71 Heartfelt Affection Quotes

In a world that often feels fast-paced and impersonal, heartfelt affection stands out as a timeless, universal language. Whether it's between friends, family members, or romantic partners, genuine expressions of care and love can deeply resonate, enrich lives, and strengthen bonds. To help you convey these tender sentiments, we've curated a collection of the top 71 Heartfelt Affection Quotes. These quotes are perfect for sharing in a thoughtful note, a touching message, or simply to inspire your own expressions of affection. Dive in and discover quotes that speak directly to the heart.

1. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have a feeling that they can’t hide.” - Rachel Cohn

2. “Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” - Christopher Hitchens

3. “I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.” - Walt Whitman

4. “We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.” - David Sedaris

5. “I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.” - Charlotte Brontë

6. “People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy.” - Bob Hope

7. “To see her is a picture—To hear her is a tune—To know her an IntemperanceAs innocent as June—To know her not—Affliction—To own her for a FriendA warmth as near as if the SunWere shining in your Hand.” - Emily Dickinson

8. “Then stay with me a little longer,' Madame Olenska said in a low tone, just touching his knee with her plumed fan. It was the lightest touch, but it thrilled him like a caress.” - Edith Wharton

9. “I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy."Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.” - Jane Austen

10. “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.” - Jane Austen

11. “Oh, I love hugging. I wish I was an octopus, so I could hug 10 people at a time!” - Drew Barrymore

12. “He wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.” - Sarah Dessen

13. “Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity...When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.” - Gretchen Rubin

14. “She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.” - Roman Payne

15. “Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection.” - Jane Austen

16. “You know the reason The Beatles made it so big?...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That's what everyone wants. Not 24/7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche...or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have such a feeling that they can't hide. Every single successful song of the past fifty years can be traced back to 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand.' And every single successful love story has those unbearable and unbearably exciting moments of hand-holding.” - David Levithan

17. “Conviction affects all substances in the vicinity.” - Toba Beta

18. “I'm telling you this for one reason and one reason only: No matter how sure you are of someone's love, it's always nice to hear it.” - Mike Gayle

19. “I’ve come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes when you are lost in a hard challenge, or when an artist or a craftsman becomes one with the brush or the tool. It happens sometimes while you’re playing sports, or listening to music or lost in a story, or to some people when they feel enveloped by God’s love. And it happens most when we connect with other people. I’ve come to think that happiness isn’t really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. Happiness is determined by how much information and affection flows through us covertly every day and year.” - David Brooks

20. “Even with friends, I had difficulty giving or receiving physical affection, although I secretly craved it.” - Kate M. Taylor

21. “There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

22. “It is a severe cruelty inflicted upon women...that we should be the ones who so desperately need love...affection...acceptance.And yet, we suffer...many of us, for lack of it throughout our entire lives."-Shackles of Honor” - Marcia Lynn McClure

23. “First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.” - George Bernard Shaw

24. “I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

25. “My lovers suffocate me! Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls...coming naked to me at night, Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river...swinging and chirping over my head, Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush, Or while I swim in the bath....or drink from the pump on the corner....or the curtain is down at the opera.....or I glimpse at a woman’s face in the railroad car; Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine” - Walt Whitman

26. “The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question "Do you see the same truth?" would be "I see nothing and I don't care about the truth; I only want a Friend," no Friendship can arise - though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.” - C.S. Lewis

27. “If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.” - W.H. Auden

28. “Outwardly, other than her hair, she had not changed much. She was still more or less the same cool, aloof woman who garnered more respect than affection. On the inside, however, it had been impossible to return to the person she used to be.” - Sherry Thomas

29. “But it is doubtless true, and evident from [the] Scriptures, that the essence of all true religion lies in holy love; and that in this divine affection, and an habitual disposition to it, and that light which is the foundation of it, and those things which are the fruits of it, consists the whole of religion.” - Jonathan Edwards

30. “Divines are generally agreed that sin radically and fundamentally consists in what is negative, or privative, having its root and foundation in a privation or want of holiness. And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart, holiness does consist very much in those pious affections.” - Jonathan Edwards

31. “But yet it is evident that religion consists so much in affection, as that without holy affection there is no true religion; and no light in the understanding is good which does not produce holy affection in the heart: no habit or principle in the heart is good which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good which does not proceed from such exercises.” - Jonathan Edwards

32. “I knew you'd kiss me.""How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself. "Because I am in pain," He say's. "That's the only way I get your attention.” - Suzanne Collins

33. “You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.” - C. JoyBell C.

34. “Needs cause motivation. Deep-rooted desires for esteem, affection, belonging, achievement, self-actualization, power, and control motivate us to push for what we want and need in our lives.” - Lorii Myers

35. “The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.” - Orhan Pamuk

36. “Conversion is not the smooth, easy-going process some men seem to think... It is wounding work, this breaking of the hearts, but without wounding there is no saving... Where there is grafting there will always be a cutting, the graft must be let in with a wound; to stick it onto the outside or to tie it on with a string would be of no use. Heart must be set to heart and back to back or there will be no sap from root to branch. And this, I say, must be done by a wound, by a cut.” - John Bunyan

37. “We men are fascinated by the things we don't really understand. It gives us something to think and talk about: like females, they drive us nuts.” - Criss Jami

