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

Kisses

The blossom of love.

Ninon de Lenclos.

Love’s great artillery.

Crashaw.

Kisses are the messengers of love.

Martin Opitz.

Stolen kisses are always sweetest.

Leigh Hunt.

A kiss from my mother made me a painter.

Benjamin West.

A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love.

Byron.

“Kiss” rhymes to “bliss” in fact, as well as verse.

Byron.

Eden revives in the first kiss of love.

Byron.

Sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.

Byron.

Our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

Tennyson.

With this kiss take my blessing. God protect thee!

Shakespeare.

As in the soft and sweet eclipse, when soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.

Shelley.

You cannot analyze a kiss any more than you can dissect the fragrance of flowers.

H. W. Shaw.

I clasp thy waist, I feel thy bosom’s beat—oh, kiss me into faintness sweet and dim!

Alexander Smith.

Or leave a kiss, but in the cup, and I’ll not look for wine.

Ben Jonson.

Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss, as seal to the indenture of my love.

Shakespeare.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

Swift.

Some there be that shadows kiss; such have but a shadow’s bliss.

Shakespeare.

  • ***And when my lips meet thine
  • Thy very soul is wedded unto mine.
  • H. H. Boyesen.

  • A soft lip
  • Would tempt you to eternity of kissing!
  • Ben Jonson.

  • What is a kisse? Why this, as some approve:
  • The sure sweet sement, glue, and lime of love.
  • Herrick.

  • I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,
  • And that’s a feeling disputation.
  • Shakespeare.

    The fragrant infancy of opening flowers flowed to my senses in that melting kiss.

    Southern.

    Once more for pity, that I may keep the flavor upon my lips till we meet again.

    Dryden.

  • The kiss you take is paid by that you give:
  • The joy is mutual, and I’m still in debt.
  • Lord Lansdowne.

    Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.

    Drayton.

  • Come, lay thy head upon my breast,
  • And I will kiss thee unto rest.
  • Byron.

    Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close.

    E. B. Browning.

  • Oh! let me live forever on those lips!
  • The nectar of the gods to these is tasteless.
  • Dryden.

    And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

    Shakespeare.

    God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.

    Beecher.

    Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

    Shakespeare.

    Then kissed me hard, as if he plucked up kisses by the roots, that grew upon my lips.

    Shakespeare.

    Mercy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

    Bible.

  • Sweeter than the stolen kiss
  • Are the granted kisses.
  • Bayard Taylor.

    And with a velvet lip print on his brow such language as the tongue hath never spoken.

    Mrs. Sigourney.

  • Give me one kiss, I’ll give it to thee again;
  • And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain.
  • Shakespeare.

    Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career of laughter with a sigh?

    Shakespeare.

    The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer.

    Holmes.

  • Kiss the tear from her lip, you’ll find the rose
  • The sweeter for the dew.
  • Webster.

    It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

    Bovee.

    I rest content, I kiss your eyes, I kiss your hair in my delight; I kiss my hand and say good-night.

    Joaquin Miller.

  • First time he kiss’d me, he but only kiss’d
  • The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
  • And ever since it grew more clean and white.
  • E. B. Browning.

    He kissed her and promised. Such beautiful lips! Man’s usual fate,—he was lost upon the coral reefs.

    Douglas Jerrold.

    Four sweet lips, two pure souls, and one undying affection,—these are love’s pretty ingredients for a kiss.

    Bovee.

    O Love, O fire! once he drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

    Tennyson.

    She brought her cheek up close, and leaned on his; at which he whispered kisses back on hers.

    Dryden.

    That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

    George Eliot.

  • I was betrothed that day;
  • I wore a troth kiss on my lips I could not give away.
  • E. B. Browning.

  • Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,
  • Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.
  • Shakespeare.

    Kisses are like grains of gold or silver found upon the ground, of no value themselves, but precious as showing that a mine is near.

    George Villiers.

    It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved—is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.

    Landor.

    Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear; my true lip hath virgined it ever since.

    Shakespeare.

  • O delicious kiss,
  • Why thou so suddenly art gone?
  • Lost in the moment thou art won?
  • Peter Pindar.

  • Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
  • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
  • Back to her mouth which answers there for all.
  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

    My lips pressed themselves involuntarily to hers—a long, long kiss, burning intense—concentrating emotion, heart, soul, all the rays of life’s light, into a single focus.

    Bulwer.

  • I came to feel how far above
  • All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,
  • All earthly pleasure, all imagined good,
  • Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss.
  • Keats.

  • Says he—“I’d better call agin;”
  • Says she—“Think likely, mister!”
  • Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
  • An’—Wal, he up an’ kist her.
  • Lowell.

    And steal immortal kisses from her lips; which even in pure and vestal modesty still blush as thinking their own kisses sin.

    Shakespeare.

    You would think, if our lips were made of horn and stuck out a foot or two from our faces, kisses at any rate would be done for. Not so. No creatures kiss each other so much as the birds.

    Charles Buxton.

  • My lips till then had only known
  • The kiss of mother and of sister,
  • But somehow, full upon her own
  • Sweet, rosy, darling mouth—I kissed her.
  • E. C. Stedman.

  • I felt the while a pleasing kind of smart,
  • The kiss went tingling to my very heart;
  • When it was gone the sense of it did stay,
  • The sweetness cling’d upon my lips all day,
  • Like drops of honey loth to fall away.
  • Dryden.

  • A pleasing trembling thrills through all my blood
  • Whene’er you touch me with your melting hand;
  • But when you kiss, oh! ’tis not to be spoke.
  • Gildon.

  • Then press my lips, where plays a flame of bliss—
  • A pure and holy love-light—and forsake
  • The angel for the woman in a kiss,
  • At once I wis,
  • My soul will wake!
  • Victor Hugo.

  • Give me a kisse, and to that kisse a score;
  • Then to that twenty, adde a hundred more;
  • A thousand to that hundred; so kiss on,
  • To make that thousand up a million;
  • Treble that million, and when that is done,
  • Let’s kisse afresh, as when we first begun.
  • Herrick.

  • Take, O take those lips away,
  • That so sweetly were foresworn;
  • And those eyes, the break of day,
  • Lights that do mislead the morn;
  • But my kisses bring again,
  • Seals of love, but sealed in vain.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Give me kisses! Nay, ’tis true
  • I am just as rich as you;
  • And for every kiss I owe,
  • I can pay you back, you know.
  • Kiss me, then,
  • Every moment—and again.
  • J. G. Saxe.

    It is as old as the creation, and yet as young and fresh as ever. It pre-existed, still exists, and always will exist. Depend upon it, Eve learned it in Paradise, and was taught its beauties, virtues, and varieties by an angel, there is something so transcendent in it.

    Haliburton.

  • Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,
  • (Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red)
  • The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine;—
  • What seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head;
  • Look in mine eyeballs; there thy beauty lies;
  • Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?
  • Shakespeare.

  • I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse
  • The tyrant’s wish, “That mankind only had
  • One neck, which he with one fell stroke might pierce;”
  • My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad,
  • And much more tender on the whole than fierce;
  • It being (not now, but only while a lad)
  • That womankind had but one rosy mouth,
  • To kiss them all at once from north to south.
  • Byron.

    There is the kiss of welcome and of parting; the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen, or the mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise, and the receipt of fulfilment. Is it strange, therefore, that a woman is invincible, whose armory consists of kisses, smiles, sighs, and tears?

    Haliburton.