“For, just as in the beginning it is formed by desire, so afterwards love is kept in existence only by painful anxiety. ”

“It was she whom I loved and whom I could not therefore see without that anxiety, without that desire for something more, which destroys in us, in the presence of the person we love, the sensation of loving.”

“Our desires interweave with one another; and in the confusion of existence, it is seldom that a joy is promptly paired with the desire that longed for it.”

“Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it.”

“The person with whom we are in love is to be recognised only by the intensity of the pain that we suffer.”

“The laborious process of causation which sooner or later will bring about every possible effect, including, consequently, those which one believed to be least possible, naturally slow at times, is rendered slower still by our desire (which in seeking to accelerate only obstructs it), by our very existence, and comes to fruition only when we have ceased to desire, and sometimes ceased to live.”

“Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit”