaven is there “She fell in love with a jackass,” he remarked. “Puck bewitched her.”

Owen Wister

Lady Baltimore

Routine can kill love

Romeo and Juliet were not prevented in time. They had their bliss once and to the full, and died before they caused each other anything but ecstasy. No weariness of routine, no tears of disenchantment; complete love, completely realized—and finis! It’s the happiest ending of all the plays.

Owen Wister

Lady Baltimore

Marriage comes without guarantees

Casanova’s romance tips - the pre-nuptial agreement

“In diplomacy and business that will pass, but not in love. Love makes no conditions. Let us have no documents, no safeguards, but give yourself up to me as Rosalie did, and begin to-night without my promising anything. If you trust in love, you will make him your prisoner.”

Jacques Casanova

Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

Cynicism about marriage doesn’t make for happiness

She knew of the arrangement and had no objection, for though she did not love him she liked him very well. Most girls are wedded without love, and they are not sorry for it afterwards. They know that by marriage they become of some consequence in the world, and they marry to have a house of their own and a good position in society. They seem to know that a husband and a lover need not be synonymous terms. At Paris men are actuated by the same views, and most marriages are matters of convenience. The French are jealous of their mistresses, but never of their wives.

Jacques Casanova

Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

We hope the romance tips on this page see you through your next relationship in a satisfactory manner. Perhaps you would be interested in knowing what might kill love?

Leave romance tips and return to Home Page

Invite Cupid tonight!

Famous poems also offer romance tips