You will never know true happiness until you have truly loved

Burke, Edmund

I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

Disraeli, Benjamin

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

Foster, John

Fiction may be more instructive than real history; but the vast rout of romances and novels, as they are, do incalculable mischief. I wish we could collect all together, and make one vast fire of them. I should exult to see the smoke of them ascend, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah: the judgment would be as just.

More, Hannah

The habitual indulgence in such reading is a silent, ruining mischief.

Necker, Madam

Romance is the poetry of literature.

Pope, Alexander

In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

Sterne, Lawrence

Lessons of wisdom have never such power over us as when they are wrought into the heart through the groundwork of a story which engages the passions.

Von Ense, Varnhagen

In the meanest hut is a romance, if you but know the hearts theree.