Why, ' I said, quite surprised by my own eloquence in inventing all this stuff, 'it happens every day. The old old story. Boys and girls fall in love, that is, they are driven mad and go blind and deaf and see each other not as human animals with comic noses and bandy legs and voices like frogs, but as angels so full of shining goodness that like hollow turnips with candles put into them, they seem miracles of beauty. And the next minute the candles shoot out sparks and burn their eyes. And they seem to each other like devils, full of spite and cruelty. And they will drive each other mad unless they have grown some imagination. Even enough to laugh. .Joyce Cary
About This Quote
In this quote, W.H. Auden speaks of how love can be both a blessing and a curse. When we first fall in love we feel as though we have been thrust into a dream—a beautiful, wondrous dream that is completely real to us. We suddenly see our loved one as someone who is extraordinary and perfect, and we understand the things they have said to us in a way that no one has ever understood before. However, as time goes on and our relationship progresses, we begin to see a few cracks in the fantasy that we have built up around our mate.
Maybe they aren’t as perfect as we originally thought, or maybe they have some flaws that we had not noticed before. Perhaps their behavior will change suddenly and without warning—and this makes us nervous.
Source: The Horses Mouth
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