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In Russian, there is a phrase

Love sometimes plays tricks - you may fall in love with a goat

(Любовь зла, полюбишь и козла). Goat means a bad person (stupid, abusive).

It is used, when an otherwise intelligent person falls in love with an obviously bad partner (e. g. a smart woman voluntarily stays in relationship with a man, who beats her, or a successful man stays with a woman, who humiliates him).

I'm looking for English equivalents, ideally rhyming.

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    I think we should just use your translation of the Russian phrase, it's much more spicy!
    – Sam Watkins
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 8:14
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    In Norwegian we have a similar phrase Kjærligheten faller like lett på en lort som på en lilje which can be loosely translated to You fall in love with a turd as easily as a lily. I believe the most similar phrase in English, as others have pointed out, is Love is blind. Boring, but expressive.
    – user122469
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 11:33
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    There is also a Turkish saying, Love is a fly that can land either on grass or feces, which I believe is closer to the Russian one. But I guess as @user122469 as stated, you'll end up with the boring love is blind.
    – Şafak Gür
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 10:53
  • I disagree with your explanation of the original phrase. The person doesn't at all have to be intelligent. The phrase is used among friends, where one complains to another - most often humourously - about their male partner, or when people are gossiping about another couple where a male partner is allegedly somewhat not up to scratch. Also I've never heard it in a way where 'goat' was a reference to a female counterpart. Since 'goat' is masculine it would just sound totally weird.
    – maksimov
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 15:49
  • @maksimov I know at least two women, who used that phrase in a conversation about a good guy marrying a bad girl (as a concluding remark).
    – Glory to Russia
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 16:52

4 Answers 4

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Love is blind, comes close to what you are referring to :

  • (Cliché) If you love someone, you cannot see any faults in that person.

    • Jill: I don't understand why Joanna likes Tom. He's inconsiderate, he's vain, and he isn't even good-looking. Jane: Love is blind.

(McGraw-Hill Dictionary)

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    It doesn't carry the exact same nuance, but it's about as close as anything else could get.
    – Zibbobz
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 13:52
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    "Love is blind" is much more broad than your Russian saying. There's no requirement that the person be a bad person... it could simply be someone physically unattractive.
    – Catija
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 15:31
  • @Catija - it looks like that also the Russian saying refers both to physical and behavioural characteristics. –
    – user66974
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 18:48
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    @Catija the OP is wrong about that. Goat, here, does not mean "a bad person". It literally means a literal goat. If you check with Chekhov or Nemirovitch-Danchenko, you will see that the OP here invented that bit. "Goat" can have the figurative sense "bad person", and so the saying can take on that additional meaning in context, and the OP can use it that way. But that's adding a layer of complexity that makes things utterly untranslatable. It's hard enough to translate the actual saying; if we must account for a word play on top of it, we're out of luck.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 10:17
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    (The saying also does not say "love sometimes plays tricks". It says "love is evil". Plain and simple. No tricks, no sometimeses. So the English "love is blind" is actually a surprisingly good fit — same bluntness, same certainty, same grammatical structure.)
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 11:09
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Tangentially related is this phrase from The [Yale] Dictionary of Modern Proverbs (2012):

You have to kiss a lot of frogs (toads) to find a prince.

But two offshoots of this saying seem more relevant to the sense of the Russian saying. First, from the title of a book published in 1991 that carries the subtitle "The First Practical Guide to Romantic Love":

Kiss a Frog, You Get Warts

And second, in one of the subentries to the Dictionary of Modern Proverbs:

1980 Good Housekeeping (Jan.) 196 (cartoon: a young woman wearing a crown speaks from a psychiatrist's couch): "I started out looking for a prince, but now I just like to kiss frogs."

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"Opposites attract". This is used more with Rich/Poor, Smart/Stupid, Good looking/Ugly, thin/fat, tall/short etc. People who are completely opposite personality get attracted to each other. However this does not cover the abusive (domestic violence/humiliation) component that seems to be indicated by the Russian phrase.

The basis of this phase is the observation that in magnets opposite poles attract and like poles repel.

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    Particularly when it's expanded to "Opposites attract divorce lawyers."
    – Mr. Bultitude
    Commented May 21, 2015 at 14:39
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We have this saying " Love is in the eye of the beholder"

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    Really It's: beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But... I suppose you could extend it to love.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 7:41
  • @Mari-LouA - not a bad expression anyway..sailornattie2.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/…
    – user66974
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 10:00
  • @Josh61 That link is a blog post is written by a non-native speaker. And there are so many language and spelling errors in it, it's frightening.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented May 23, 2015 at 6:58
  • @yes..but I really like love is in the eye of the beholder. How could you fall in love with a goat otherwise.
    – user66974
    Commented May 23, 2015 at 8:12

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