As You Like It

“ “Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! ”

“ I was not more beautiful than other women, but I wanted to be. In spite of me and in spite of themselves, the men hovered about me, lavish of their glances. I moved like a ray of joy, life was a festival redder than war; I expressed myself without saying a word, all hearts were ready, they gave me more love than I asked for and almost as much as I needed.
That was the air I breathed and had to breathe. Is it good, is it bad? It is an instinct which keeps turning rapidly round and round in you. ”

“ "You have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate." [80]
"As moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so." ”

“ What sweetness in the glance of a woman who begins to attract you! At first it seems as though everything that passes between you is timid and tentative, but soon there is born a strange joy, an echo answers you; you know a dual life. What a touch! What a strange attraction! And when love is sure of itself and knows response in the object beloved, what serenity in the soul! Words die on the lips, for each one knows what the other is about to say before utterance has shaped the thought. Souls expand, lips are silent. ”

“ “Do you like him much?”
“I told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so very much: he is full of faults.”
“Is he?”
“All boys are.”
“More than girls?”
“Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislikes, we should be friendly to all, and worship none.” ”

“ I never discussed any more profound topic with my sweetheart than love—and perhaps poetry and music. Sometimes, as I sit and listen to you two, I can't half believe that you are lovers. It's so perfectly absurd. You talk about everything on earth. ”

“ The answer was a kiss that sent a thrill of pleasure through every vein.
"Oh, my dear, this is nothing to what you would enjoy were you to link your fortune to mine and fly with me to France. Then we would live a life of love and pleasure such as you have just tasted. Our whole lives would be nothing but love and pleasure, morn, noon and night it would be love, all love. There should be nothing around us but love - nothing but pleasure!" ”

“ And why is it that affection, as exhibited in general life, is so rarely seen unstained by the tint of some darker passion? Love on, fair girl—love on in thy purity and innocence! The beauty that thou seest in nature, and the music it sends forth, exist only in thy own heart, and the light which plays around thee like a glory, is only the reflection of that image whose lustre has taken away the shadows from thy spirit! ”

“ But, as I was saying, I do like a little romance about them,—just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. ”

“ I thought only of your impatience, and the people waiting, and the pleasure of days to come when, free from this intolerable bond, I could keep my place at your side and bear your name unreproved and taste to the full the awe and delight of a passion such as few women ever feel, because few women were ever loved by a man like you. ”

“ You will blush as does the budding rose, and the blood of youth will mount to your face. While saying that your heart is sealed, you will allow it to escape through that fresh aureole of beauty, each ray of which allures a kiss. How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more! And why should that astonish you? You are a woman; that body, that spotless bosom, you know what they are worth ”

“ For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they shine only when it is dark. ”

“ he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! ”

“ Have you not sometimes seen two men striving to gain the ear of a fair lady, and eloquence, and sense, and wit all fail, while sweet tones only have prevailed? The eye and the ear are but sentries on guard, and the fair form and the sweet tone are but as passwords to the camp. Nay, more: some voices have their peculiar harmonies with the hearts of individuals. One will have no sweetness in its tone to many, while to another it will be all melody ”

“ The singer steps before her flower-bedecked window, and sings her beauties in the name of her lover. He compares her size to that of a pear tree, her lips to two blushing rose-buds, and her womanly form to that of a dove. With assumed harshness the lady asks her lover: Who are you, and what do you want? He answers with ardent confidence: "Thy love I do adore. The stars live in the harmony of love, and why should not we, too, love each other?" Then the proud beauty gives herself away: she takes her flower-wreath from her hair and throws it down to her lover, promising to be his forever. ”

“ The delicacy of her love scenes, the lightness of touch that distinguishes her numerous flirtations can only be equalled by the pathos she has thrown into her work every now and then, as if to temper her brightness with a little shade. ”

“ That somewhere, deep in the heart of the man she loved was a music surpassing in sweetness the music of the shallow girl’s voice which now seemed to sway him to her will. “If he is a man worth loving,” she thought, “he’ll see through the surface glamour of a girl like that.” ”

“ She stopped, catching a look of surprise in her lover's face, and sought confusedly to blot out the effect of her last words. “I mean—but of course you know best. I want you to keep your place; you love the work, and no one could do it so well as you. ”

“ She placed love before everything—lifted it to the altar as you raise a saint and worshipped with bent knees and silently moving lips. To understand the great-hearted love of a greatly loving woman, you must know the joy of greatly giving. She loves to give; she gives to love. ”

“ What folly, indeed, to love such a girl! What fascinates you is simply the mysterious brilliancy of her coal-black eyes—of which you may find ten thousand duplicates in Italy or Spain. Don’t you see that no flashes of wit are ever mirrored in those eyes? that, though beautiful, they are soulless, like a black pansy? that they look at one person as at another, incapable of expressing shades and modulations of tender emotion, because the soul of which they are the windows has never been, and never will be, moved by Love? ”

“ “Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,—love her, love her, love her!” ”

“ All the sweet of her liberty and her adventure were singing in her veins, all the sweet of young life and the “honey of romance” were in her heart—so little it takes to make one mad with delight when she is twenty and safe away from two who are ponderous and done with glamour. ”

