* Honore de Balzac to Madame Evelina Hanska
 
			Our love will bloom always fairer, fresher, more gracious, 
because it is a true love, and because genuine love is ever increasing.

It is a beautiful plant growing from year to year in the heart, ever extending 
its palms and branches, doubling every season its glorious clusters and perfumes; 
and, my dear life, tell me, repeat to me always, that nothing will bruise 
its bark or its delicate leaves, that it will grow larger in both our hearts, 
loved, free, watched over, like a life within our life...
		

* Leo Tolstoy, Russian to Valeria Arsenev
 
			I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to 
love in you that which is eternal and ever precious - your heart, your soul. 
Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to 
love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, 
nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful 
and natural of feelings.
		

* Napoleon Bonaparte To Josephine
 
			I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the 
intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil.
Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! 
Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried?... My soul aches 
with sorrow, and there can be no rest for you lover; but is there still more 
in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, 
I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! 
it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!

You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.

Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, 
for they set my blood on fire.
		

* Elizabeth Barrett Browning To Robert Browning
 
			To Robert Browning:

And now listen to me in turn. You have touched me more profoundly than 
I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you came here today. 
Henceforward I am yours for everything....

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806-1861)
		

* to Louise Colet
 
			Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private,
personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of
my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the
beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me.

I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old
passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts
of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that
swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a storm cloud.

On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to
the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank.

- Gustave Flaubert, French writer