Love letter

“ LOVE.—There is no greater or more profound reality than love. Why that reality should be obscured by mere sentimentalism, with all its train of absurdities is incomprehensible. There is no nobler possession than the love of another. There is no higher gift from one human being to another than love. The gift and the possession are true sanctifiers of life, and should be worn as precious jewels, without affectation and without bashfulness. For this reason there is nothing to be ashamed of in a love letter, provided it be sincere. ”

“ Soul is wanting in them. I love you is merely an expression of habit, a necessary form, the I have the honor to be of the love letter. Little by little the style freezes where it inflamed. The post day, no longer eagerly anticipated, is rather dreaded; writing has become a fatigue. We blush to think of the madnesses we have trusted to paper, and wish we could recall our letters and burn them. What has happened? Is it a new attachment which begins where an old one ends? No: it is love dying in advance of the object loved. ”

“ The first time a woman cries after she is married, she reads over all the love letters the other men have written her, for a love letter is something a tender-hearted woman cannot bring herself to destroy. ”

“ I like not ill words. Write thy letter, but put out of thy mind all bad thoughts first. A love letter from a bitter heart is not lucky. And of all thy wit thou wilt have great need if to a woman thou write. ”

“ The little maid of fourteen sighs for a love letter, and hopes that her cousin Frederick William, who sues for her hand, will write her one, and is so innocent as to suppose that he woos her because he loves her. Poor child, disappointed in her curiosity and her wish to know herself beloved! Yes, yes, it is the perpetual longing of the young heart to be loved, and when the first love letter is received, the foolish young creature fancies itself the happiest being upon earth, and feels itself transported into the blessedness of paradise. ”

“ In an era when letter-writing is said to be dying out, it is not surprising that love-letters should come under suspicion. Indeed, there have been many temptations to cynicism. The law courts have been invoked to decide whether love-letters belong to the sender or to the receiver; nice questions have grown out of misunderstandings as to proposals of marriage. It is hinted that men are to become revoltingly crafty as to things put upon paper, and that the young lady of a not remote future will receive her lover’s notes moist and blurred from the embrace of a copying book. ”

“ Under the pillow of the maiden, her lover’s letter brings visions of happiness too great for the human heart to hold. Even in her dreams, her fingers tighten upon his letter—the visible assurance of his unchanging and unchangeable love.
When the bugle sounds the charge, and dimly through the flash and flame the flag signals “Follow!” many a heart, leaping to answer with the hot blood of youth, finds a sudden tenderness in the midst of its high courage, from the loving letter which lies close to the soldier’s breast. ”

“ TELLING THEIR LOVE.—The generality of the sex is, love to be loved; how are they to know the fact that they are loved unless they are told? To write a sensible love letter requires more talent than to solve, with your pen, a profound problem in philosophy. ”

“ As soon as it was light I took stationery from my trunk and wrote an impassioned letter to my beloved, that she might see, before we met again, how terribly she had misjudged me. I told her the story as it really was—my sudden awakening, the longing that possessed me for some recognition from the being to whom all my life's love had been pledged. ”

“ I know how precious any one must be whom you love so much. But make her love me a little before she reads my letter—and don't let her call me anything but Pet—and then I shall feel as if I had a sister already. And so I have, as you say. What a glad word!—I could cry again with the very writing of it.
'Endy—I did cry a little over your letter, but only for joy: if it had been for sorrow I should have cried long ago; for I knew well enough what was coming. Only I want more than ever to be at home,—and to see you, and to see Faith—don't let her think I am like you! ”

“ A real love letter is absolutely ridiculous to everyone except the writer and the recipient. A composition, which repeats the same term of endearment thirteen times on a page, has certainly no particular claim to literary art.
When a man writes a love letter, dated, and fully identified by name and address, there is no question but that he is in earnest. A large number of people consider nothing so innocently entertaining as love letters, read in a [Pg 116] court-room, with due attention to effect, by the counsel for the other side. ”

“ Ownest beloved, I know not whether thou dost expect a letter from thy husband; but I have a comfortable faith that it will not be altogether unwelcome; so I boldly sit down to scribble. I love thee transcendently; and nothing makes me more sensible of the fact, than that I write thee voluntary letters, without any external necessity. It is as if intense love should make a dumb man speak. (Alas! I hear a knocking at the door, and suspect that some untimely person is about to call me away from my Dove.) ”

“ A letter betraying anger and hurt pride may often crystallise a yielding mood into determination and summon evil spirits which love cannot banish. The letter asking forgiveness may cross the path of the one which puts an end to everything. It would seriously test the power of the Egyptian to foretell what might result from a single letter, written in all love and tenderness, perhaps, but destined to be completely misunderstood.
Old love letters often mean tears, because they have been so wrongly read. ”

“ To her the letter gave.
"Ha, there's a letter frae your love,
He says he sent you three;
He canna wait your love langer,
But for your sake he'll die.
"He bids you write a letter to him;
He says he's sent ye five;
He canna wait your love langer,
Tho' you're the fairest woman alive." ”

“ In your letter, dear, be sure to tell me that you are convinced that I love you more than it is possible to imagine; that you are persuaded that all my moments are consecrated to you; that to think of any other woman has never entered my head—they are all in my eyes without grace, wit, or beauty ”

“ DEAREST DONALD,—I received your kind letter. That you are doing well, and saving money for the purpose you speak of, it is pleasant to hear. That you still love me is what is dearest to my heart. I may confess in this letter what I could scarcely ever say in your presence, that I think of you always. All our old walks are eloquent of the calm and happy past. ”

