“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.”

“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.”

— Marcus Aurelius《Meditations》

“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》

“Rome, thou art a whole world, it is true, and yet without love this World would not be the world, Rome would cease to be Rome.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe《Roman Elegies》

“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》

“The sons and daughters of the Love-Star instantly ceased their own soft musical conversation, and Zaidie sang the old plantation song through for the first time that a human voice had sung it to ears other than human.”

— George Griffith《A Honeymoon in Space》

“I know not, I know not where Danusia is but I challenged him, because, even if I were to lose my life, I prefer death to life without my love, without the one who is clearest to me in the whole world.”

— Henryk Sienkiewicz《The Knights of the Cross, or, Krzyzacy: Historical Romance》

“The whole panorama of the world's life before the historic period, seemed to be born over again, and mine was the only human heart that beat in this unpeopled world!”

— Jules Verne《A Journey to the Centre of the Earth》

“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》

“The hatred of the "world," the curse on the affections, the fear of beauty and sensuality, another world, invented for the purpose of slandering this world the more, at bottom a longing for.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche《The Birth of Tragedy》

“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》

“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.》

“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》