“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”

“Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence with thy soul.”

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning《Sonnets from the Portuguese》

“A woman with so passionate a nature as hers, married against her will to a man she could never love, and meeting once more the man whom she loved, the man who really loved her, must find such friendship a dangerous pitfall.”

— Grant Allen《Linnet》

“Human love, the love of mother, husband, and friend rank above it, and first of all stands the love of God.”

— Clotilde Graves《That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day》

“You wish me to love you: this is the man whom I love, and whom I have sworn to love during my whole life: make the comparison yourself.”

— Antoine François Prévost《Manon Lescaut》

“She is a good and pure woman, and I love her as a man might love an angel.”

— Arnold Bennett《The Grand Babylon Hotel》

“She was in love, but the man she was in love with has not heard of her either.”

— Jacques Futrelle《The Problem of Cell 13》

“But when these sort of men are so unwelcome to others, as that the very sight of them is thought ominous, I yet make them highly in love with themselves, and fond admirers of their own happiness.”

— Erasmus《In Praise of Folly》

“There was an end of faith, for he was faithless; there was an end of love, for love had betrayed her; there was an end of beauty, for beauty had been her bane.”

— Benjamin Disraeli《Henrietta Temple》

“O Truth Who art Eternity! and Love Who art Truth! and Eternity Who art Love!”

— Augustine of Hippo《Confessions》

“I, unhappy that I am, these eight years have I loved thee more than my life, and thou, as I have felt, art all afire and all consumed with love of a strange woman, wicked and perverse man that thou art!”

— Giovanni Boccaccio《The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio》

“The life we lead is all love: The love we hold is all death, Nor ought I crave to feed life, Nor ought I seek to shun death, But only that my goddess, My life my death do count hers.”

— Philip Sidney《The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia》

“A great desire to love and be friends, to love everybody, to be friends with everybody, seemed to be invading Lotty—a desire for sheer goodness.”

— Elizabeth von Arnim《The Enchanted April》