They say that love is blind... but they have differed in accounting for it.
Chateaubriand says: love is blind so that it may draw forth the pity of the greatest number of lovers.
Lamartine holds: love is blind because it lost its way... and so became marriage.
While Napoleon says: love is blind because it hates the light and adores the dark!
But Victor Hugo says:
"Love is blind... yet how often it sees things that do not exist!"
A man's love does not last long... though it be intense and brimming with devotion!
It is founded on beauty and admiration: it flares up in a man's youth, when the self's appetite runs strong, and dwindles in his old age, when his passions burn low.
Man changes in love... but woman endures in love!
— In love as in the kitchen: the credit is almost all to the one with the spices! "Balzac"
— Nothing is lighter than poverty when love enters into it... and nothing harder than love when poverty enters upon it. "A sage"
— Love is like fire: old houses are easy for it to destroy... and so you see it finds burning the old easier than burning the young. "Etienne Rey"
Love??
A question long repeated on people's tongues is answered by the Arab poet, who says:
If you claim that love is a sin, then love is the finest thing by which God is disobeyed!
Many believe that only the young know love... and that only the young are capable of love... But "Mikael Glanier," the Danish
poet-philosopher, sees otherwise, for he says:
Who was it who said that love wells up in spring... keeps company with boyhood... and blossoms in the age of youth?
Youth: is perpetual motion... is gaiety and forgetfulness... is frolic and madness and freedom!
Youth: nothing contents it... and of nothing does it have its fill!
Youth: hates fidelity... because it does not understand tranquility... and does not know constancy...
Who was it, then, who said: love flourishes in the age of youth?
... How should a young man believe in one woman...
and how should a young woman believe in one man?
No! None loves well but he who has bidden youth farewell...
For how can you love Love... while you still love Life?!