“ Her affection for her was the one romance of her youth, and she lavished upon it all the sweetness and tenderness, the enthusiasm and devotion of her nature, which make her seem to us lovable above all women. ”

“ What could be more marvellous, more chimerical, than this temporary suppression of a strong appetite at the time when it would be supposed to manifest itself most irresistibly—this distilling of the finer emotions, leaving all the gross, material elements behind? Can you imagine anything more absurdly romantic than the gallant attentions of a man on his knees before a girl whom, with his stronger muscles, he could command as a slave? Who but a romantic lover would obliterate his selfish ego in sympathetic devotion to another, trying to feel her feelings, forgetting his own? ”

“ Yes; if the world be right in calling a passion romantic just in proportion as it is not merely hopeless, but pure and unselfish, drawing its delicious power from no hope or faintest desire of enjoyment, but merely from simple delight in its object—then my passion was most romantic. ”

“ Because I don't happen to like the things that you like, the things that you already have had the first full joy of liking,—you've got to miss altogether your dimmer, second-hand glimpse of happiness! ”

“ Here is the offering, blond, slim, laughing, which I already present to you.... He will perceive uncomprehendingly that if I am a little more beautiful than myself, it is because by virtue of loving one comes to resemble the love one feels. ”

“ The half-hearted reproach and the offended look are the marks of those who pretend to spurn but who really love us in their hearts.
1098. The slender-shaped maid melteth to see my imploring look and softly smileth: and the gentle smile giveth her an added grace.
1099. It is only in lovers' eyes that one can see the look of absolute unconcern, as if they were perfect strangers. ”

“ How many evenings, that would have been insufferably stupid, have flown delightfully, chased by her delicious voice!"
"You make a great virtue of what was simply an enjoyment to herself. She delights as much, or more, in singing than any one can delight in hearing her." ”

“ There's the pleasure of pursuit—there's vanity, there's the satisfaction of your own amour-propre, there's desire, there's intellectual attraction, there's the love of beauty, there's the artist's joy in doing what you know you can do well, and getting a pretty woman for sole audience. ”

“ “I must ask what it is you want of me?”
“What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing,” she said, understanding all he had not uttered. “But that I don’t want; that’s secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.” ”

“ Have you not seen those whose charms at first-sight found no place in your thoughts, but as you were drawn nearer and nearer to them, so also did your esteem quicken, and that esteem, almost unconsciously, you found ripening into affection, until in turn you were seized with an ardent passion? ”

“ My life—my whole life. Take it, and do with it what you will. . . . I love you—love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly! You did not know it then—you know it now! ”

“ I dared not dream she loved me. Nay,
Her love was proud; and pride is loth
To look with favor, own it fond
Of one the world loves not to-day....
No matter if she loved or no,
God knows I loved enough for both,
And knew her as you shall not know
Till you have known sweet death, and you
Have cross'd the dark; gone over to
The great majority beyond. ”

“ He remains quite as free from sentimental and pathetic love as from sensual, especially as he apprehends that the former would in the end entangle him in the latter, because like a minor-tone it has quite a different returning scale from its ascending one. ”

“ With each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture—all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love—all these things are like so many objects on the horizon of the landscape that tempt a man to walk beyond the horizon, to explore. ”

“ Thou knowest that I love none but Thee. All this beautiful poesy of my being lies in Thee. Deeply I feel it. I ask nothing. Each desire, each passionate feeling, is on the surface only; inmostly Thou keepest me strong and pure. Yet always to be thus going out into moments, into nature, and love, and thought! ”

“ From what I already know, I have no doubt that you would make any girl very happy whom you loved, but, although I have a great liking and esteem for you, I cannot say that I return your affection as you deserve. ”

“ Then again, too, she felt to perfection the fine wonder, the fine glow of a great inspiration, and realised anew that therein all the pleasures of the senses added together are contained; that inspiration in its higher manifestations is like love—that it is love, in fact—love without the lover ”

“ It is only a very callous kind of critic who will discount reality from a love because—it is touched with glamour—for was there ever in all history a lovely reality without a lovely glamour? Since, be you ever so young, to kiss a courtesan is to kiss a courtesan, but, be you ever so calm, to kiss a lover is to make a fairy-tale....
I didn't wonder whether Iris had told Roger that she was seeing his brother. ”

“ I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of it, [9] lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, ’twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures. ”

“ It is the same feeling which overcomes the lover who has just been assured of the return of his love, who looks around with beaming eye, and would like to press flowers and all to his overflowing heart. ”

“ "Beauty is only to be admired, only to be loved—to be harvested carefully and then flung at a chosen lover like a gift of roses. It seems to me, so far as I can judge clearly at all, that my beauty should be used like that...." ”

“ And with a reader who has penetrated deeper, whose nostrils yearn for her indescribably subtle perfume, who knows the different aspects of her streets from days of diligent tramping, who has seen her river blending with her sky in a hundred harmonies, who has felt her moods and her humours, finding like a true lover her blemishes as adorable as her perfections, who has recognized her past in her present, and who, though a stranger, has divined in ecstasy the wild throb of her romantic heart—with him my task is easier still. ”