“The poets have sung in every key this being who came all beauty from the hands of her Creator; but what is all this physical beauty compared to the spiritual beauty of a noble and high-souled woman?”

“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》

“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》

“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》

“You wrong me, wearied out with thought and grieving As though the whole world's sorrow eat my heart, I come to gaze upon your face believing Its beauty is as ointment to the smart.”

— Adela Florence Nicolson《India's Love Lyrics》

“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》

“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》

“So prone is the mind of man to suspicion, so intimately are we convinced in our own hearts of the fallibility of human nature at every point, that accusation often repeated will ever leave a doubt in the most candid mind.”

— George Payne Rainsford James《Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times》

“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》

“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 ...》

“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》

“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》