Much worse is it, and woe to that woman who, in the night watches, looking at her husband as he snores, says in a low, fretful voice: My husband is only a male!
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There is hardly a man who would confess to his friends, or even to himself, that he married a woman to possess her. Even if it were true, modesty and pride fight against the confession, and with one of those clever self-deceptions with which we know how to embellish and deceive our own consciences, we exclaim in a decided and convinced tone, I love her!
If it be so difficult a thing to distinguish between gold and its alloy, true and false diamonds, eastern and Roman pearls, imagine whether it is easy to distinguish between the desire of the flesh and true love. Yet this is just one of those most dangerous and hidden pitfalls which bring death to happiness in the battle waged in our minds between the to be or not to be, when we have to decide whether or no we ought to give the holy name of wife to the woman we desire. In other books of mine I have ventured to give some advice to those aspiring to matrimony to enable them to distinguish between true love and carnal excitement, which only affects one organ.
As I believe, however, that we have here before our eyes one of the gravest and most vital questions in the art of taking a wife, I may be allowed to enter more minutely into particulars.
Always doubt a sudden impression, so called a coup de foudre, if it has seized you after long abstinence from woman’s society.
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For love also, and perhaps more for love than for the brain, it is prudent to remember the fasting Philip.
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