If love did not come by chance, it would never come at all.

(1) Ovid wrote not Art of Loving ("Ars Amandi"); he wrote on the Amatorial Art ("Ars Amatoria").

(2) “Arte regendus amor.”—­“Ars Amatoria”, I, 4.

* * *

To each of us himself is the centre of the visible universe.  But when love comes it alters this Ptolemaic theory.  Yet,

It is a significant fact that love, which, more than any other thing in this world, is the great bringer-together of hearts, begins its mysterious work as a separator and puter-at-a-distance.  For

When love first dawns in the breast of youth, it throws about its object a sacred aureole, which awes at the same time that it inspires the faithful worshipper.

* * *

Can only two walk abreast in the path of love?  How many try to widen that strait and narrow way!

* * *

Love raises everything to a higher plane; but nothing higher than the man or woman who is loved.

Is there anything about which love does not shed a halo?  Indeed,

Love is a sort of transfiguration.  And when on the mount, we can very truly say, “It is good for us to be here”.

If there is any sublunary thing equal in value to the true love of a faithful woman, it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive.

True love makes all things loveable,—­except perhaps the chaperon.

Was there ever man or woman yet who was not bettered by a true love?

True love is ever diffident and fearful of its own venturesomeness (3).  But this not every woman understands.

Too often the Phantasm of love and not the Verity wins the day (4).  Women who seek a real lover should beware the overbold one.

(3) Cf.  “La volupte Nous rend hardis, l’amour nous rend timides.”  —­Voltaire, La Pucelle, Chant vi.

(4) See Leopardi, “Storia del Genere Humano”, where the Verities of Truth and Love and Justice never leave the throne of Jove, but their Phantasms are sent down amongst men.

* * *

To merge the thee and the me into one—­that is ever the attempt of love.  It is impossible.  Yet, perhaps

They are happiest who can longest disbelieve in the impossibility of this amatorial fusion; for it may be that such

Incredulity is favorable to romance.

* * *

Love is not exactly a sacrifice; it is an exchange.  The lover, indeed, gives his heart; he expects another in return.

* * *

Love is like life:  no apparatus can manufacture it; kill it, and nothing in the heavens above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth will resuscitate it.

How many a forlorn human wight has tried to resuscitate love!

* * *

To such heights does love exalt the lover that he or she will live for days in the remembered delights of a look, a word, a gesture.  But