Topic
Keats sets the key — love is my religion, I could die for it — but La Rochefoucauld corrects it immediately: passions are nothing else than different degrees of heat and cold of the blood. Emerson finds that all mankind loves a lover; Camus calls beauty unbearable because it shows us what we cannot keep. Longfellow is blunt about disappointed passion leaving a permanent scar. Ward Beecher describes love as a lamp that needs to be fed or it burns low. Saint-Exupéry, Browning, and Keats treat desire as the engine of all serious endeavor. Lichtenberg studies passion through what a man's mistress reveals about his dreams. The collection is honest about passion as both creative force and eventual trap.