Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
Samuel RichardsonRead
By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep, exclusive love for one person above all others.
In this quote, the speaker conveys a profound attachment to a singular beloved, suggesting that this love affects their basic needs and desires. It highlights the intensity of their feelings, as they claim that they cannot partake in essential aspects of life, such as eating or sleeping, without the presence of the woman they adore, emphasizing the completeness and importance of their emotional connection.
In practice
This quote could be used in a romantic speech to illustrate the depth of one’s feelings for their partner.
Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.
If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.
For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.
You are always new, the last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.
Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!
My heart, the bird of the wilderness, has found its sky in your eyes. They are the cradle of the morning, they are the kingdom of the stars. My songs are lost in their depths. Let me but soar in that sky, in its lonely immensity. Let me but cleave its clouds and spread wings in its sunshine.
It seemed a marvel to her that any mortal should suffer for lack of love, and yet she had never known a mortal who didn't feel unloved. There was enough love just in this ugly hallway, she thought, that no one should ever feel the lack of it again. She peered at the parents, imagining their hearts like machines, manufacturing surfeit upon surfeit of love for their children, and then wondered how something could be so awesome and so utterly powerless.
The scene I had just witnessed (a couple making love in the ocean) brought back a lot of memories – not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeoman and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull.
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