Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.
Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.
Why, friends, you go to do you know not what: Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not: I must tell you then: You have forgot the will I told you of. . . . . Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. . . . . Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar! when comes such another?
If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song."
This Extasie doth unperplex (We said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move: But as all severall soules contain Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt souls, doth mixe againe. Loves mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.
It is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved? It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.