World's Greatest Love Letters!

From Mark Twain, American writer, to Olivia Langdon, his future wife - May 12, 1869

"Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confided to my life-long keeping. You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf."

From John Keats, English poet, to Fanny Brawne - circa 1818

"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 were dissolving. 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 - you have ravish'd me away by a power I cannot resist."

From Winston Churchill, British politician, to Clementine Churchill, his wife - January 23, 1935

"My darling Clemmie,

"In your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me, about my having enriched your life. I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me, because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt, if there can be accounts in love.... What it has been to me to live all these years in your heart and companionship no phrases can convey.

"Time passes swiftly, but is it not joyous to see how great and growing is the treasure we have gathered together, amid the storms and stresses of so many eventful and to millions tragic and terrible years?

"Your loving husband."

From Napoleon Bonaparte, French military and political leader, to Joséphine de Beauharnais, his fiancé - 1796

"I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried?

"My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for you lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire?

"Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives! You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire."

Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay, Paris, 1793, Friday morning

I am glad to find that other people can be unreasonable as well as myself; for be it known to thee that I answered thy first letter the very night it reached me ( Sunday ). though tho couldst not receive it before Wednesday, because it was not sent off till the next day. There is a full, true, and particular account.

Yet I am not angry with thee, my love, for I think that it is a proof of stupidity, and like wise of a milk -and - water affection, which comes to the same thing when the temper is governed by a square and compass. there is nothing picturesque in this straight - lined equality, and the passions always give grace to the actions. Recollection now makes my heart bound to thee; but it is not thy money - getting face, though I cannot be seriously displease with the exertion which increases my esteem, or rather is what I should have expected from thy character. No; I have thy honest countenance before me - relaxed by tenderness; a little - little wounded by my whims; and thy eyes glittering with sympathy. Thy lips then feel softer than soft, and I rest my cheek on thine, forgetting all the world. I have not left the hue of love out of the picture - the rosy glow; and fancy has spread it over my own cheeks, I believe, for I feel them burning, whilst a delicious tear trembles in my eye that would be all your own, if a grateful emotion directed to the Father of nature, who has made me thus alive to happiness, did not give more warmth to the sentiment it divides. I must pause a moment.

Need I tell you that I am tranquil after writing thus? I do not know why, but I have more confidence in your affection, when absent, than present; nay, I think that you must love me, in the sincerity of my heart let me say it, I believe I deserve I your tenderness, because I am true, and have a degree of sensibility that you can see and relish.

Yours sincerely, Mary

The last of the romantic love letters from Beethoven to his "immortal beloved"

Good morning, on July 7

Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, now and then joyfully, then sadly, waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us -

I can live only wholly with you or not at all -

Yes, I am resolved to wander so long away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you, and can send my soul enwrapped in you into the land of spirits -

Yes, unhappily it must be so -

You will be the more contained since you know my fidelity to you. No one else can ever possess my heart - never - never -

Oh God, why must one be parted from one whom one so loves.

And yet my life in V is now a wretched life -

Your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men -

At my age I need a steady, quiet life - can that be so in our connection?

My angel, I have just been told that the mailcoach goes every day - therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once -

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.

Oh continue to love me - never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved.

ever thine

ever mine

ever ours

A Romantic Love Letter written to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940) by Zelda his future wife
It is believed that this romantic love letter was written Spring 1919.

Sweetheart,

Please, please don't be so depressed - We'll be married soon, and then these lonesome nights will be over forever -- Maybe you won't understand this, but sometimes when I miss you most, it's hardest to write - and you always know when I make myself - Just the ache of it all - and I can't tell you. If we were together, you'd feel how strong it is - you're so sweet when you're melancholy. I love your sad tenderness - when I've hurt you - That's one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels - and they bothered you so - Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget - and until we are, I am loving, loving every tiny minute of the day and night

Scott - there's nothing in all the world I want but you - and your precious love - All the material things are nothing. I'd just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence - because you'd soon love me less - and less - and I'd do anything -- to keep your heart for my own - I don't want to live -I want to love first, and live incidentally - Why don't you feel that I'm waiting - I'll come to you, Lover, when you're ready - Don't don't ever think of the things you can't give me -- and it's so damn much more than anybody else in all the world has ever had - anything You've trusted me with the dearest heart of all

How can you think deliberately of life without me - If you should die - O Darling - darling Scott - It'd be like going blind. I know I would, too, - I'd have no purpose in life - just a pretty - decoration. Don't you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered - and I was delivered to you - to be worn - I want you to wear me, like a watch - charm or a button hole bouquet - to the world. And then, when we're alone, I want to help - to know that you can't do anything without me.

I'm glad you wrote Mamma. It was such a nice sincere letter - and mine to St. Paul was very evasive and rambling. I've never, in all my life, been able to say anything to people older than me - Somehow I just instinctively avoid personal things with them - even my family. Kids are so much nicer.

A Romantic Love Letter written by Jack London (1876 - 1916) to Anna Strunsky.
It is believed that this romantic love letter was written in Oakland, April 3, 1901

Dear Anna:

Did I say that the human might be filed in categories? Well, and if I did, let me qualify - not all humans. You elude me. I cannot place you, cannot grasp you. I may boast that of nine out of ten, under given circumstances, I can forecast their action; that of nine out of ten, by their word or action, I may feel the pulse of their hearts. But of the tenth I despair. It is beyond me. You are that tenth.

Were ever two souls, with dumb lips, more incongruously matched! We may feel in common - surely, we oftimes do - and when we do not feel in common, yet do we understand; and yet we have no common tongue. Spoken words do not come to us. We are unintelligible. God must laugh at the mummery.

The one gleam of sanity through it all is that we are both large temperamentally, large enough to often understand. True, we often understand but in vague glimmering ways, by dim perceptions, like ghosts, which, while we doubt, haunt us with their truth. And still, I, for one, dare not believe; for you are that tenth which I may not forecast.

Am I unintelligible now? I do not know. I imagine so. I cannot find the common tongue.

Large temperamentally - that is it. It is the one thing that brings us at all in touch. We have, flashed through us, you and I, each a bit of universal, and so we draw together. And yet we are so different.

I smile at you when you grow enthusiastic? It is a forgivable smile - nay, almost an envious smile. I have lived twenty-five years of repression. I learned not to be enthusiastic. It is a hard lesson to forget. I begin to forget, but it is so little. At the best, before I die, I cannot hope to forget all or most. I can exult, now that I am learning, in little things, in other things; but of my things, and secret things doubly mine, I cannot, I cannot. Do I make myself intelligible? Do you hear my voice? I fear not. There are poseurs. I am the most successful of them all.

Jack