"Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a doctrinaire. Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times past, we have taken to argument and rhetoric and debate. Women's tactics are reduced to three shifts. In the first place, they declare that we cannot love as they love. (Coquetry! the Marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our natural generosity or self-love; for does it not flatter a young man's vanity to console a woman for a great calamity? And lastly, they have a craze for virginity.英文原著 · 《A Woman of Thirty》
Somehow, though five times thus rejected, his heart was not so heavy when he left. She had not denied that she loved. Upon what shallow waters can the bark of passion remain afloat! Or, shall we play the doctrinaire, and hint that at thirty-four the tides of life are calmer and cognizant of many sources instead of but one--as at four-and- twenty?英文原著 · 《Roads of Destiny》
"Pshaw! those gentlemen the doctrinaires have invented a nebulous
aphorism for our consolation--Stupid as a fact."英文原著 · 《The Magic Skin》