”i will love you forever," swears the poet. i find this easy to to swear. " i will love you at 4:15 p.m. next tuesday": is that still as easy?" -w.h. auden, (1959).
"it is difficult to define love. what can be said is that in the soul it is a passion to dominate another, in the mind it is mutual nderstanding, whilst in the body it is simply a delicately veiled desire to posses the beloved after many rites and mysteries.
if pure love exists, free from the dross of our other passions, it lies hidden in the depths of our hearts unknown even to ourselves.
where love is, no disguise can hide it for long; where it is not, none can simulate it.
there are few people who, when their love for each other is dead, are not ashamed of that love.
you can find women who have never had a love affair, but seldom women who had only one.
there is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand copies, all different.
love, like fire, cannot survive without continual movement, and it ceases to live as soon as it ceases to hope or fear.
true love is like ghostly apparitions: everybody talks about them but few have ever seen one.
love lends its name to countless dealings which are attributed to it but of which it knows no more than the doge knows what goes on in venice.
we cannot love anything except in terms of ourselves, and when we put out friends above ourselves we are only concerned with our own taste and pleasure. yet it is only through such preference that friendship can be true and perfect.
constancy in love is perpetual inconstancy, inasmuch as the heart is drawn to one quality after another in the beloved, now preferring this, now that. constancy is therefore inconstancy held in check and confined to the same object.
constancy in love is of two kinds: one comes from continually finding new things to love in the beloved, and the other from making it a point of honor to remain constant.
we are nearer to loving those who hate us than loving those who love us more than we want."
原文链接：
诗人发誓说"我将永远爱你“，我认为这是个容易发的誓。”我会在下周二下午4时15分爱你“，这个还是一样容易吗？ ——w.h.auden (1959年)。
“给爱情下定义是很难。可以描述的是：它是灵魂深处想支配对方的激情，头脑思维中相互了解的渴望，而肉体本能上仅仅是微妙掩饰的欲望——熬过了无数次的礼节仪式之后占有心爱之人的欲望。
如果存在纯洁的爱，毫无其他种种欲望的糟粕，那它一定是深藏在我们内心深处，甚至连自己都没意识到。
爱存在之处，没有任何伪装能够长期隐藏它；爱不在之处，也没有任何假装可以长期冒充它。
很少有人在双方的爱情枯竭消散之后，不为那份爱情感到羞愧的。
你可以找到从未恋爱过的女人，但很少有只恋爱过一次的女人。
爱情只有一种，但它有上千份拷贝，各不相同。
爱，就像火苗，除非持续变动否则无法幸存，一旦停止了期望或担忧，它便停止了生命。
真爱就如同幽灵显现：所有人都谈论它们，但很少有人见到过一个。
爱借名义给无数可归因于它的往来交易，但它对它们的了解不会比威尼斯总督对威尼斯所发生的事了解得多。
我们不会爱任何事物，除非按照自己的意愿，当我们把朋友放在自己之前考虑时，我们只是关心我们自己的品味和乐趣。然而，只有通过这种偏好，友谊才会是真正的完美的。
爱所恒定不变的是它永恒的易变，因为心被心爱人一个接着一个的特质所吸引，一会儿更喜欢这个，一会儿又更喜欢那个。因此恒定不变就是将易变控制与局限在同一个对象上。
恒定不变的爱有两种：一种是在心爱人身上不断找寻可爱之处，另一种是由于顾及名誉涉及面子而保持不变。我们更容易爱那些恨我们的人，而不是那些爱我们超出我们所期望的人。