One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
StendhalRead
The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The joy we derive from love is directly linked to the anxieties we have about it.
Stendhal's quote suggests that our experiences of love are deeply intertwined with our fears and insecurities. The more we are afraid to lose someone or afraid of being vulnerable, the more intensely we might feel the pleasures and joys of love, indicating that love can be a source of both bliss and trepidation.
Themes
LovePleasureFearsRelationshipsEmotional
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding toast, one might say this quote to highlight the depth of love's experience.
More from Stendhal
All quotes →True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.
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In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
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A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
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Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
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Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
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