Agreeable Then To My Present Inclination, I

Flattery In Courtship Is The Highest Insolence, For Whilst It Pretends To Bestow On You More Than You Deserve, It Is Watching An Opportunity To Take From You What You Really Have.

I Was Amongst The Virtues Like The Great Turk In His Seraglio Of Women, And I Chose To Dwell With That Virtue Which Looked The Fairest In My Eyes And Gave Me At That Season Most Pleasure. In Short, I Made Wives Of Them: I First Admired Them, Then Made Them My Own Property, And If They Would Not Submit To My Will, I Again Turned Them Off And Divorced Them.

What I Mean By Love ... Is This. A Sympathetic Liking--excited By Fancy, Directed By Judgment--and To Which Is Joined Also A Most Sincere Desire Of The Good And Happiness Of Its Object.

There Is Yet Another Kind Of Matrimonial Dialect (which Naturally Succeeds This Of Talking At Each Other), Which May Very Properlybe Styled The Language Contradictory.... In The Former, However Plain The Object Of Satire May Be Exhibited To The Whole Company, Yet There Always Remains Some Little Covering.... But In This Last Method, The Defiance Becomes More Open And The Impetuosity With Which These Contradictions Are Uttered (although The Subjects Of Them Are Often Of The Most Indifferent Nature) Evidently Prove That They Arise From Passion.

I Endeavor Not To Conceal That I Believe There Is A Great Mixture Of Desire In The Passion Which Is Called Love--or Rather, Without Any Far-fetched Strain On Words, It May Be Called The Companion Of Love.