Wedding Readings from Literature
Whether you are searching for profound words that you may not have or you just want to build on your personal vows, here are some greats works of literature!
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
âOnce for all, I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.â
I donât love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesnât bloom, and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you; so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
In One Anotherâs Arms â Rumi
The moment I heard my first love story I began seeking you,
not realizing the search was useless.
Lovers donât meet somewhere along the way.
Theyâre in one anotherâs souls from the beginning.
I have for the first time found what I can truly love â I have found you. You are my sympathy â my better selfâmy good angelâI am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about youâand, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one. â
âThe Velveteen Rabbit â by Margery Williams
âWhat is REAL?â asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. âDoes it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?â
âReal isnât how you are made,â said the Skin Horse. âItâs a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.â
âDoes it hurt?â asked the Rabbit.
âSometimes,â said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. âWhen you are Real you donât mind being hurt.â
âDoes it happen all at once, like being wound up,â he asked, âor bit by bit?â
âIt doesnât happen all at once,â said the Skin Horse. âYou become. It takes a long time. Thatâs why it doesnât happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things donât matter at all, because once you are Real you canât be ugly, except to people who donât understand.â
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
âI cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.â
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
âOnce upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.â
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
âThe highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.â
The Amber Spyglass)
by Philip Pullman
âI will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, Iâll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again⌠Iâll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment. And when we do find each other again, weâll cling together so tight that nothing and no oneâll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you⌠Weâll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams⌠And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they wonât just be able to take one, theyâll have to take two, one of you and one of me, weâll be joined so tightâŚâ
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
by Jonathan Safran Foer
âIf there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jewellerâs felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesnât exist, and I have tried everything that does.â