L'amour affronte la Mort ; lui seul, non pas la vertu, est plus fort qu'elle. Lui seul (pas la vertu) inspire de bonnes pensées.

This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected- in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness; it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.

[...] Et ma fièvre ? D'où vient-elle ?
- Allons donc, c'est un incident sans conséquence qui passera vite.
- Non, Clawdia, tu sais bien que ce que tu dis là n'est pas vrai, et tu le dis sans conviction, j'en suis sûr. La fièvre de mon corps et le battement de mon cœur harassé et le frissonnement de mes membres, c'est le commencement d'un incident, car ce n'est rien d'autre [...], rien d'autre que mon amour pour toi [...].

For passion, like crime does not sit well with the sure order and even course of everyday life. It welcomes every loosening of the social fabric, every confusion and affliction visited upon the world, for passion sees in such a disorder a vague hope of finding advantage for itself.

And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.