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“Tell her happiness is just practice,” he said.
“Take my love for granted,” he said, “and I shall do the same for you.”
“The measure of a man’s culture is the measure of his appreciation,” he said. “We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more.”
“I’m like the trunk of a cactus, I suppose,” she told him. “I take in a dose of culture and time with friends, then I retreat and go live on it for a while until I get thirsty again. It’s not good to live so much inside oneself. It’s a self-imposed exile, really. It makes you different.”
I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.
“‘To fare on—fusing the self that wakes’…” “…‘and the self that dreams.’
If you could offer me One hour of repose In which my soul might find peace; If you could reveal to the darkest recesses of my mind My true self and the truth of the world. Were it to come to pass, I would say To the fleeting moment: Stay, for thou art beautiful! Then might I die
And let fearsome hell engulf me.
“Arrestati, sei bello.” Stay. For you are so beautiful.
“Ogni mia fibra, E’posseduta dall’amor.” My every fiber is possessed by love.
“She says that once love leaves a marriage, then the marriage isn’t sacred anymore. But if a true, great love happens outside of marriage, it’s sacred and has its own rights.
‘Only cohabitation can decide the morality of a particular case.’”
Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the pain lest they themselves perish?
“But marriage is immoral without love.”
When both lovers yearn to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop each other to the greatest perfection, this is the highest form of love possible between a man and a woman of the same moral and intellectual level.
“To experience such love is to feel oneself doubled. Such feeling liberates and deepens the personality, inspires us to noble deeds and works of genius. When this great love happens—and it is but once in a lifetime—it has a higher right than all other feelings. The perfect love establishes its own right in a life.”
“Les grandes inspiratrices.”
“It’s not an ignoble path for a woman to be a muse. Are you his?”
MEMENTO VIVERE. Remember to live.
“To free women from conventionalism—that should be the aim of the struggle.”
