According to George Sands – “There is only one happiness in life—to love and be loved.” Being one of the most famous love quotes, this also defines the feeling which has left lovers spellbound for ages. Let’s uncover the mystery of love through the famous stories of love which capture our heart every time we hear them.

We have all experienced the power of love once in our lives. The unimaginable feeling when our lives revolved around that one person. How can anyone forget the emotions which have been echoed time and again by stories of love across generations?

All-time Famous Stories of Love

One of the most famous love stories of all time is the story of two teenagers who have become the synonym for love – Romeo and Juliet. The tragic love story by Shakespeare strengthens the belief of Geoffrey Chaucer who famously said in his work – The Canterbury Tales that ‘Love is blind’. Shakespeare’s lovers blinded by the passion and love died for each other in the midst of their feuding families.

Though Romeo and Juliet is probably one of the most famous love stories which has been captured on the silver screen many a times, another affair which has rocked the imagination of many is the historic affair of Antony and Cleopatra. As W.S. Gilbert says in Iolanthe – ‘It’s love that makes the world go round’, the world of these two lovers revolved around each other. The affair abruptly ends during the war between the Egyptians and Romans when the false death news of Cleopatra shatters Antony who accidentally falls on his own sword and dies. Following this news, Cleopatra sacrifices herself. Such love and selfless act of sacrifice makes this story stand out in the list of love stories across many generations.

While talking about love stories, who can forget the famous French affair of Napoleon and Josephine who parted when Napoleon left Josephine as she could not bear him an heir. Though this might seem selfish for many, the lovers never faltered in their love as their passion for each other was embalmed in their hearts till they died. The passion in the story reflects the thought of Aphra Behn in The Fair Jilt – “As love is the most noble and divine passion of the soul, so is it that to which we may justly attribute all the real satisfactions of life, and without it, man is unfinished, and unhappy.”

The love stories of all times reflect that “the course of true love never did run smooth”, but that has not deterred lovers from falling and expressing their love for each other. Be it the epic lovers of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, or the Greek love stories of Paris and Helena, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Odysseus and Penelope, or the much recent passion love stories of Juan and Evita Peron from Argentine or the Indian love epic behind the Taj Mahal – Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal.

All stories of love express one of the finest quotes by George Eliot – “Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.”