Forsake your fear, and do what you believe is right, and what your heart desires. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the will to act in spite of it.

And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda

"What happiness it is to love one woman only! This is both a heartfelt expression and the result of reasoning and observation; for I can analyse you with the most perfect coolness, and I perceive with glad conviction that no one else can be compared to you. I know not in the world such another perfect intelligence, a more noble heart, a more sweet and charming temper, a more upright character, a sounder judgment, nor anyone who is so wise and reasonable."

"...You must believe me when I say that even yet, after all these years, I have not become accustomed to knowing you. Centuries would not suffice, and life is so short! You saw the fact in those two months. I was in the same state of ecstasy and bewilderment when I went away as I was the first day I beheld you."

-- Honoré de Balzac, to Countess Ewelina Hanska

"I love you more than it is possible to imagine...all my moments are consecrated to you...to think of any other woman has never entered my head--they are all in my eyes without grace, wit, or beauty...you, you alone, such as I see you, such as you are, can please me."

Napoleon, to his wife, Josephine

"Put my passion under the utmost restraint, send me as distant from you as the earth will allow, yet you cannot banish those charming ideas which will ever stick by me whilst I have the use of memory. Nor is the love I bear you only seated in my soul, for there is not a single atom of my frame that is not blended with it; therefore don't flatter yourself that separation will ever change my sentiments, for I find myself unquiet in the midst of silence, and my heart at once pierced with sorrow and love."

-- Hester Vanhomrigh, from a letter to Jonathan Swift

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-- Shakespeare