Source identified
“Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.”
Romantic love is compared to an unavoidable childhood illness, making intense emotion comic by treating it as something people catch, endure, and eventually recover from.
Source note: The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, “On Being in Love”; the comparison opens the essay’s mock-medical treatment of romance.
Source identified
“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
Error is treated as ordinary human limitation, while forgiveness requires an additional act of generosity.
Source note: An Essay on Criticism, Part II; Pope warns that shallow learning can produce premature confidence before deeper study tempers judgment.
Source identified
“Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at.”
Voice: Fictional narrator · J. (first-person narrator)
The narrator gives the dog a mock life-purpose centered on obstruction and provoking people, turning ordinary pet mischief into a grand statement of ambition.
Source note: Three Men in a Boat, packing episode; the narrator describes Montmorency repeatedly inserting himself into whatever the men are trying to pack.
Source identified
“Adversity shows whether we have friends, or only the shadows of friends.”
Difficulty tests whether a relationship has substance because support under pressure reveals more than companionship during easy circumstances.
Source note: The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 35, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).
Source identified
“When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And one ends by deceiving others.”
Voice: Fictional character · Lord Illingworth
The line turns romance into a two-stage comedy of self-deception and social deception, exaggerating cynicism to expose how desire distorts judgment.
Source note: A Woman of No Importance, Act III; Lord Illingworth answers Gerald’s question about love with the romance/self-deception epigram. The exact catalog wording is supported by this play, not by The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Source identified
“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator
The narrator summarizes Anne’s development as a reversal: excessive caution shaped her early choice, while experience later teaches her to value warmer confidence and attachment.
Source note: Persuasion, Chapter IV, Project Gutenberg #105. This is narrator commentary after Anne reconsiders the engagement she ended at nineteen under Lady Russell’s persuasion.