“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
This quote has no known author and is recorded as an anonymous proverb.
About this quote
Barrett Browning sent the sonnets to Robert Browning before they were published, which is why the collection is called a translation from the Portuguese although it is not. The question turns love into something you can itemise, which is the infatuated mind's instinct: to make the feeling legible to itself.
Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese