The rose blooms, blows, fades and withers and feels nothing.

If that is love, we may yet all develop into passionless promoters of a flat and unprofitable commonwealth; the earth may yet be changed to a sweetmeat for us to feed on, and the sea to sugary lemonade for us to drink, as the mad philosopher foretold, and we may yet all be happy after love has left us." Unorna smiled, while he laughed again.
"Good," she said.

"You tell me what love is not, but you have not told me what it is." "Love is the immortal essence of mortal passion, together they are as soul and body, one being; separate them, and the body without the soul is a monster, the soul without the body is no longer human, nor earthly, nor real to us at all, though still divine.

Love is the world's maker, master and destroyer, the magician whose word can change water to blood, and blood to fire, the dove to a serpent, and the serpent to a dove--ay, and can make of that same dove an eagle, with an eagle's beak, and talons, and air-cleaving wing-stroke.

Love is the spirit of life and the angel of death.