Status Updates From Agnes Grey (Alma Classics E...

Many will feel this, who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them they are worthy to be loved again, while yet they are debarred, by the lack of this [i.e physical beauty], or some such seeming trifle from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart.

We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird... Why? Because it lives and feels, because it is helpless and harmless. A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird with its graceful form.