Alice Vîrtopeanu

“Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the fruits of his ambition, if you take him from the splendour of a great political career, if you close the doors of public life against him, if you condemn him to sterile failure, he who was made for triumph and success? Women are not meant to judge us but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission. Why should you scourge him with rods for a sin done in his youth, before he knew you, before he knew himself? A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A women's life revolves around curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that man's life progresses. Don't make any terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man's love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“You think that would have changed things? The answer is of course, and for a while, and never.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout all the pages of his memory.”
― Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes