Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/265

 J5T.35.] LOVE IS NOT BLIND. 241

Is your friend such a one that an increase of worth on your part will rarely make her more your friend? Is she retained is she attracted by more nobleness in you, by more of that virtue which is peculiarly yours ; or is she indif ferent and blind to that ? Is she to be flattered and won by your meeting her on any other than the ascending path? Then duty requires that you separate from her.

Love must be as much a light as a flame.

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

A man of fine perceptions is more truly femi nine than a merely sentimental woman. The heart is blind; but love is not blind. None of the gods is so discriminating.

In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is com monly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart, it is so much the more sensitive.

Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagina tion. The imagination knows nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry and it controls the breast. My heart may still yearn toward the valley, but my imagination will not permit