Love at first sight quotes

These love at first sight quotes explore the magic of an instant connection that can last a lifetime.

When it comes to matters of the heart, there’s something truly magical about the idea of love at first sight.

To say I’m a believer would only be the half of it – I knew my husband would be the man for me from the first few messages he sent after a mutual friend gave him my number because she thought we’d be a good match.

(A number I only gave because I’d been rejected by a man whom I then discovered was advertising for Russian bride, but that’s another story).

And that was before I’d even laid eyes on him.

Writers and poets have corned the market on words of love for centuries – and it’s fair to say that from classics through to the modern tales, the concept of love of first sight has formed the basis of more than a plot or two.

These love at first sight quotes from literature therefore capture the enchanting, sometimes crazy experience of falling for someone you’ve just met.

Love at first sight quotes

When I saw you I fell in love. And you smiled because you knew. – Arrigo Boito

I believe in love at first sight. Fate, the universe, all of it. But not how you’re thinking. I don’t mean it in the ‘our souls were split and you’re my other half forever and ever’ sort of way. I just think you’re mean to meet some people. I think the universe nudges them into your path. Even on random Monday afternoons in July. Even at the post office. – Becky Albertalli

I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you. – Cassandra Clare

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed. – J.M. Darhower

I already thought on that first evening of our meeting how glorious it would be to spend one’s whole life regarded by those beautiful, candid eyes, and how it would then be impossible ever to think or do ill. – Hermann Hesse

Maybe love at first sight isn’t what we think it is. Maybe it’s recognizing a soul we loved in a past life and falling in love with them again. – Kamand Kojouri

But my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that’s not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. – Henry James

It’s pathetic, I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was…not love at first sight exactly, but – familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you. Game over. – Mhairi McFarlane

Where both deliberate, the love is slight; Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight? – Christopher Marlowe

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight. – Vladimir Nabokov

You appeared, and I found hope in every corner.
Even amidst all hell I saw paradise appear. – Abhijit Naskar

It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but it was deeper than that. A sense of belonging to a place I never knew I wanted but somehow always needed. It was a home that carried a heartbeat. – Nikki Rowe

And what is love at first sight but recognition? – Katherine Rundell

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night. – William Shakespeare

You turned a corner and a stunning landscape presented itself, and though you yourself had not changed, everything else had for, after you’d seen this new thing, whatever this thing was, you automatically understood the mechanisms of life could not go back to where they had been before. The sight – though it could more properly be called an experience, encompassing all five senses and even ones not yet discovered – rendered everything before it monochrome and matte. – Ray Smith

There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will. – Nicola Yoon

Love at first sight quotes for her

From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. – Arthur Conan Doyle

You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you’re the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes on you. Do I believe in love at first sight? But of course! Love cannot be tamed nor bridled by things like time, circumstance, and logic! – C. JoyBell C.

ll was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved… [her] to distraction! She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her. – Charles Dickens

What I remember most is the searing sensation of looking into her eyes for the first time, eyes that would hunt me for the rest of my life – Jonathan Hull

A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love’s retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don’t want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of … [her] being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me;… [she] had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.” – Milan Kundera

The moment I saw her, a part of me walked out of my body and wrapped itself around her. And there it still remains. – Arundhati Roy

This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected – in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life. – Thomas Mann

(You might also like these soulmate quotes for lovers).

It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her… You become whatever she needs you to be. – Stephenie Meyer

Met. So tame a word for it. It was not a meeting… I was introduced to her and it was like finding a part of myself that had been somehow walking the earth without me. She was my other half when I had not realized I was incomplete. – Deanna Raybourn

And when her eyes met mine, I felt something click, like a key turning in a lock. Believe me, I’m no romantic, and while I’ve heard about love at first sight, I’ve never believed in it, and I still don’t. But even so, there was something there, something recognizably real, and I couldn’t look away. – Nicholas Sparks

(You might also like these deep love messages for her).

Love at first sight quotes for him

Every cell in my body was telling me that he was my happily ever after. – C.J. English

The very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone. – Jane Austen

(You might also like these Jane Austen quotes about love).

From the whirlwind rush of feelings to the quieter sparks of connection, these love at first sight quotes are reminders that life can change in an instant in the most beautiful of ways.

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