Love Quotes
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116. Admiration; Friendship; Judgement; Love
I regretted that I had lost much of my disposition to admire, which people generally do as they advance in life. Johnson: "Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, --judgement, to estimate things at their true value." I still insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgement, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne. Johnson: "No, Sir, admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgement and friendship like being enlivened."
Boswell: Life
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980. Conviviality; Love; Society
"A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity or philosophical discoveries may compel veneration and respect, but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and cheerfulness which disencumbers all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom, and exalts the timorous to confidence. This easy gaiety is certain to please, whatever the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can receive no lasting advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contribute to our pleasure."
Johnson: Rambler #89 (January 22, 1751)
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1,013. Love; Society
"To love all men is our duty, so far as it includes a general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but to love all is equally impossible; at least impossible without the extinction of those passions which now produce all our pains and all our pleasures: without the disuse, if not the abolition of some of our faculties, and the suppression of all of our hopes and fears in apathy and indifference."
Johnson: Rambler #99 (February 26, 1751)
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1,290. Love
"It is not hard to love those from whom nothing can be feared."
Johnson: Addison (Lives of the Poets)
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1,439. Admiration; Conviviality; Love
"It is always necessary to be loved, but not always necessary to be reverenced."
Johnson: Rambler #188 (January 4, 1752)
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1,686. Love
"I know not whether it is the interest of the husband to solicit very earnestly a place on the bracelet. If his image be not in the heart, it is of small avail to hang it on the hand. A husband encircled with diamonds and rubies may gain some esteem, but will never excite love. He that thinks himself most secure of his wife, should be fearful of persecuting her continually with his presence. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence; and Fidelity herself will be wearied with transferring her eye only from the same man to the same picture."
Johnson: Idler #39 (January 13, 1759)
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