Same Old Story

I know a young man who laments the absence of a love in his life. Verily, there is nothing new under the son. Let us turn to the Goncourts, Edmond and Jules, and their journal entry for March 5, 1858:

“It is all very strange. We see love everywhere, in books, on the stage, in other people’s lives. Everybody talks about it all the time. It is something which seems to be extremely important and extremely absorbing. Yet here we are, both of us perfectly healthy, fit for service in affairs of the heart, rich enough to wear clean socks and buy a bouquet of flowers, and with our noses more or less in the middle of our faces – and hanged if we can remember ever having been in love for more than a week at a time.”