Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason, nor do the assets or blemishes that we discover tempt us to devotion or intimidate us. It is a sweet, mournful, mysterious power that drives us, and we stop thinking, feeling, wishing, we let ourselves drift along and never ask where we are drifting.
-- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Venus in Furs
Translated by Joachim Neugroschel
Tempest-Tossed
2 hours ago