1) Love is not a ruthless mind game. Mind games do not make me think you are alluring. Mind games do make me think you are just a waste of my precious time. Love is when you aren’t afraid to say what you need to say. Love is honesty. Love is when you finally decide to tell the one you love how you really feel. Don't hold back.

You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on. - Pride & Prejudice

2) Love shouldn't be rushed. First start out as friends, and see what happens along the way. When you become best friends, you will turn into the perfect lovers. If you can't be friends with that person how do you expect to love that person? You always hear couples who are deeply, 'can't live without each other kind of love' say: "I fell in love with my best friend," for a good reason.

I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. - When Harry Met Sally

3) Love is when a connection naturally happens; it can never be forced.

When I'm with you, I feel so safe. Like I'm home. - Garden State

4) Love isn’t always enough. No matter how many times you cross paths, no matter how much you mean to one another, and perhaps truly love each other, a brutal kind of love can arise. A sad truth raises its ugly head, for whatever the reason may be, sometimes you or that special someone is not ready to love or be loved. Sometimes you just meet someone at the wrong time in a person's life. The love was and is probably still there, and yet you know and that person knows, it just can't and will never work out. A slow heartbreak wrapped in: happiness, sadness, and love all at once. But in this scenario love doesn't conquer all. Timing is everything.

How do you look at the girl you love and tell yourself it's time to walk away? The Vow

5) Love that is rejected is like slipping between the cracks in the ninth circle of hell. When it comes to love, you have to realize just because you love someone, doesn’t mean he or she loves you back. If you are rejected, love that person anyway, wish the best for her or him, and love and respect yourself enough to let it go and walk away.

A man who wants to make a relationship work will move mountains to keep the woman he loves. If he's not calling you to tell you he loves you and wants you back, it's because he's showing up at your new residence in person... if he's not doing any of that, he may love you, he may miss you, but ultimately he's just not that into you. - He's Just Not That Into You

6) Love like life, doesn't last forever. The cliche rings true: "All good things must come to an end." Sometimes the person you are in love with last for a short period of time: a month, three months, six months, a year, two years, five years. No matter how long the relationship last, when it ends, you feel as if the person you once turned to and confided with everyday has died, and you feel as if something died within you too, and all you are left with is the memories you shared together.

All we have is how you remember me - I want that memory to be strong and beautiful. If I know I am remembered that way - I can face anything...don't you see? You're my immortality. - Sweet November

7) Love and respect go hand in hand. Love and lust are often confused with one another. If looks and sex is the main subject of the conversation, then you are not respected at all; you are looked at either as a: booty call, good for a "fun" time or the other woman and you should run away and never return. If your so-called love truly loved you, sex would be the last thing that comes to mind. If someone truly loved you, the conversation would be more like: what you did that day, where you want to go together, what your thoughts are about everything, what you want out of life, and not just about that picture perfect body. If that's not the case then, 'whatever forever.'

You can't love me if you don't respect me. - Lyn Collins

8) Love is not just about loving another person. Love is also about loving yourself too. If you can't love yourself, you can't love another person. Being single isn’t some sort of disease many people make it out to be. The way I see it, being single is an opportunity where you love, find and create yourself. When you love yourself, you surprise yourself. Self-love is a beautiful feeling, as is loving another person. Self-love is your duty to your own happiness.

The thing about being single is you should cherish it because in a week or a lifetime of being alone you may only get one moment. One moment when you're not tide up in a relationship with anyone... A parent, a pet, a sibling, a friend. One moment when you stand on your own, really truly single. And then it's gone. - How To Be Single

9) Love is no black and white checklist; love comes in shades of gray. If you are truly in love with someone you take the good and the bad because it's who that person is. Take it or leave it.

I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car,
I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick, it even makes my rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie,
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around and the fact that you didn't call
but mostly I hate the way I don't hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. - 10 Things I Hate About you

10) Love is sacred and strange. You sacrifice by doing things you don’t want to do, for the one you love because it would bring a smile to his or her face. You do it because you know it's incredibly hard to find someone in this world you love and who loves you back. Love is not meant to be convenient. A love that is convenient is not love at all. Love is not selfish. Don't take the easy way out. Dare to love someone when it takes effort, not when it's always that simple.

And if I asked you about love you probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone could level you with her eyes. Feeling like! God put an angel on earth just for you…who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel and to have that love for her to be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting’ up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hours don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. - Good Will Hunting

11) Love is when someone is there for you when times are tough. Cherish the person who, when you were nobody, believed you were somebody.

Nobody's life is filled with perfect little moments. And if it were, they wouldn't be perfect little moments. They would just be normal. How would you ever know happiness if you never experience downs? - Cecelia Ahern, P.S. I Love You

12) Love happens with the person you least expect. Sometimes you settle with someone because you knew him or her for a long time and you're too afraid to meet someone new. That's not love. That's called convenience. With on again, and off again lovers, you still go back to that person because you can't let him or her go, or thought it was too good to be true in the first place, and yet you get let down feeling hurt over and over again. Rekindling old flames taste like relit cigarette. It's just not the same. You may have thought things aligned perfectly for the both of you, but the relationship came to an end for a reason. There is a whole world full of people out there and each one deserves a closer look. Love like life is an adventure. Life-like love is about moving forward, not backward. Turn and face the strange because maybe, just maybe you will find stars.

Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.- Henry Van Dyke