‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Samuel Butler wrote this in Way of All Flesh.

Samuel Butler aged 23 in 1858  (Photo Credit Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Butler_1858.jpg

Pressing one’s suit on someone is not using her as an ironing board.  It is an expression about courtship and a proposal of marriage.

Are you courting?
When I was in my early teens a great-uncle by marriage used to ask me this question.  In the North of England it was still a current expression.  In the South, where I lived it was more usual to ask whether someone had a boyfriend or was “going out with anyone”.

Billing and cooing
is a phrase associated with a courting couple.  They might be lovey-dovey.

Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
something blue.

This rhyme describes items of clothing a bride wears according to tradition.

Have a fling means have a love affair.

A billet doux is a love-letter.

For the love of… is an idiom.

Faint heart never won fair lady
is a proverb put to good use by WS Gilbert in Iolanthe.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride
is a saying.

Another proverb is
Where there is no trust, there is no love.

Perhaps the most famous verse in the New Testament is John 3:16