* * *

It still remains a mystery that, out of a townful of folk, two particular hearts should worry themselves into early graves because this one cannot get that other.  Yet

It is almost enough to destroy one’s faith in the uniqueness of love to see from how narrow a circle of acquaintances men and women choose their spouses.  Were Plato’s two half-souls separated by the diameter of the globe—­that were lamentable.

* * *

The man often argues that esteem will grow into passion.  The woman knows that the argument is utterly fallacious.  Yet Unless passion is guarded by esteem,—­as the calyx ensheaths the corolla, the former is prone to wither.

In youthful love, as in the enfolded bud, esteem and passion—­like calyx and corolla—–­seem one and identical;

It is only the full-blown flower that displays its constituent parts.

Would that love could remain ever in bud!

* * *

To some love comes like a flash; to others as the burning of tinder.

In all, when real love is kindled, it devours all that is combustible.  But

All love, like all fire, needs, not only ventilation but replenishing: 

Unless the primal spark is nourished, it will not glow;

Stifle love, and it dies down.  So

Even the love of a married pair, unless it retains something of the romance of courtship, is apt to go out.

* * *

Love takes no though of surroundings:  an empty compartment is as good as a coppice.  Give it privacy, it is satisfied.

* * *

In love, we would much rather give than take.  Yet, if the giving is one-sided, there is trouble.  And

Love brooks no half measures.  Again,

Trust a woman to calculate the breaking-strain of her lover’s heart.  But she will never let him off with less than the maximum stress.

* * *

When love is dead, it is perhaps best soonest buried.

* * *

In astronomy, to determine the motions of three bodies mutually attractive is admittedly difficult.  It is easy compared with the same problem in love.

* * *

A man’s work and a woman’s love, though to each the sum-total of life, are often things wholly and totally dissociated.

Man, the egoist, thinks that if the woman loves him, by consequence she will love his work.  It may be, but usually, non sequitur; for

Few are the women who can understand a man’s work: 

For thousands of years man has worked in the hunting-field, in the market-place in the camp; for an equal length of time woman has worked by the cradle, by the hearth.  Accordingly,

Man has two sides to his nature, woman but one: 

Man wears one aspect when facing the world; he wears quite another aspect when facing women;

At their work, men are rigid, frigid, austere, sever, peremptory, tyrannical, downright;