I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation.
I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live. If any love is shown us we should recognise that we are quite unworthy of it.
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
American women are wonderfully clever in concealing their parents as much as English women are good at concealing their past.
American women always take the best bachelors. Why can't they stay in their own country? They are always telling us it is the Paradise for women... That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so eager to get out of it.