“ We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women, until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental camera-obscura. ”
 Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). copy citation

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“They all are painted there by reflection from our faces, but because all of them are painted on each spot, and each on the same surface, and many other objects at the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a single pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women, until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental camera-obscura. —My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the anniversaries come round. What’s the difficulty?—Why, they all want him to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he doesn’t want to do.” source