True
love is that which ennobles the personality, fortifies the heart, and
sanctifies the existence. And the being we love must not be mysterious
and sphinx-like, but clear and limpid as a diamond; so that admiration
and attachment may grow with knowledge.
* * * * *
Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely
love's contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved,
it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own
triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most
passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting,
and vain _ego_, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The
contrast is perfect.
* * * * *
Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power of
loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; their
fidelity as resisting as the diamond; they are hungry for devotion and
athirst for sacrifice. Their love is a piety, their tenderness a
religion, and they triple the energy of love by giving to it the
sanctity of duty.
* * * * *
To the spectator over fifty, the world certainly presents a good deal
that is new, but a great deal more which is only the old furbished
up--mere plagiarism and modification, rather than amelioration.
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