“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》

“To her, my thoughts I daily dedicate; To her, my heart I nightly martyrise; To her, my love I lowly do prostrate; To her, my life I wholly sacrifice: My thought, my heart, my life, my love, is she! &c.”

— Anna Brownell Jameson《The Romance of Biography (Vol 1 of 2): or Memoirs of Women Loved and Celebrated by Poets, from the Days of the Troubadours to the Present Age. 3rd ed. 2 Vols.》

“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》