In The Big Bang Theory, it was the male characters who were generally more willing to profess loving feelings rather than the women, with Penny in particular being averse to the idea of admitting she was in love. And yet, Penny had more knowledge about relationships and social situations than the rest of her friends.
In this list, we haven’t restricted Penny’s insights about love to romantic moments, and have included friendship related ones as well as comedic quotes to bring in a well-rounded feel to how far-reaching Penny’s thoughts on love were.
“Howard Wolowitz… You Sign Anything She Puts In Front Of You, Because You Are The Luckiest Man Alive.”
Penny tended to mess things up for her own relationships, but she was a whiz when it came to handing out advice to others over their couplings. Case in point was in Season 5, when Howard was feeling annoyed at the prospect of signing a prenuptial agreement.
Penny, knowing that a guy like Howard could never do better than Bernadette (who loved him despite all his faults), handed him some tough love by making it clear that a prenuptial agreement was a small cost for guaranteed lifetime happiness. Seeing as the two remained married till the end, Penny was right for sure.
“I Love Him, But If He Gets Broken Let’s Not Get A New One.”
Out of all the characters on the show, Penny was the one who surprisingly displayed the most love for Sheldon. While others like Leonard tried to hide their affection for him, Penny would openly state that she had definite love for this man-child.
Her manner of showing it did differ, though, as she would make light jokes at his expense even when Sheldon wasn’t around. This quote was one of the instances where Penny was shown questioning why she came to love Sheldon in the first place.
“I Love You, Too, But You Cost More Than My Rent.”
It wasn’t just people that Penny took to developing relationships with as she was seen frequently out and about to go shopping. Out of the accessories and apparel she liked to spoil herself with, it was shoes that had a special place in Penny’s heart.
In this scene, Penny acknowledged that buying the shoes was a mistake as that pair cost a mind-boggling sum. She still tried to convince herself to keep them by pretending they were alive and wanted Penny to love them like they were her children.
“Sweetie, Every Night You Don’t Kill Him In His Sleep, He Wins.”
Penny recognized Leonard’s love for Sheldon even though Leonard would never want to admit it. It took Leonard a long time to call Sheldon his best friend onscreen, but Penny expedited this by pointing it out on numerous occasions.
She would also add in this fact in other occasions as well, as here Leonard wanted to keep wearing an extremely itchy shirt because he didn’t want to admit Sheldon was right about it; Penny chimed in that the fact that Leonard hadn’t ended the annoying person that Sheldon was meant that he actually loved the latter enough to always put up with his craziness.
“Who Do We Love!?”
Sheldon’s tendency to weird mannerisms caused Penny to come up with numerous ways to entertain herself when she realized there was nothing she could do other than put up with Sheldon. To this end, we saw her make Sheldon’s knocking on the door habit a fun one.
In this scene, Sheldon, as always, knocked three times and repeated Penny’s name in between the beats, only to have Penny ask him from the other side of the door if he loved her. This exasperated Sheldon further when Penny asked the same question each time he took a pause to say her name.
“…Like That Movie Wall-E At The End. You’re So Full Of Love And You Can Save A Plant And Get Fat People Out Of Their Floaty Chairs.”
It’s a misconception if you think Amy was the one who saw the capacity to love that Sheldon carried, as Penny noted this far before Amy had even made her debut on The Big Bang Theory. One of the nicer moments between the two was when Sheldon had to tuck Penny into bed after she’d had very powerful muscle relaxers, that caused her to go rather cuckoo.
Here, Penny’s drugged-up state had no problem in revealing that she was certain Sheldon really had a lot of love to give and could show his caring side more if he’d wanted to. She made a rather weird example using Wall-E to illustrate her point, though.
“It Means I Wish You Weren’t Going.”
The first time Penny truly realized she had loving feelings for Leonard was during the second season finale, as she had to hide how much she was hurting with the knowledge that Leonard would be gone for months with no way to contact her.
She displayed some true act of selfless love here too, as Penny lied about the sweater she had so thoughtfully knitted for Leonard having any deeper meaning. When Leonard accepted her answer and left, Penny leaned against the door and admitted out loud that she’d wished he didn’t need to go.
“It’s So Strange. No Matter How Thoughtless And Selfish He Is, I Still Love Him.”
Had it not been for Penny’s unconditional love for Sheldon, then the finale of The Big Bang Theory surely would’ve been the weakest. Eventually, though, it was because of encouragement on her part that the friend group decided to attend Sheldon’s Nobel Prize ceremony despite him having insulted them earlier.
Once he saw that Penny and the others really did love him beyond his selfish antics, Sheldon would dedicate his entire success to them, wrapping up twelve years worth of storylines - all due to Penny’s unwavering affection for him.
“You Know That I Love You…”
It took a heck of a long time for Penny to finally admit she loved Leonard; six years, to be exact. In the end, though, it took a slip of the tongue for Penny to say out loud of her feelings for him, something that made for both an embarrassing and touching situation.
As it happened, Penny felt frustrated that Leonard would feel threatened by any other man stealing her away, and told him that since she was in love with him there wasn’t anything to feel threatened by. When both of them realized what she’d just said, Leonard and Penny had separate ways to deal with it, but it was certain their love was now here to stay.
“Thank You For Marrying Me. Hopefully For The Last Time.”
The “I love you” part of their relationship served only a pit stop to bigger milestones, and Penny married Leonard quite a while later, with the wedding for their marriage taking place a year later. By this point, Leonard and Penny had been engaged multiple times and were now having another wedding.
Still, Penny made this occasion as special as before when she reaffirmed her love for Leonard and thanked him for marrying her, which was something that can’t be taken lightly as Leonard was someone who had previously been insecure whether he’d deserved Penny at all. Assuring him that she was the lucky one in this scenario meant that all of Leonard’s hopes at having Penny reciprocate his feelings were validated once and for all.
