Infatuation

“ The amorous hyperbole of the ancients is romantic in the sense of fanciful, fictitious, extravagant, but not in the sense in which I oppose romantic love to selfish sensual infatuation. There is no intimation in it of those things that differentiate love from lust—the mental and moral charms of the women, or the adoration, sympathy, and affection, of the men. ”

“ If you mean for romantic love, for the infatuation that defies all change of sentiment, all growth of feeling, that revels in the thought, experience will not make us wiser, nor daily associations less admiring, it is not enough. ”

“ Indeed, the latter is far from rare, and there are instances of women having filled other women with the blindest infatuation for them—an infatuation surpassing that of the most doting lovers, and, without doubt, generated by undue influence, or, in other words, by witchcraft. ”

“ The whole world, adolescent and adult, was falling in love, with the inevitable unrequited infatuations, the jealousies, infidelities and the bitter-sweetness of wholesale, illicit, impossible love situations in which vulnerable people found themselves increasing astronomically. ”

“ That which may be anticipated, at length comes to pass; the lover returns—he flies to his mistress—she receives him with blushing cheek and palpitating heart. I shall not attempt to describe the scene, but throughout the day and night that succeeds that interview the lover seems like one distracted. In the city, in the fields—alone, or in company—he hears nothing but the magic words, “I LOVE YOU!” ringing in his ears, and feels that ecstatic delight which it is permitted mortals to taste but once in their lives. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ The passion I experience is too powerful, too vast, to descend even to the falsehoods to which we should both be reduced, if we sought the pleasures of a vulgar love. No, no, to belong to him in the open gaze of day, in the face of the world, to bear his name nobly and proudly—or bury my unhappy love in the depths of my heart. ”

“ Why did I not experience a moment of embarrassment, timidity or restraint? Naturally bashful, easily confused, having seen nothing of the world, could I, the first time, the first moment I beheld her, adopt caressing language, and a familiar tone, as readily as after ten years' intimacy had rendered these freedoms natural? Is it possible to possess love, I will not say without desires, for I certainly had them, but without inquietude, without jealousy? Can we avoid feeling an anxious wish at least to know whether our affection is returned? ”

“ As if a love which, from the first moment, both lovers feel to be, for them, the arbiter of life and death, were to be decried in favour of an affection founded on mutual esteem—the variety which, it appears, "our age demands." ”

“ Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl’s heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. ”

“ The accent rests on the word necessary; for it is this feeling of necessary communion of interests that distinguishes conjugal affection from Love and from friendship, in both of which there is a mutual sympathy, but not so far-reaching and inevitable. A lover’s fame or disgrace may be keenly felt by his sweetheart or his friend, yet society does not associate them with the other’s reputation or disgrace; and if the infamy is too great, they can easily sever their bond, without leaving a spot on their own good name. ”

“ He had once been somewhat shaken by the dicta of the modern philosophers who relegate human love to the plane of an illness or an appetite. But where was the physical difference between the woman he so passionately loved and the one for whom he had never felt more than affection and pity? If from the strange adventure of his marriage he had lost some certainties concerning the human soul, he had gained the certainty that Love at least appertains to it. ”

“ When one of those invincible appeals of imploring passion awoke all the echoes of her love, and ran through her veins with a thrill, striking the innermost depths of her heart, she threw herself back and imprinted her burning lips upon the cold paper. ”

“ This accomplished, inasmuch as the agency of my influence could represent the responsive source of sexual alliance, for the embodiment of affection, she became so deeply absorbed with sweet meditative reflection that she was unconscious of my departure. This ingraft of affection, in surety so propitious, should engender solicitude, on your part, in behalf of your race; for enjoyment ever lacks full maturity, when we feel that there are others with the prestige of purity and goodness, who are denied our privilege from the want of kindly direction. ”

“ I am disinclined to make excavations into the insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. ”

“ Suppose, now, the husband died (and I regret that I can not regard this contingency with disgust) and there were at least a sporting chance of my stepping into his shoes—oh! of course not at once, but later—later—why, then I could face permanent loyalty and temporary asceticism with a light heart.... But to go through the world refusing all sweets because my favorite sweet has been appropriated, surely that were foolish.
"Again, am I in love with her? Can one fall in love so suddenly, outside the realm of fiction? ”

“ The sweet remembrance of those days cost those amiable girls nothing; the tender union which reigned among us equalled more lively pleasures, with which it could not have existed. We loved each other without shame or mystery, and wished to continue our reciprocal affection. There is a species of enjoyment connected with innocence of manners which is superior to any other, because it has no interval; for myself, the remembrance of such a day touches me nearer, delights me more, and returns with greater rapture to my heart than any other pleasure I ever tasted. ”

“ What of this new and astonishing revelation—new and astonishing to him, at any rate—that love, to a woman, is not a mere decoction of bliss administered by a powerful and benevolent male, but a highly complicated universe of subjective illusions in which the lover is only dimly seen as a necessary but disturbing phantom of gross and agonizing ineptitudes? ”

“ You are, I think, the first lover who ever tried to persuade another to love his beloved. To be sure, the lover to whom you are offering her is only an illusion; otherwise such generosity would be matchless. ”

