“ Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself. ”
This peculiar connexion between a certain view of woman and the European conception of war has had profound consequences for morality, education, and politics.
~ Denis De Rougemont
What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering.
To love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.