Romantic Literature Is In Effect Imaginative Lying

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”

“Love brings to light a lover's noble and hidden qualities-his rare and exceptional traits: it is thus liable to be deceptive of his normal qualities.”

“but love is not fashionable anymore, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once-but no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.”

“Perhaps the hopes I have confessed to are of an illusory nature, too. But I hold fast to one distinction. Apart from the fact that no penalty is imposed for not sharing them, my illusions are not, like religious ones, incapable of correction.”

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”