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Home  »  Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay  »  Mrs. Mary W. Shelley

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Mrs. Mary W. Shelley

It is said that in love we idolize the object, and, placing him apart and selecting him from his fellows, look on him as superior in nature to all others. We do so; but even as we idolize the object of our affections, do we idolize ourselves: if we separate him from his fellow-mortals, so do we separate ourselves, and glorying in belonging to him alone, feel lifted above all other sensations, all other joys and griefs, to one hallowed circle from which all but his idea is banished: we walk as if a mist, or some more potent charm, divided us from all but him; a sanctified victim, which none but the priest set apart for that office could touch and not pollute, enshrined in a cloud of glory, made glorious through beauties not our own.

Mrs. Mary W. Shelley.