Bronte beats Shakespeare for romantic lines

LONDON, Feb 10

Britons have chosen a line from Emily Bronte's novel "Wuthering Heights" as the most romantic in English literature just in time for Valentine's Day.

A poll of 2,000 adults commissioned by Warner Home Video to mark the DVD release of the romantic comedy "Going the Distance" showed 20 percent of respondents chose the line: "whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same".

Fictional character Catherine Earnshaw's comment on her love for Heathcliff was followed by Winnie-The-Pooh, fictional bear created by English writer AA Milne: "If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus one day, so I never have to live without you".

England's most famous playwright, William Shakespeare, came third with a line from his play about the star-crossed lovers in "Romeo and Juliet": "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun".

A list of quotes and their ranking by respondents follows: 1. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same - Emily Bronte 2. If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you - A A Milne 3. But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun - Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet 4. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong - W.H. Auden 5. You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams - Dr. Seuss 6. When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part - Captain Corelli's Mandolin 7. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be - Robert Browning 8. For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow - Rosemonde Gerard 9. But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love her forever - Robert Burns 10. I hope before long to press you in my arms and shall shower on you a million burning kisses as under the Equator - Napoleon Bonaparte's 1796 dispatch to wife Josephine.

(Reuters Life!)