To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
Interpretation
Love can cloud our perception, making us idealize the person we are attracted to.
This quote by H. L. Mencken suggests that love can create a kind of blindness where we fail to see the reality of a person, seeing them instead as extraordinary or divine. It highlights the tendency of lovers to elevate their partners to a pedestal, obscuring their flaws and presenting them as idealized beings, which is often a temporary state caused by the intensity of romantic feelings.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about the nature of romantic relationships.
I know a good many men of great learning-that is, men born with an extraordinary eagerness and capacity to acquire knowledge. One and all, they tell me that they can't recall learning anything of any value in school. All that schoolmasters managed to accomplish with them was to test and determine the amount of knowledge that they had already acquired independently-and not infrequently the determination was made clumsily and inaccurately.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.
The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they should meet.
Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and great each other.
Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being
We lie in each other's arms eyes shut and fingers open and all the colors of the world pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away--
Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.