It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration,
and the like, as things past, while love remains.--_Thoreau._
The love of man to woman is a thing common, and of course, and at first
partakes more of instinct and passion than of choice; but true
friendship between man and man is infinite and immortal.--_Plato._
We look at the one little woman's face we love, as we look at the face
of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own
yearnings.--_George Eliot._
Take away love, and not physical nature only, but the heart of the moral
world would be palsied.--_Southey._
Among all the many kinds of first love, that which begins in childish
companionship is the strongest and most enduring; when passion comes to
unite its force to long affection, love is at its spring-tide.--_George
Eliot._
Nothing quickens the perceptions like genuine love. From the humblest
professional attachment to the most chivalric devotion, what keenness of
observation is born under the influence of that feeling which drives
away the obscuring clouds of selfishness, as the sun consumes the vapor
of the morning.--_Tuckerman._
~Luck.~--Hope nothing from luck, and the probability is that you will be
so prepared, forewarned, and forearmed, that all shallow observers will
call you lucky.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
~Luxury.~--Whenever vanity and gayety, a love of pomp and dress,
furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and
elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of
men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what
evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.--_John Adams._