Unique Non-Religious Wedding Readings
If you’re having a non-religious wedding ceremony, there are many great quotes about love, relationships and marriage from literature, poems, and philosophers. Some couples like to include a quote in their wedding paper goods/stationery like their Save the Dates, Wedding Invitations, or Thank You cards. Other couples opt to include a short saying during the ceremony itself either before the vows where a traditional sermon would occur or in the program or even as inspiration for the vows themselves. However you want to incorporate quotes is totally up to you! But if you’re looking for some inspiration or are unsure of which literary genius to choose from, here are some of our favorite, unique, and non-religious wedding quotes. As you can see all these quotes look lovely in calligraphy or hand lettering!
Wedding Readings From Literature
“Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star…” – E.E. Cummings, being to timelessness as it’s to time
“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.” – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses.” ~E.E. Cummings
“We said we’d walk together, come what may, that come the twilight should we lose our way, if as we’re walking a hand should slip free, I’ll wait for you and should I fall behind, wait for me.” ~Bruce Springsteen
“You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.” Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” ~ When Harry Met Sally
“Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other…” ~Apache Marriage Blessing
“It is the true season of Love when we believe that we alone can love; that no one could ever have loved as much as before, and than no one will ever love in the same way after us.” ~Goethe
“Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” – Dr. Seuss
“Unless you love someone, nothing else makes sense.” – E.E. Cummings
“You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest and most beautiful person I have ever known, and even that is an understatement.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
“You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” – Maya Angelou
“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.” – Martin Luther
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.” Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” – “When Harry Met Sally”
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles
“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” – Judy Garland
“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” – William Shakespeare
“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.” – Rumi
“Who, being loved, is poor?” – Oscar Wilde
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” – Maya Angelou
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Do I love you? My god, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.” — William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“We loved with a love that was more than love.” – Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee”
“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” – Audrey Hepburn
“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë
“It is love that makes impossible possible.” – Indian Proverb
“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”– Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”– Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” — Judy Garland
“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” – Plato
“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.” — Mark Twain
“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” — Oscar Wilde
“Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.” In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Insomuch as love grows in you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.” — St. Augustine
“By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what’s still worse, love any woman in the world but her.”– Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady
“yours is the light by which my spirit’s born:
yours is the darkness of my soul’s return
—you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars” — E.E. Cummings, #38
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” —Aristotle
“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend is his wife.” — Franz Schubert
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”– Jane Austen, Persuasion
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only with what you are expecting to give—which is everything.” — Katharine Hepburn
“Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly at your service.” —William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“Love is like the wind, you can’t see it, but you can feel it.” — Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
“True love stories never have endings.” — Richard Bach
“To live without loving is to not really live.” — Molière
“That love is all there is is all we know of love.” — Emily Dickinson
“There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.” —George Sand
“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you ” — E.E. Cummings
“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.” — Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
“After a while, you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh.” — Sex and The City
“Now at last they were at the beginning Chapter One of the Great Story no one on earth has ever read, which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.” — C.S. Lewis
“And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” — Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet
“Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.” — Dwight Moody
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” — Maya Angelou
“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” — Helen Keller
“Love me and the world is mine.” — David Reed
“You don’t find love, it finds you. It’s got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what’s written in the stars.” — Anais Nin
“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” — Paulo Coehlo
