Roses are red, violets are blue, these Valentine’s quotes will make you snort, smirk and swoon too
Valentine’s Day has a way of putting the pressure on—say something romantic, say something clever, don’t be cringe. That’s exactly why funny Valentine’s Day quotes deserve their moment. Not everyone wants a sonnet or a dozen roses; some of us just want a laugh that says, “Yes, I love you, but let’s not make this weird.” And let’s be honest: They’re even better when you don’t have to come up with them yourself.
Which is why we did the hard part for you. Like the best Valentine’s Day memes, these quotes lean into the humor of real relationships, from the long-term ones and the messy ones to the “you stole my fries, but I still adore you” ones. They’re perfect for cards, texts, captions, or just reminding your partner that love doesn’t always look like a rom-com—sometimes it looks like shared sarcasm and inside jokes.
So if you’d rather make them laugh than make them cry (in a good way), you’re in the right place. Keep reading for clever, laugh-out-loud lines that prove humor is really romantic.
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Best funny Valentine’s Day quotes
- “To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.” —H.L. Mencken
- “I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.” —Jonathan Swift
- “Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.” —Lynda Barry
- “My heart’s in the right place. I know, cuz I hid it there.” —Carrie Fisher
- “I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?” —Zsa Zsa Gabor
- “At my age, an affair of the heart is a bypass!” —Joan Rivers
- “Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age. As your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.” —Phyllis Diller
- “Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it.” —Nora Ephron
- “The whole Valentine’s thing is fine, but you don’t back it up right next to the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. Unbelievable. And we find it acceptable.” —Lewis Black
- “If I love you, what business is it of yours?” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “I love Valentine’s Day. When you’re a kid, everyone gets a valentine. It’s like, ‘To Tim, nice pants. Love, Scott.’ It’s valentines galore!” —Mike Birbiglia
- “Romantic love is mental illness. But it’s a pleasurable one.” –Fran Lebowitz
- “No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” —Henry A. Kissinger
- “On Valentine’s Day, millions of men give millions of women flowers, cards and candy as a heartfelt expression of the emotion that also motivates men to observe anniversaries and birthdays — fear.” —Dave Barry
- “If I eat a huge meal and I can get the girl to rub my belly, I think that’s about as romantic as I can think of.” —Ryan Gosling
- “I don’t know who St. Valentine was, but I hope he died alone, surrounded by couples.” —Miranda Hart
- “You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.” —Henny Youngman
Funny Valentine quotes for singles
- “It sounds like a cliché but I also learnt that you’re not going to fall for the right person until you really love yourself and feel good about how you are.” —Emma Watson
- “We are complete with or without a mate, with or without a child.” —Jennifer Aniston
- “Life is too short to be in relationships where you feel this isn’t fully right or somebody doesn’t have your back, or somebody doesn’t fully value you.” —Anna Faris
- “It wasn’t love at first sight. It took a full five minutes.” –Lucille Ball
- “I didn’t fall for you, you tripped me!” –Jenny Han
- “Nobody loves me as much as I love me, so I guess I’ll just be my own valentine.” —Adam Rippon
- “If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?” —Lily Tomlin
- “He or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.” —Tom Robbins
- “I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.” —Elizabeth I of England
- “People say, ‘But you’re alone.’ But I don’t feel alone. I feel very un-alone. I feel very sparkly and excited about everything.” —Stevie Nicks
- “Without single women and their impressive sense of self, we’d be without Queen Elizabeth I, Marie-Sophie Germain, Susan B. Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, Harper Lee, Diane Keaton, Greta Garbo, Jane Goodall and me, myself and I.” —Chelsea Handler
Funny Valentine quotes about love
- “Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.” —Joey Adams
- “Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do—but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.” —Albert Einstein
- “What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.” —Pearl Bailey
- “It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year’s Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in.” —Joan Bauer
- “Love kills intelligence. The brain and the heart act upon each other in the manner of an hour-glass. One fills itself only to empty the other.” —Jules Renard
- “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” —Joan Crawford
- “Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby—awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.” —Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
- “Love is better than chocolate, but sometimes chocolate is easier to find.” —Judy Kain
- “Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it’s more like love’s shady second cousin who’s always borrowing money and can’t hold down a job.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
- “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” —Blaise Pascal
- “The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing—and then marry him.” —Cher
- “A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.” —Zsa Zsa Gabor
- “Love doesn’t just drop on you unexpectedly; you have to give off signals, sort of like an amateur radio operator.” —Helen Gurley Brown
- “I understood Valentine’s Day as a concept. The naked baby shoots you with an arrow, and you fall in love.” —Trevor Noah
Funny Valentine quotes for married couples
- “When I eventually met Mr. Right, I had no idea that his first name was Always.” —Rita Rudner
- “Take care of him. And make him feel important. And if you can do that, you’ll have a happy and wonderful marriage … Like two out of every ten couples.” — Neil Simon
- “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.” —Benjamin Franklin
- “I told my wife a man is like wine, he gets better with age. She locked me in the cellar.” —Rodney Dangerfield
- “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.” —Rita Rudner
- “I never want to be away from you again, except at work, in the restroom or when one of us is at a movie the other does not want to see.” —Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
- “My mother-in-law said, ‘Dear, I’d like to tell you the secret of a happy marriage … Every now and then, it helps to be a little deaf.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- “A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.” – Terry Pratchett
- “In every house of marriage there’s room for an interpreter.” —Stanley Kunitz
- “Marriage is a wonderful invention; but, then again, so is a bicycle repair kit.” —Billy Connolly
- “For the sake of your marriage, get a king-size bed. And if you really want to stay married, get two.” —Ray Romano
- “To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the loving cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up.” –Ogden Nash
Funny Valentine quotes for Galentine’s Day
- “What’s Galentine’s Day? Oh, it’s only the best day of the year.” —Leslie Knope
- “Who was this St. Valentine anyway? I assume the patron saint of bad gifts, ’cause that’s how we express our love on St. Valentine’s Day.” —Jim Gaffigan
- “You rainbow-infused, space unicorn.” —Leslie Knope
- “Uteruses before duderuses … Ovaries before brovaries.” —Leslie Knope
- “Oh, here’s an idea: Let’s make pictures of our internal organs and give them to other people we love on Valentine’s Day. That’s not weird at all.” —Jimmy Fallon
- “Give your friendships the magic you would give a romance. Because they’re just as important. Actually, for us, they’re way more important.” —Alice Oseman
- “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” —Woodrow Wilson
- “Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.” —Samuel Johnson
- “Friendship makes a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession; friendship is never anything but sharing.” —Elie Wiesel
- “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” —Thomas Aquinas
Why trust us
At Reader’s Digest, we’ve been sharing our favorite quotes for over 100 years. The sayings and quips that appear in the magazine’s “Quotable Quotes” (formerly “Remarkable Remarks”) are curated from interviews and essays originally published in the magazine, reprints from trusted titles and other verified sources. For this piece, Kelly Kuehn tapped her experiences as a lifestyle editor for Reader’s Digest to ensure that all information is accurate. We’ve gone the extra step and had Marcy Lovitch, a fact-checker with 20-plus years of experience researching for national publications including Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Glamour, Seventeen, Real Simple, Forbes and InStyle magazines, verify that all quotes are attributed correctly and have credible sourcing. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
