Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.

Passion costs me too much to bestow it on every trifle.

Nay, but Jack, such eyes! such eyes! so innocently wild! so bashfully irresolute! Not a glance but speaks and kindles read more

Nay, but Jack, such eyes! such eyes! so innocently wild! so bashfully irresolute! Not a glance but speaks and kindles some thought of love! Then, Jack, her cheeks! her cheeks, Jack! so deeply blushing at the insinuations of her tell-tale eyes! Then, Jack, her lips! O, Jack, lips smiling at their own discretion! and, if not smiling, more sweetly pouting -- more lovely in sullenness! Then, Jack, her neck! O, Jack, Jack!

The best proof of love is trust.

The best proof of love is trust.

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

Tenderness is a virtue.

Tenderness is a virtue.

Who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor with the Lord.

Who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor with the Lord.

Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed.

Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed.

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking read more

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, read more

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much.