Words From The Heart

Love can be one of those emotions so big that it's a struggle to put it into words and, when you try, it can often feel cheesy or inauthentic. In our digital age, the art of the love letter has fallen out of style. Luckily, some of the greatest love letters in history have survived centuries for our perusal.

Edmund Leighton on Wikimedia

1. John Keats To Fanny Brawne

October, 1819: "I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet."

William Hilton on Wikimedia

2. Abigail Adams To John Adams

December 1782: "Should I draw you the picture of my Heart, it would be what I hope you still would Love; tho it containd nothing New; the early possession you obtained there; and the absolute power you have ever mantaind over it; leaves not the smallest space unoccupied."

Benjamin Blyth on Wikimedia

3. Ludwig Van Beethoven To "Immortal Beloved"

July 1812: "I can live only wholly with you or not at all. No one else can ever possess my heart – never – never. Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves. Be calm, only by a calm consideration of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together. Be calm – love me – today – yesterday – what tearful longings for you – you – you – my life – my all – farewell. "

Joseph Karl Stieler on Wikimedia

4. Orson Welles To Rita Hayworth

1943/4: "I suppose most of us are lonely in this big world, but we must fall tremendously in love to find it out. [...]  You are my life — my very life. Never imagine your hope approximates what you are to me. Beautiful, precious little baby — hurry up the sun! — make the days shorter till we meet. I love you, that's all there is to it."

International News Photo on Wikimedia

5. Héloïse d'Argenteuil To Peter Abélard

12th century: "God knows I never sought anything in you except yourself; I wanted simply you, nothing of yours. I looked for no marriage-bond, no marriage portion, and it was not my own pleasures and wishes I sought to gratify, as you well know, but yours. The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word friend."

Edmund Leighton on Wikimedia

6. Emily Dickinson To Susan Gilbert

Early 1880: "Susan — I would have come out of Eden to open the Door for you if I had known you were there. You must knock with a Trumpet as Gabriel does, whose Hands are small as yours —I knew he knocked and went away — I didn't dream that you did."

Unknown authorUnknown author on Wikimedia

7. Franz Kafka To Felice Bauer

November 1912: "I answer one of your letters, then lie in bed in apparent calm, but my heart beats through my entire body and is conscious only of you. I belong to you; there is really no other way of expressing it, and that is not strong enough."

Mondadori Portfolio on Wikimedia

8. Sullivan Ballou To Sarah Ballou

July 1861: "But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the brightest day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by."

BetacommandBot on Wikimedia

9. Zelda Fitzgerald To F. Scott Fitzgerald

Autumn 1930: "I’ve never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and you ’phoned me just because you phoned me tonight – I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me."

Alfred Cheney Johnston on Wikimedia

10. Oscar Wilde To Alfred Douglas

April 1895: "This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonour be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently."

Gillman & Co on Wikimedia

11. Vladimir Nabokov To Véra Nabokov

November 1932: "I’ll tell you — with my love I could have filled ten centuries of fire, songs, and valor — ten whole centuries, enormous and winged, — full of knights riding up blazing hills — and legends about giants — and fierce Troys — and orange sails — and pirates — and poets."

Giuseppe Pino (Mondadori Publishers) on Wikimedia

12. Richard Burton To Elizabeth Taylor

1964: "My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don’t realise of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness."

Courier-Gazette, McKinney, TX Photo from 20th Century Fox, producer of the film. on Wikimedia

13. Vita Sackville-West To Virginia Woolf

January 1921: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it."

Unknown authorUnknown author on Wikimedia

14. Elizabeth Barrett To Robert Browning

September 1845: "You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me—my heart was full when you came here today– Henceforward I am yours for everything but to do you harm—and I am yours too much, in my heart, ever to consent to do you harm in that way."

Thomas Buchanan Read on Wikimedia

15. Frida Kahlo To Diego Rivera

1940s: "All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love."

Unknown Photographer (Picture date: 1932 August 2) on Wikimedia

16. Herman Melville To Nathaniel Hawthorne

November 1851: " The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then – your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb." 

Joseph Oriel Eaton on Wikimedia

17. Napoleon Bonaparte To Joséphine de Beauharnais

 April 1796: "A few days ago I thought I loved you; but since I last saw you I feel I love you a thousand times more. All the time I have known you, I adore you more each day; that just shows how wrong was La Bruyére’s maxim that love comes all at once."

Harold Piffard on Wikimedia

18. Wilfred Owen To Siegfried Sassoon

November 1917: "In effect it is this: that I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can't hurt me in the least. If you consider what the above Names have severally done for me, you will know what you are doing. And you have fixed my Life – however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. "

Unknown authorUnknown author on Wikimedia

19. Johnny Cash To June Carter Cash

June 1993: "We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each other’s minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realise how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met."

Joel Baldwin on Wikimedia

20. Rose Cleveland To Evangeline Simpson Whipple

May 1890: "The photographs are before me. I wish to keep all of them, but not one of them shows me even your shadow, my Eve. My Eve is all light and joy and triumph, like a red rose just open on a June morning, with the look of one who has found, not lost—one who has reached and no longer seeks and searches earth and air for resting place."

John Chester Buttre (1821–1893) on Wikimedia