So it is with us. Let our possession escape
us, our consternation is complete. Again the spring uncoils, and again
we are madmen. "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love
that would seem hid; love's night is noon," says Shakspeare. "It is
better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" sings
Tennyson. "Nothing but real love," says Lord Lytton, "can repay us for
the loss of freedom, the cares and fears of poverty,
THE COLD PITY OF THE WORLD
that we both despise and respect." "Love," says Sir Thomas Overbury,
wittily, "is a superstition that doth fear the idol which itself hath
made." "To reveal its complacence by gifts," says Mrs. Sigourney, "is
one of the native dialects of love." "Love is never so blind as when it
is to spy faults," says South. "Love reckons days for years," says
Dryden, "and every little absence is an age." "Where love has once
obtained an influence," observes Plautus dryly, "any flavoring, I
believe, will please." "That is the true reason of love," says Goethe,
"when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could either have
loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
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