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Orson Welles to Rita Hayworth -

The famed American director and the Hollywood star had a short but passionate marriage. Welles once wrote: "You are my life—my very life. Never imagine your hope approximates what you are to me. Beautiful, precious little baby—hurry up the sun! Make the days shorter till we meet. I love you, that's all there is to it."

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Ludwig van Beethoven to his 'Immortal Beloved' -

Beethoven addresses an unknown recipient in this famous 1812 letter. "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved ... Be calm—love me—today—yesterday—what tearful longings for you—you—you—my life—my all—farewell. Oh continue to love me—never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours."

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Ernest Hemingway to Marlene Dietrich -

The famed American novelist was a prolific, confident writer, notorious for his staunch masculinity, but in his letters to actress Marlene Dietrich, who was reportedly just his best friend, between 1949 to 1959, he was completely vulnerable: "I can't say how every time I ever put my arms around you I felt that I was home."

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Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas -

Wilde was put on trial for homosexuality in 1895, but even still he kept writing to Douglas: "This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonor be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently."

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Johnny Cash to June Carter Cash -

On June's birthday, the singer wrote: "We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each others minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted. But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You're the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much."

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Mark Twain to Olivia Louise Langdon -

Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was married to "Livy" from 1870 until she died in 1904. "Out of the depths of my happy heart wells a great tide of love and prayer for this priceless treasure that is confined to my life-long keeping," he wrote before they married. "You cannot see its intangible waves as they flow towards you, darling, but in these lines you will hear, as it were, the distant beating of the surf."

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Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf -

The writers met in the early 1920s and fell in love despite both being married, though their husbands are said to have known. Sackville-West wrote in 1927: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. … I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal."

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Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf -

The letter continued, "I shan't make you love me any more by giving myself away like this—But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I don't really resent it."

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Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West -

That same year, Woolf wrote, "Look Here Vita—throw over your man, and we'll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I'll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads—They won't stir by day, only by dark on the river."

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Zelda Fitzgerald to F. Scott Fitzgerald -

Though the Jazz Age writers had a tumultuous relationship, there were moments of love, captured in various letters especially from Zelda, who often called her husband Goofy. "I've never been able to decide … whether I love you most in the eternal classic half-lights where it blends with day or in the full religious fan-fare of mid-night or perhaps in the lux of noon. Anyway, I love you most and just because you phoned me tonight—I walked on those telephone wires for two hours after holding your love like a parasol to balance me."

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Georgia O'Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz -

Famed painter Georgia O'Keeffe was positively infatuated with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and over their 30-year romance O'Keeffe exchanged more than 5,000 letters that revealed so much about her life and love. One she wrote to Stieglitz: "Dearest—my body is simply crazy with wanting you—If you don't come tomorrow—I don't see how I can wait for you—I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours—the kisses—the hotness—the wetness—all melting together—the being held so tight that it hurts—the strangle and the struggle."

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John Keats to Fanny Brawne -

John Keats met Fanny Brawne in late 1818 when he moved next door to her family, and he quickly fell in love though they never married. "Every hour I am more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my Mouth ... the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute's content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. If I cannot live with you I will live alone…"

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Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton -

Hollywood's famous on-and-off couple were notoriously passionate, and shortly before their first divorce Taylor wrote, "I wish I could tell you of my love for you, of my fear, my delight, my pure animal pleasure of you, my jealousy, my pride, my anger at you at times. Most of all my love for you, and whatever love you can dole out to me—I wish I could write about it but I can't. I can only 'boil and bubble' inside and hope you understand how I really feel. Anyway, I lust thee. Your (still) Wife."

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Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor -

Burton wrote this letter to Taylor during the early part of their first marriage in 1964: "My blind eyes are desperately waiting for the sight of you. You don't realize of course, E.B., how fascinatingly beautiful you have always been, and how strangely you have acquired an added and special and dangerous loveliness."

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Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert -

When Emily Dickinson was 19, she met fellow 19-year-old Susan Gilbert, whom many historians believe was her only true love. In a 1851 letter while Gilbert was away, Dickinson wrote, "Susie, forgive me Darling, for every word I say—my heart is full of you, none other than you is in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me … I add a kiss, shyly, lest there is somebody there!"