“ What could be more fantastic than a lover's stubborn preference for a particular individual and his conviction that no one ever loved so frantically as he does? What more extravagant and unreasonable than his imperious desire to completely monopolize her affection, sometimes guarding her jealously even from her girl friends or her nearest relatives? What more romantic than the tortures and tragedies, the mixed emotions, that doubt or jealousy gives rise to? Does not a willing but coyly reserved maiden romance about her feelings? ”

“ This is the natural history of undisciplined passion; it cheapens love, it robs it quickly of its exquisiteness and charm. The faithful lover, on the other hand, by checking premature intimacies, and keeping true to the one woman who calls or will some day call out all his love, knows a steady joy that bulks in the end far greater than the flaring and fitful and quickly disillusioned passions of unearned love. ”

“ What an intimacy, what an intensity of relation, I said to myself, so successful a process implied! It was of course familiar enough that when people were so deeply in love they rubbed off on each other—that a great pressure of soul to soul usually left on either side a sufficient show of tell-tale traces. ”

“ Under these conditions the lovers will be aiming towards an ideal which recognizes that in wedded life all that is lasting in affection, in tender courtesy, in most intimate companionship, in sweetest demonstration, is possible without the physical union, which in itself is the most transitory of pleasures, but which in unlimited indulgence becomes the most domineering of passions, exhaustive of physical power and of mental vigor, and absolutely annihilating all true love. ”

“ Love.—I speak here of the true love of a higher nature of one sex for the other, or sexual love, which is not simple friendship, but is combined with sexual appetite. To write on love is almost to pour water into the ocean, for literature is three parts composed of dissertations on love. There can be no doubt that the normal man feels a great desire for love. The irradiations of love in the mind constitute one of the fundamental conditions of human happiness and one of the principal objects of life. ”

“ They confuse that rude instinct which is jealousy, physical and base, with the higher and more ardent love—the virile affirmation of possession with the fresher, more vigorous desire of love’s happiness—but this does not make their passions more trivial nor less consuming. ”

“ Again, if this accession of toil, and this diminution and decay of perceptible love, and this falling back on inward love, is the natural course of events, why not say so in the beginning? If inward love be satisfactory at one time, why not at another, as well before marriage as after? Why, when a man has once made and received affidavit of love, should he not be content, and neither proffer nor demand manifestations? Let men be satisfied with inward love during courtship, and the honeymoon, if inward love is so all-sufficient. ”

“ Their attachment had been but physical; their affection only make-believe—to colour fact, and suffuse reality with romance. Only that insatiable appetite for life had really led her wrong; that passion for physical vitality ”

“ You hear of silent love, of lovers staring on one another with glowing eyes, their lips incapable of the emotions and sensations which crowd their quick hearts and fill their throats with sighs. This may be very well too; but, for my part, I have generally observed that lovers have a very great deal to talk about. ”

“ Our restless pursuit of discoveries and divinations has become for us as attractive and indispensable as hapless love to the lover, which on no account would he exchange for indifference,—nay, perhaps we, too, are hapless lovers! ”

“ Where love is merely sensual and shallow lovers' quarrels do not fan the flame, but put it out:
"Love which, once dissolved, is united again, after unpleasant things have been revealed, tastes flat, like water that has been boiled." ”

“ But if, after all, the girl is such as he describes and believes,—innocent, artless, and worthy his affection,—oh, then I range myself, with your own good heart, upon his side. Never will I run the risk of unsettling a man’s whole character for life by wantonly interfering with his affections. ”

“ How we glow over these novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties? Perhaps we never saw them before, and never shall meet them again. But we see them exchange a glance, or betray a deep emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them, and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance. All mankind love a lover. ”

“ The business of a love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing, persuades them that they have real passion when they have but flirtation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Imagine the effect of these arts upon a sensitive and romantic girl, a lonely and orphaned creature who was yearning for the voice of affection, and weaving many a beautiful fancy of future happiness, to be found only in reciprocal affection, and you will anticipate the result. ”

“ It has indeed an egoistic side, including the ingredients I have called Individual Preference, Monopolism, Jealousy, Coyness, Hyperbole, Mixed Moods, and Pride; and it is not a mere accident that these are also the seven features which may be found in sensual love too; for sensuality and selfishness are twins. But the later and more essential characteristics of romantic love are the altruistic and supersensual traits—Sympathy, Affection, Gallantry, Self-sacrifice, Adoration, Purity, and Admiration of Personal Beauty. ”

“ No doubt the illusions of love would be little known, and passion would see a diminution of its transports. But is it passion that in general ennobles human affairs? We need honest attachments and delicate delights, and all these we may obtain while still preserving our common-sense.... ”

“ What is love to a mistress, for example, but a pleasant emotion raised by a sight or idea of the person beloved, joined with desire of enjoyment? In what else consists the passion of resentment, but in a painful emotion occasioned by the injury, accompanied with desire to chastise the author of the injury? In general, as to every sort of passion, we find no more in the composition, but the particulars now mentioned, an emotion pleasant or painful accompanied with desire. ”