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Sometimes at night I get a feeling of claustrophobia; of being smothered by my own personality, of choking through being in the world. During these moments the universe seems a prism wherein I lie fettered by the chains of my senses and blinded through being myself.We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving; we may appear to ourselves to be as much in love at other times - so will a day in early September, though it be six times shorter, seem as hot as one in June. And on how that first true love-affair will shape depends the pattern of our lives.
The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely. But the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it to be all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends and a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not til then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode - and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction.
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[Connolly, The Unquiet Grave]
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