Falling in Love / With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science

wise enough or fortunate enough to follow the earliest promptings of their own hearts, and not to be ashamed of that divinest and deepest of human intuitions, love at first sight.

What we each fall in love with individually is, I believe, our moral, mental, and physical complement. Not our like, not our counterpart; quite the contrary; within healthy limits, our unlike and our opposite.

Intelligence and goodness are almost as necessary as health and vigour in order to make up our perfect ideal of a beautiful human face and figure.

A good-humoured face is in itself almost pretty. A pleasant smile half redeems unattractive features

beauty is one of the very best guides we can possibly have to the desirability

'the saying that beauty is but skin-deep is itself but a skin-deep saying.'

We do fall in love, taking us in the lump, with the young, the beautiful, the strong, and the healthy; we do not fall in love, taking us in the lump, with the aged, the ugly, the feeble, and the sickly

Some of us fall in love with one person, some with another

We cannot fall in love with everybody alike.

The butterfly that circles and eddies in his aërial dance around his observant mate is endeavouring to charm her by the delicacy of his colouring, and to overcome her coyness by the display of his skill. The peacock that struts about in imperial pride under the eyes of his attentive hens, is really contributing to the future beauty and strength of his race by collecting to himself a harem through whom he hands down to posterity the valuable qualities which have gained the admiration of his mates in his own person