Fetching wisdom...
Francesco Petrarch, Jane Austen, George Sand, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo — writers in the Romantic tradition who wrote heartbreak with operatic intensity. These are the most searching, most beautiful of those moments.
“My tears are the Tigris and Euphrates, flowing for the lost beloved.
“Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learned, seized him for the fair form that was taken from me.
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
“The course of true love never did run smooth.
“There is no peace for me, and I am not at war; I fear and hope; I burn and am a mass of ice.
“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
“I wasn’t in love with her anymore, but I was still in love with the idea of her.
“The most terrible of all feelings is the feeling of having hope, without hope.
“Terror made me cruel; and rage made me wild.
“I have thousands of desires, each worth dying for; many have been fulfilled, yet I yearn for more.
“Friendship was a thing, like a river, that could be diverted.
“And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
“Tears are the language of a soul in agony, beyond words, beyond reason.
“Beloved, your absence is a desert, my heart a thirsty wanderer within.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.
“How can joy visit a soul whose beloved is gone forever?
“Love is a thing full of anxious fears.
“She was so weary of life, of love, of everything.
“The heart is left without a refuge, a prisoner of love's desire.