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Napoleon Bonaparte to Joséphine de Beauharnais -

The ruthless French leader had a sweet side for his wife Josephine despite divorcing her when she could not have children. While he was away in 1796, he wrote, "The charms of the incomparable Joséphine kindle continually a burning and a glowing flame in my heart … I thought that I loved you months ago, but since my separation from you I feel that I love you a thousand fold more. Each day since I knew you, have I adored you more and more."

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Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo -

French actress Juliette Drouet gave up her career after becoming Victor Hugo's mistress. She once wrote to him, "If only I were a clever woman, I could describe to you my gorgeous bird, how you unite in yourself the beauties of form, plumage, and song! … You are not only the solar spectrum with the seven luminous colors, but the sun himself, that illumines, warms, and revivifies! This is what you are, and I am the lowly woman that adores you."

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Abigail Adams to John Adams -

The wife and closest advisor of second US President John Adams wrote to her "dearest friend" in 1782, "I look back to the early days of our acquaintance and friendship as to the days of love and innocence, and, with an indescribable pleasure, I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads with an affection heightened and improved by time, nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my heart."

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Prince Albert to Queen Victoria -

Though they were first cousins, Prince Albert truly loved Queen Victoria. "Dearest deeply loved Victoria, I need not tell you that since we left, all my thoughts have been with you at Windsor, and that your image fills my whole soul. Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth. How that moment shines for me still when I was close to you, with your hand in mine."

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Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera -

The artists' infamous on-and-off relationship was very intense while it was on, as Frida wrote in one letter: "I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I'd like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love."

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Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan -

The former US President wrote to his wife on their 31st anniversary in 1983: "I told you once that it was like an adolescent's dream of what marriage should be like. That hasn't changed. … When you aren't there I'm no place, just lost in time & space. I more than love you, I'm not whole without you. You are life itself to me. When you are gone I'm waiting for you to return so I can start living again."

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Winston Churchill to Clementine Churchill -

The former British Prime Minister and his wife were married for 56 years and wrote to each other whenever they were apart, including this letter in 1935: "My darling Clemmie, in your letter from Madras you wrote some words very dear to me, about having enriched your life. I cannot tell you what pleasure this gave me, because I always feel so overwhelmingly in your debt, if there can be accounts in love…What it has been to me to live all these years in your heart and companionship no phrases can convey."

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Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn -

Before he ordered her execution and after originally courting her sister, King Henry VIII seemed to be really in love with Anne. "I beg to know expressly your intention touching the love between us. Necessity compels me to obtain this answer, having been more than a year wounded by the dart of love, and not yet sure whether I shall fail or find a place in your affection."

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James Joyce to his wife Nora Barnacle -

The famed Irish writer's personal letters to his wife were shockingly different to his greatest works, like in one 1909 letter where he talked about her "tiny little naughty farties" while they had sex, adding, "I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere..."

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Richard Nixon to his wife Pat -

The former US President had quite the poetic soft spot for his wife Pat, and once wrote: "And when the wind blows and the rains fall and the sun shines through the clouds (as it is now) he still resolves, as he did then, that nothing so fine ever happened to him or anyone else as falling in love with Thee—my dearest heart."

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Rockwell Kent to his wife Frances -

The famed American painter wrote to his wife in 1926: "And as I love you utterly, so have you now become the whole world of my spirit. It is beside and beyond anything that you can ever do for me; it lies in what you are, dear love—to me so infinitely lovely that to be near you, to see you, hear you, is now the only happiness, the only life, I know."

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Marilyn Monroe to Joe DiMaggio -

Despite their marriage not lasting, Monroe and DiMaggio remained friends until she died in 1962. "I don't know how to tell you just how much I miss you," Monroe once wrote. "I love you till my heart could burst. All I love, all I want, all I need is you—forever. I want to be just where you are and be just what you want me to be. I know it's lousy of me to be so late so often, and I promise to try a million times harder, I promise."

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Gustave Flaubert to Louise Colet -

In the 1840s and 1850s, the famed French novelist Flaubert wrote many steamy letters to French poet Louise Colet during their affair: "I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports...When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them."

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Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah -

American Civil War major Sullivan Ballou was preparing to be killed in the battle against Confederate troops when he wrote this letter to his wife in 1861: "O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day, and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by."

Sources: (Time) (CR Fashion Book) (Culture Trip) (Country Living) (Glamour)

See also: Celebrities who penned open letters

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