If a man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral misfortune, if not as a moral fault in him.

And when a man can love, and does love successfully, then it is held that his whole nature has burst out into blossom.

The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a reflection of its importance in life.

It is, as it were, the sun of the world of sentiment--the source of its lights and colours, and also of its shadows.

It is the crown of man's existence; it gives life its highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be almost joined with, heaven.
All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only, and is by no means to be taken without reserve.