“ If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart? ”
Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet (1834). copy citation
Author | Honoré de Balzac |
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Source | Eugénie Grandet |
Topic | love heart |
Date | 1834 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley |
Weblink | https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A9nie_Grandet |
Context
“*** In the pure and monotonous life of young girls there comes a delicious hour when the sun sheds its rays into their soul, when the flowers express their thoughts, when the throbbings of the heart send upward to the brain their fertilizing warmth and melt all thoughts into a vague desire,—day of innocent melancholy and of dulcet joys! When babes begin to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart? The moment to see within the veil of earthly things had come for Eugenie.
An early riser, like all provincial girls, she was up betimes and said her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,—a business which henceforth was to have a meaning.”
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