Books
25 Romantic Quotes From Books That Will Make For Swoon-worthy Proposals
Struggling to find the right words? Maybe try using a professional’s prose.
If you're looking to craft the perfect proposal for that special someone, check out the romantic proposal quotes from books listed here. Taken from the last 200 years of English-language literature, these quotes are sure to make your beloved swoon into your arms for that picture-perfect kiss.
Literary proposals have a way of sticking in our memories. Classics fans can never forget Mr. Darcy's two proposals — one disastrous, one less so — to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, or Laurie's proposal to Amy in Little Women, and contemporary literature fans can’t get enough of stories like Call Me by Your Name and This Is How You Lose the Time War. The way we see it, there's nothing wrong with taking a little inspiration from the romantic overtures found in books.
Even if you aren't preparing to pop the question, chances are high that you know someone who is — or perhaps, you simply want to revel in some literary love affairs. Whatever your reason, you’re sure to find what you’re looking for in the romantic proposal quotes below.
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“If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I'm with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.”
— from Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
"If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving."
— from Paula by Isabel Allende
"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."
— from Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
"You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling."
— from The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
"I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed."
— from Possession by A. S. Byatt
“Happiness seeps into me when you're around.... Without invitation, without notice, joy finds me. Being around you is being alive, it's breathing, it's home.”
— from Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev
"You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city . . . you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes."
— from Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany
“I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.”
— from This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
— from Adam Bede by George Eliot
"It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment."
— from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
"I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm."
— from The Princess Bride by William Goldman
“Maybe it's better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”
— from They Both Die in the End by Adam Silvera
"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading."
— from Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
"After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you."
— from The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
"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."
— from Atonement by Ian McEwan
“I fell in love with you the day that I met you, and then I fell in love with the person you remembered you are. I got to fall in love with you twice. That’s — that’s magic. You’re the first thing I’ve believed in since — since I don’t even remember, okay, you’re — you’re movies and destiny and every stupid, impossible thing, and it’s not because of the fucking train, it’s because of you. It’s because you fight and you care and you’re always kind but never easy, and you won’t let anything take that away from you. You’re my hero.... I don’t care if you think you’re not one. You are.”
— from One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
“You don't find a life. You have to make one, with the people around you and the causes you put your strength into.”
— from The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
"Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it."
— from Jazz by Toni Morrison
"If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets."
— from Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
— from "Sonnet XVIII" by Pablo Neruda
“All these years, [we]’ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.”
— from Normal People by Sally Rooney
“[My] heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.”
— from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
"As in the soft and sweet eclipse, / When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, / High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull; / So when thy shadow falls on me, / Then am I mute and still, by thee / Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, / Full, oh, too full!"
— from "Prometheus Unbound" by Percy Bysshe Shelley
"I want — I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words like that — categories like that — won't exist. Where we shall be simply two human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter."
— from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
“Happiness is tricky. Sometimes you have to fight for it. Sometimes, though—the best times—it sneaks up behind you, wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you close.”
— from Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon
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