“ And yet she must say something, if only to cover her discomposure.
'And has it come to this, that a daughter of mine has actually received a love-letter! You! Sophia Sangster! what kind of conduct do you practise, that a libert---- a----young man feels encouraged to write you a love letter, and make you a proposal? Where has been your maidenliness? Your common sense of propriety? When I was a young woman, no man breathing would have presumed to write about love to me!'
'Mamma! I have done nothing. ”

“ I know now that I love you, dear,—wait—nay, he cannot wait, but goes before, and I—will come—yes, dear heart, I will”—
And before her father could grasp her she slid from his hands, and lay there beneath the birch-tree, the moon shining upon her white robe, and her face as white, and the hands clasping the letter to her breast. ”

“ I have often seen the pretty little love-letter fall at the feet of a lover—it was a little bit of flax made into a sort of half-knot—'yes' was made by pulling the knot tight—'no' by leaving the matrimonial noose alone. ”

“ Of one who has ceased to love we hear that "the passion in her was like a place of waves evaporated to a crust of salt." Of a lady's letter we learn that it "flourished with light strokes all over, like a field of the bearded barley." ”

“ If you are engaged, of course you should write love letters—the most beautiful that you can—but don't write baby-talk and other sillinesses that would make you feel idiotic if the letter were to fall into strange hands. ”

“ In any case the letters that pass between an engaged couple should be kept absolutely private. We know the story of the man who wrote the same love-letters to two girls, who {61} discovered his treachery by comparing their respective treasures. Such a case is, I hope, purely fictional, but there ought to be some exceptionally good reason for divulging the sweet nothings that go to make up the typical love-letter. For the one to whom they are addressed they will be sublime, to the outsider they will probably be only ridiculous. ”

“ LETTERS. These paper missives are good to dream about: if you dream you receive a great number of letters, it foretells that honors await you: to receive one letter in your dream, denotes that some one is praising you behind your back. If a girl dreams that she receives a love-letter from her beau, it shows that he adores her: a gentleman who has a similar dream of a letter from his sweetheart, may rest satisfied that he only possesses her heart. ”

“ Quoth she, "Take the answer to thy letter." He took it and reading it, wept with sore weeping and said, "I long for some one to slay me at this moment and send me to my rest, for indeed death were easier to me than this my state!" Then he took ink case and pen and paper and wrote a letter containing these two couplets,
"O hope of me! pursue me not with rigour and disdain: * Deign thou to visit lover wight in love of thee is drowned; Deem not a life so deeply wronged I longer will endure; * My soul for severance from my friend divorced this frame unsound." ”

“ The same reason should serve as a warning to all gentlemen against writing love-letters; for if a gentle swain is really and truly in love, he will write under excited feelings; and a letter written with a palpitating heart, threatening to break a rib at every throb, can hardly fail to appear a little ridiculous in the eyes of all who may not chance to be exactly in the same frame of mind, or possessed of the same degree of feeling with the writer. ”

“ She learns ten new words at home every day, and always knows her lesson perfectly. She has learned to begin and end a letter, and it will not be long before she can write a love-letter—a genuine mother love-letter—to her boys. ”

“ The enclosed letter which was unsealed, ran as follows: “If you love me as deeply as I love you, you cannot hope to be happy without me; we cannot correspond in any other way than the one I am bold enough to adopt. ”

“ He remembered, with bitter reproach, that he had not written to her for a length of time, treble the accustomed interval between his letters; and felt that, while at the moment she had written the lines he had now pressed to his bosom, she was expecting, with unutterable fondness and anxiety, to receive his lukewarm assurances of continued love, the letter he was about to write in answer to hers was the first one that would greet her eyes. ”

“ P. S.—Dear, silly child, your letter only shows that you knew nothing of love, except theoretically. Learn then that love is a quickening force which may produce fruits so diverse that no theory can embrace or co-ordinate them. ”

“ Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must write immediately and do all you can to console me in it—make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me—write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. ”

“ It is——”
“Oh, stop talking,” I cried, in a hunted tone. “I can’t bear it. If you are going to arrest me, get it over.”
“I’d rather not arrest you, if we can find a way out. You look so young, so new to Crime! Even your excuse for being here is so naïve, that I—won’t you tell me why you wrote a love letter, if you are not in love? And whom you sent it to? That’s important, you see, as it bears on the case. I intend,” he said, “to be judgdicial, unimpassioned, and quite fair.”
“I wrote a love letter,” I explained, feeling rather cheered, “but it was not intended for any one. Do you see? ”

“ I realize indeed of this emphatic and smiling well done from the heart and conscience of a true wife and mother, and one too whose sense of the poetic, as I glean from your letter, after flowing through the heart and conscience, must also move through and satisfy science as much as the esthetic, that I had hitherto received no eulogium so magnificent.
I send by same mail with this, same address as this letter, two photographs, taken within a few months. One is intended for the lady (if I may be permitted to send it her) —and will you please accept the other, with my respects and love? ”

“ Our love letters are our titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the intimate vanity of our womanhood; they are the treasures of our heart. No, a woman does not destroy these secret and delicious archives of her life. ”

“ DR. SWIFT TO MR. POPE.
DUBLIN, SEPT. 20, 1723.
RETURNING from a summer expedition of four months on account of my health, I found a letter from you, with an appendix longer than yours from lord Bolingbroke. I believe there is not a more miserable malady than an unwillingness to write letters to our best friends, and a man might be philosopher enough in finding out reasons for it. One thing is clear, that it shows a mighty difference betwixt friendship and love, for a lover (as I have heard) is always scribbling to his mistress. ”