Love is blind

Origin of: Love is blind

Love is blind

Although Shakespeare uses the expression very often in several of his plays, he did not coin it, nor did Geoffrey Chaucer who used it in The Merchant’s Tale c. 1387. It is an ancient saying, familiar to both the Greeks and Romans and probably to civilisations before them. Modern research has confirmed that it is not just a fanciful metaphor. In 2004, a University College London study found that feelings of love impair those parts of the brain responsible for critical thought and vision.