Love would slay rather than surrender; would for-swear rather than forgo.
* * *
Some loves, like some fevers, render the patient immune--at all events
to that particular kind of contagion.
Many lovers are vaccinated in early youth.
* * *
Only love can comprehend and reciprocate love. This is why,
If, of two sensitive human souls, the one loves passionately and the
other not at all, the other is unwittingly blind and deaf to love's
clamors and claims: the one may ardently urge; the other but passively
yields:--
Only the famished understand the pangs of the hungered.
Of a great and reciprocated love there is one and only one sign: the
expression of the eyes. Who that has seen it was ever deceived by its
counterfeit?
Did ever the same love-light shine in the same eyes twice?
The light of love in the eyes may take on a thousand forms: exultant
jubilation, a trustful happiness; infinite appeasement, or promises
untold; an adoration supreme, or a complex oblation; tenderness
ineffable, or heroic resolves; implicit faith; unquestioning confidence;
abounding pity; unabashed desire. . .
He who shall count the stars of heaven, shall enumerate the radiances of
love.
* * *
There is no Art of Loving (1); though, as Ovid says, love must be guided
by art (2). Yet,
If love did not come by chance, it would never come at all.
(1) Ovid wrote not Art of Loving ("Ars Amandi"); he wrote on the
Amatorial Art ("Ars Amatoria").
(2) "Arte regendus amor."--"Ars Amatoria", I, 4.
* * *
To each of us himself is the centre of the visible universe. But when
love comes it alters this Ptolemaic theory. Yet,
It is a significant fact that love, which, more than any other thing in
this world, is the great bringer-together of hearts, begins its
mysterious work as a separator and puter-at-a-distance. For
When love first dawns in the breast of youth, it throws about its object
a sacred aureole, which awes at the same time that it inspires the
faithful worshipper.
* * *
Can only two walk abreast in the path of love? How many try to widen that
strait and narrow way!
* * *
Love raises everything to a higher plane; but nothing higher than the man
or woman who is loved.
Is there anything about which love does not shed a halo? Indeed,
Love is a sort of transfiguration. And when on the mount, we can very
truly say, "It is good for us to be here".
If there is any sublunary thing equal in value to the true love of a
faithful woman, it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive.
True love makes all things loveable,--except perhaps the chaperon.
Was there ever man or woman yet who was not bettered by a true love?
True love is ever diffident and fearful of its own venturesomeness (3).
But this not every woman understands.
Too often the Phantasm of love and not the Verity wins the day (4).
Women who seek a real lover should beware the overbold one.
(3) Cf. "La volupte Nous rend hardis, l'amour nous rend timides."
--Voltaire, La Pucelle, Chant vi.
(4) See Leopardi, "Storia del Genere Humano", where the Verities of Truth
and Love and Justice never leave the throne of Jove, but their Phantasms
are sent down amongst men.
* * *
To merge the THEE and the ME into one--that is ever the attempt of love.
It is impossible. Yet, perhaps
They are happiest who can longest disbelieve in the impossibility of this
amatorial fusion; for it may be that such
Incredulity is favorable to romance.
* * *
Love is not exactly a sacrifice; it is an exchange. The lover, indeed,
gives his heart; he expects another in return.
* * *
Love is like life: no apparatus can manufacture it; kill it, and nothing
in the heavens above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the
earth will resuscitate it.
How many a forlorn human wight has tried to resuscitate love!
* * *
To such heights does love exalt the lover that he or she will live for
days in the remembered delights of a look, a word, a gesture. But
One thing is impossible to love: love cannot create love; the intensest
and most fervent love is powerless to evoke a scintillation of love.
Love may worship, it may adore, it may transfigure, it may exalt the
object of its devotion to the skies; but it cannot cause that object to
emit one ray of love in return.
* * *
Hate may be concealed; love never.
* * *
The greater the imaginative altitude of love, the lower the boiling
point. But
Love cannot always be kept at high pressure.
* * *
The young think love is the winning-post of life, the old know it is a
turn in the course. Nevertheless, it is a fateful turn.
* * *
In love, the imagination plays a very large part. And this may be
variously interpreted. Thus,
By man, love is regarded as a sort of sacred religion; by woman, as her
every-day morality. The former is the more exhilarating; but the latter
is more serviceable. Indeed,
Love and religion are very near akin: both inspire, and both elevate.
And
If faith, hope, and charity are the basis of religion, there never was
such as religion as love. And
Love is the only religion in which there have been no heretics. Why?
Because woman are at once its object and its priesthood.
Love, art, and religion are but different phases of the same emotion:
awe, reverence, worship, and sacrifice in the presence of the supreme
ideal.
Love knows no creed. Nay more,
Love acknowledges no deity but itself and accepts no sanctions but its
own: it is autonomous. And yet--
And yet, love sometimes feels constrained to offer a liturgical
acquiescence to the rubric of Reason. In short,
Between the prelatical domination of Reason and the recusant
Protestantism of Love there has ever been strife. Or, in plain language,
There are two codes of ethics: one that of the romantic heart; the other
that of the practical head. Who shall assimilate them?
The heart, in its profoundest depths, feels that something is due to
Reason; and Reason, in its highest flights, feels that something is due
to the heart.
Is there a divine duplicity in the human soul? And yet, after all,