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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Cupid

That blind, rascally boy that abuses every one’s eyes, because his own are out.

Shakespeare.

  • Cupid is a knavish lad,
  • Thus to make poor females mad.
  • Shakespeare.

    Love, well thou knowest, no partnership allows; Cupid averse rejects divided vows.

    Prior.

    Love is a child that talks in broken language, yet then he speaks most plain.

    Dryden.

    The wounds invisible that Love’s keen arrows make.

    Shakespeare.

    Thou art figured blind, and yet we borrow our best sight from thee.

    Massinger.

  • Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
  • And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
  • Shakespeare.

    There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.

    Sir Thomas Browne.

    There is an English song beginning, “Love knocks at the door.” He knocks less often than he finds it open.

    Mme. Swetchine.

    Love is ever busy with his shuttle, is ever weaving into life’s dull warp bright, gorgeous flowers, and scenes Arcadian.

    Longfellow.

    According to the Asiatics, Cupid’s bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.

    Miss Edgeworth.

  • This senior junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid:
  • Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,
  • The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
  • Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.
  • Shakespeare.

    Before the birth of Love, many fearful things took place through the empire of necessity; but when this god was born, all things rose to men.

    Socrates.

  • Cupid is a casuist,
  • A mystic and a cabalist—
  • Can your lurking thought surprise,
  • And interpret your device.***
  • Heralds high before him run;
  • He has ushers many a one;
  • He spreads his welcome where he goes,
  • And touches all things with his rose.
  • All things wait for and divine him—
  • How shall I dare to malign him?
  • Emerson.

    We say love is blind, and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a bandage around his eyes. Blind—yes, because he does not see what he does not like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in the universe is Love for finding what he seeks, and only that.

    Emerson.

    In the true mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him as guide; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we say Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

    Emerson.

    Love can take what shape he pleases; and when once begun his fiery inroad in the soul, how vain the after knowledge which his presence gives! We weep or rave; but still he lives, and lives master and lord, amidst pride and tears and pain.

    Barry Cornwall.