An Ideal Husband

it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

you are to me the white image of all good things, and sin can never touch you

I have told you that I love you. Can't you love me a little in return?

am a ship without a rudder in a night without a star

I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.

We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us - else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man's love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman's.

And how I worshipped you! You were to me something apart from common life, a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. And now - oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life!

when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers