5 of the greatest love letters of all time
The greatest of all love letters inspire us to put pen to paper to share our deepest thoughts with our loved one. So with that in mind, here are five of the most romantic (and well-written) love letters in history.
Musician Johnny Cash wishes wife June Carter Cash a happy 65th birthday in 1994
“We get old and get use to each other. We think alike. We read each others minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.”
Novelist Zelda Fitzgerald to fellow writer F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1930
“Darling – I love these velvet nights. 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.”
Poet John Keats to his neighbour Fanny Brawne in 1819
“My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you.”
Poet Elizabeth Barrett to husband and fellow poet Robert Browning in 1846
“It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me — the fullness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy…and only I know what was behind — the long wilderness without the blossoming rose…and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve—not you—but my own fate?
Was ever any one taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do? And you love me more, you say? Shall I thank you or God? Both, indeed, and there is no possible return from me to either of you! I thank you as the unworthy may…and as we all thank God. How shall I ever prove what my heart is to you? How will you ever see it as I feel it?”
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne to painter Sophia Peabody
“How did I love before I knew you — before I possessed your affection! I reckon upon your love as something that is to endure when everything that can perish has perished — though my trust is sometimes mingled with fear, because I feel myself unworthy of your love. But if I am worthy of it you will always love me; and if there be anything good and pure in me, it will be proved by my always loving you.”