David’s Reviews > Love > Status Update

Unlike Werther, for whom realities are shaped by his desires, Don Juan's desires are imperfectly satisfied by cold reality, as in ambition, avarice, and the other passions. Instead of losing himself in the bewitching reveries of crystallization his attitude is that of a general to the success of his tactics, and in brief he destroys love instead of enjoying it more than others, as is commonly believed.

Now just as man has almost no physiological self-knowledge except what is derived from comparative anatomy, so vanity and various other causes of illusion prevent us from having a clear picture of out own passions except through the observation of the weaknesses of others. If by chance this essay of mine serves any useful purpose, it will be to train the mind to make this sort of comparison.

The story of Mademoiselle de Sommery is well known in France; how, surprised in flagrante by her lover, she boldly denied the whole thing. When he pressed her, she cried: 'Oh! I see it all now. You don't love me anymore; you'd rather believe your eyes than what I tell you!'

The more physical pleasure plays in love and in what initially brought about intimacy, the more liable that love is to inconstancy and, still more, to unfaithfulness. This applies particularly to cases where the crystallization has been abetted by the fires of youth at sixteen

Some people, over-fervent, or fervent by starts - loving on credit, if I may put it that way - will hurl themselves upon the experience instead of waiting for it to happen. Before the nature of an object can produce its proper sensation in them, they have blindly invested it from afar with imaginary charm which they conjure up inexhaustibly within themselves.

...because nothing paralyzes the imagination like an appeal to memory.

The memories produce a semblance of love; there is the pricking at your pride and the sadness in satisfaction; the atmosphere of romantic fiction catches you by the throat, and you believe yourself lovesick and melancholy, for vanity will always pretend to be grand passion.