The surest test of a dead love is that it forgets how to be jealous.

* * *

The falling-out of lovers true is a renewing may be of love. (1) Still it is not to be recommended.  In fact, it might be said that

Every falling-out of lovers true is a nail in love’s coffin.  Yet,

A blessing it is that in love we remember the sweet rather than the bitter.  For

Love was ever bitter-sweet (2).

(1) “Amanitum irae amoris integratis est.” 
   —­Terrence, Andria, iii, 23.

(2) But I supposed innumerable people have said this before.  No matter.

* * *

The heart of a lover is like that bottom of a well:  all the beauties of the starry heavens are revealed in it; but when it sheds the light of its countenance upon it, all else is obliterated.

* * *

Was any lover ever loved enough?  Or

Did any ever hear of a tired lover?  Nevertheless often

“Drink to me only with thine eyes”, says the youthful lover; but when the seance is over he goes out and orders beef-steak and bottled beer.

* * *

What it really craves, the lover’s heart is impotent to express.  Yet, it is ever attempting.

A lover is full of wishes as an egg is full of meat.  But

What it really wishes no lover seems able to say.  As a matter of fact,

The endless task which the lover is ever attempting is a search for a formula for the summation of an infinite series of which love is the variable.—­Few lovers seem to understand this.

* * *

To kindle aspiration in her lover, a woman herself need not be aspiring.  For,

Whatever the talents of a man, they are stimulated by contact with woman.  Since

An elevating influence seems to radiate from women:  we have but to come into the light of their countenances for our own faces to shine as the sun.  Indeed,

Physicists may talk as they like, but lovers know a more subtle and a more potent force than any yet revealed to them.  It has not yet been named; but for the present it might be called “psychicity”. (3)

(3) Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of “celebricity”.  See “Over the Tea Cup”

* * *

If you wish to ascertain the relationship of a youthful pair, watch their eyes.  For

Simulation is difficult to the eye.

* * *

When the idol into which a woman has converted her lover is dethroned, she still worships her remembrance of her god, and puts together and treasures the broken pieces.

When the idol into which has converted his loved one is dethroned, he generally changes his creed.

* * *

A circumpsecting lover is a woman’s abhorrence:  as a calculating mistress is a man’s.

* * *

Let a lover but put himself into the hands of his mistress, and he is safe.  Since