Page:Friendship, love & marriage (1910) Thoreau.djvu/47

 is more of good nature than good sense at the bottom of most marriages. But the good nature must have the counsel of the good spirit or Intelligence. If commonsense had been consulted, how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon or divine sense, how few marriages such as we witness would ever have taken place!

Our love may be ascending or descending. What is its character, if it may be said of it :

Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more than love. They who aspire to love -worthily, subject themselves to an ordeal more rigid than any other.

Is your friend such an 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 indifferent 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 feminine 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 41