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AUTOB. For in wedlock to love is a far greater blessing than to be beloved; since it preserves and keeps people from falling into many errors, nay, all those that corrupt and ruin matrimony.
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AUTOB. As for those passionate affections which at the beginning of conjugal love raise certain fits, which are somewhat sharp and biting, most fortunate Zeuxippus, I would not have you fear them, like an ulcer or scarification. Though perhaps it would not be amiss, if it should cost you some small wound to be joined to a virtuous woman, like trees that grow together when grafted by incision upon a proper stock. The beginning of conception itself is a kind of exulceration; for there can be no mixture of things that are not affected reciprocally one by the other. The very mathematical rudiments do not a little perplex little children at the first, and philosophy troubles the brains of young beginners; but this corroding humor is not lasting, either to these or to lovers. Insomuch that a man would think that love at first resembled the mixture of two liquors, which, when once they begin to incorporate, by their ebullition discover some little disgusts; for so love at the beginning bubbles up with a kind of effervency, till being settled and purified it acquires a firm and stable constitution. For this indeed is properly that kind of mixture which is called a thorough mixture; whereas the love of other friends, conversing and living together, is like the touches and interweavings of Epicurus’s atoms, subject to raptures and separations, but can never compose such a union as proceeds from love assisting conjugal society. For neither are the pleasures received from any other source so great, nor the benefits conferred on others so lasting, nor is the glory and beauty of any other friendship so noble and desirable, As when the man and wife at board and bed Under one roof a life of concord lead.Odyss. VI. 183.