"Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. It is not judment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults wich we discover, that make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us.

It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will, we let ourselves be carried away by it..."

Venus in Furs, Masoch