Denis De Rougemont

What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple; not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering.

This peculiar connexion between a certain view of woman and the European conception of war has had profound consequences for morality, education, and politics.

Happiness ... can exist only in acceptance.

To love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.

Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself.