“Herein doth consist happiness of life, for a man to know thoroughly the true nature of everything; what is the matter, and what is the form of it: with all his heart and soul, ever to do that which is just, and to speak the truth.”

“If one should dream that such a world began In some slow devil's heart, that hated man, Who should deny him?--God, as thou art clean, Suffer not this, oh, suffer not this sin To be, that e'er I look on such a day!”

— Sophocles《Oedipus King of Thebes: Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes》

“Alas howe my soule and bodye were lothe to leaue one an another, the sorrowe whereof made me vnwilling to intertaine so cruel an enemy as death: whereupon I plucking vp a good heart, thought thus.”

— Francesco Colonna《Hypnerotomachia Poliphili》

“Sometimes love, for a woman, means only shelter; often, for a man, love means the blending of all knowledge, of all beauty, all ambition, of all that he has learned from books and from life.”

— E. Phillips Oppenheim《The Zeppelin's Passenger》

“Robert Bruce, on his death-bed, bequeathed his heart to his friend, the good Lord James, to be borne in war against the Saracens.”

— Walter Scott《The Lady of the Lake》

“It is only in trembling that any human soul can see one they love uplifted to such a height of extravagant joy as that on which Prue now sits queening it over the workaday world.”

— Rhoda Broughton《Doctor Cupid》

“Love, in his case, had meant the idealisation of the whole of life--the life of action and the life within the soul.”

— John Oliver Hobbes《Robert Orange: Being a Continuation of the ...》

“To a woman indifferent to love, every man is the same, and all are men; but to her whose heart is truly susceptible of that refined passion, there is no other man in the world but her lover.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau《Eloisa: or, A series of original letters》

“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》

“She felt in her heart that Spencer was only awaiting a favorable opportunity to declare his love, and she did not strive to repress the wave of divine happiness that flooded her heart at the thought.”

— Louis Tracy《The Silent Barrier》

“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》

“He trembled, and his eyes seemed to be moistened; clearly his ferocious soul was weakening, and fear had stricken him to the heart.”

— Gustave Aimard《The Treasure of Pearls: A Romance of Adventures in California》