38. “I am not sure if women are attracted to genius. Can you imagine the wise wizard winning the woman over the gallant swordsman? It seems rather otherworldly in more ways than one.” - Criss Jami

39. “Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.” - Alain De Botton

40. “Alessandra approached the geniuses of the past to give them life with her attention, which was the form her affection took: paying attention.” - Carlos Fuentes

41. “[L]asting love is something a person has to decide to experience. Lifelong monogamous devotion is just not natural—not for women even, and emphatically not for men. It requires what, for lack of a better term, we can call an act of will. . . . This isn't to say that a young man can't hope to be seized by love. . . . But whether the sheer fury of a man's feelings accurately gauges their likely endurance is another question. The ardor will surely fade, sooner or later, and the marriage will then live or die on respect, practical compatibility, simple affection, and (these days, especially) determination. With the help of these things, something worthy of the label 'love' can last until death. But it will be a different kind of love from the kind that began the marriage. Will it be a richer love, a deeper love, a more spiritual love? Opinions vary. But it's certainly a more impressive love.” - Robert Wright

42. “Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.” - Daniel Keyes

43. “Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon.” - James Baldwin

44. “It's true that nothing in this world makes us so necessary to others as the affection we have for them.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

45. “Affection is like the noonday sun; it does not need the presence of another to be manifest.” - Isabel Allende

46. “[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.” - Héloïse

47. “Med människor i en liten båt sker något sällsamt. Vad de upplever är att de känner sig ensamma. Vad de känner är att de är ensamma tillsammans, tillsammans med de andra i båten. Därför uppstår mellan människor i små båtar en tillfällig tillgivenhet. Man har ju bara varandra och djupa vatten är skrämmande och små båtar är mycket bräckliga. Var och en blir den andres livboj. Är inte du rädd så inte är jag det.” - Stig Dagerman

48. “If the guy likes/loves you, he won't care if you are a good kisser or not.He should like you for what you are - not how you kiss.” - Meg Cabot

49. “We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.” - Brené Brown

50. “In my opinion, giving a kiss is a much better prize than receiving one.” - Hiro Fujiwara

51. “Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair.” - Sonya Hartnett

52. “I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.” - Sonya Hartnett

53. “What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.” - Len Deighton

54. “A concrete love is a mass of emotion formed into a compound mixture of affection, care, desire and expectation.” - Munia Khan

55. “Sex isn't what I'm after. Sex is just what I can get.” - John Valentine

56. “In a world of complete economic equality, you get and keep the affections you deserve. You can’t buy love with gifts or favors, you can’t hold love by raising an inadequate child, and you can’t be secure in love by serving as a good scrub woman or a good provider.” - B.F. Skinner

57. “When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?” - Sayo Masuda

58. “I use the chopsticks to outline the biggest heart possible. Then I use the Sweet'N Low packets to fill it in. I borrow some from two other tables when I run out.When I'm done, I point to the heart on the table."This," I say, "is only about one ninety-millionth of how I feel about you."She laughs."I'll try not to take it personally," she says."Take what personally?" I say. "You should take it very personally.""The fact that you used artificial sweetener?"I take a Sweet'N Low and fling it at her."Not everything is a symbol!" I shout.” - David Levithan

59. “When I heard about these lessons, I thought they would be a dreadful waste of my time. I pictured two very silly girls uninterested in any sort of instruction. But that describes neither Miss Gray nor yourself. I should tell you, I used to train younger Shadowhunters in Madrid. And there were quite a few of them who didn’t have the same native ability that you do. You’re a talented student, and it is my pleasure to teach you.”Sophie felt herself flush scarlet. “You cannot be serious.”“I am. I was pleasantly surprised the first time I came here and again so the next time and the next. I found that I was looking forward to it. In fact, it would be fair to say that since my return home, I have hated everything in London except these hours with you.” - Cassandra Clare

60. “I like the word 'affection' because it signifies something habitual, and we are soon to meet to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm.” - Michael Kelahan

61. “...you have not only a very large portion of my affection and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling...” - Michael Kelahan

62. “To be loved is the birthright of every mewling babe, but, once grown, a man is not assured of such affection.” - Katherine Marsh

63. “Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.” - Honoré de Balzac

64. “You ask me why I don’t love you, but surely you must believe I am very fond of you and if to desire to possess a person wholly, to admire and honour that person deeply, and to seek to secure that person’s happiness in every way is to “love” then perhaps my affection for you is a kind of love. I will tell you this that your soul seems to me to be the most beautiful and simple soul in the world and it may be because I am so conscious of this when I look at you that my love or affection for you loses much of its violence.” - James Joyce

65. “Do not keep the slanderer away,treat him with affection and honor:Body and soul, he scours all clean,babbling about this and that.” - Kabir

66. “Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.” - C.S. Lewis

67. “My relationship with him was defined by these complex emotions, this mixture of gratitude and resentment.” - Otsuichi

68. “Innately affectionate, and innately afraid of unreturned affection, and indomitably unwilling to let any of that stop her.” - Peter Watts

69. “Any love or happiness given to anyone always comes back. Unfortunately we expect it from the same person” - Brahmakumaris

70. “Set your affection to infinity and your hate to zero!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

71. “If a mark of affection can sometimes be taken for an insult, perhaps the gesture of love is not universal: it too must be translated from one language to another, must be learned.” - Kim Thuy