Love

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.

A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her ugliness. Soon, if she is natural and unaffected, her expression makes him overlook the faults of her features. He begins to find her charming, it enters his head that she might be loved, and a week later he is living in hope. The following week he has been snubbed into despair, and the week afterwards he has gone mad. (Chapter 17)

The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.

When one has just seen the woman one loves, the sight of every other woman damages the vision and physically hurts the eyes;

The combinations of these two elements, enchantment and surrender, is, then, essential to the love which we are discussing... What exists in love is surrender due to enchantment.

Nothing is so odious to the mediocre as mental superiority. There lies the source of hatred in the world of today.

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.

Žena je u stanju da voli i da za čitavu jednu godinu čoveku koga stavlja ispred ostalih kaže samo deset ili dvanaest reči. U dubini njenog srca uvek je zabeleženo koliko puta ga je videla, da je išla dva puta s njim u pozorište, da se dva puta srela sa njim na nekom ručku, da ju je tri puta pozdravio u šetnji.” (VII O razlikama u rađanju ljubavi kod dva pola, VIII)

basta pensare a una perfezione per vederla in ciò che si ama.