"
"On the contrary," said the Minor Poet, "they have taught us to
distinguish between the true and the false. So it is with love.
The more it is cheapened, ridiculed, employed for market purposes,
the less the inclination to affect it--to be in love with love, as
Heine admitted he was, for its own sake."
"Is the necessity to love born in us," said the Girton Girl, "or do
we practise to acquire it because it is the fashion--make up our
mind to love, as boys learn to smoke, because every other fellow
does it, and we do not like to be peculiar?"
"The majority of men and women," said the Minor Poet, "are incapable
of love. With most it is a mere animal passion, with others a mild
affection."
"We talk about love," said the Philosopher, "as though it were a
known quantity. After all, to say that a man loves is like saying
that he paints or plays the violin; it conveys no meaning until we
have witnessed his performance. Yet to hear the subject discussed,
one might imagine the love of a Dante or a society Johnny, of a
Cleopatra or a Georges Sand, to be precisely the same thing.
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