"Silent looks, involuntary starts, things indicated, not expressed,--these are the most dangerous, the most seductive aliment of thought to a delicate and sensitive nature. If things were said out, they might not be said wisely,--they might repel by their freedom, or disturb by their unfitness; but what is only looked is sent into the soul through the imagination, which makes of it all that the ideal faculties desire.

"In a refined and exalted nature, it is very seldom that the feeling of love, when thoroughly aroused, bears any sort of relation to the reality of the object. It is commonly an enkindling of the whole power of the soul's love for whatever she considers highest and fairest; it is, in fact, the love of something divine and unearthly, which, by a sort of illusion, connects itself to a personality...

"What Mary loved so passionately, that which came between God and her in every prayer, was not the gay, young dashing sailor,--sudden in anger, imprudent of speech, and, though generous in heart, yet worldly in plans and schemings,--but her own ideal of a grand and noble man,--such a man as she thought he might become." (The Minister's Wooing, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.)

Oy... This is way too true...

And then:

"Disenchantment must come, of course; and in a love which terminates in happy marriage there is a tender and gracious process, by which, without shock or violence, the ideal is gradually sunk in the real, which, though found faulty and earthly, is still ever tenderly remembered as it seemed under the morning light of that enchantment."

Okay, that makes me really want to get married. :(

-Stephanie

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