"You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night."

"It is a lovely place and lacks only you."

"I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other..."

"You must not make scenes with me, they kill, — they wreck the loveliness of life. I cannot see you, so Greek and gracious, distorted with passion; I cannot listen to your curved lips saying hideous things to me. Don’t do it, you break my heart."

"You are the divine thing I want, the thing of grace and genius."

"It is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing."

"I feel that my only hope of again doing beautiful work in art is being with you."

"Everyone is furious with me for going back to you, but they don't understand us. I feel that it is only with you that I can do anything at all. Do remake my ruined life for me, and then our friendship and love will have a different meaning to the world."

"From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence."

"I am happy in the knowledge that we are friends again, and that our love has passed through the shadow and the light of estrangement and sorrow and come out rose-crowned as of old. Let us always be infinitely dear to each other, as indeed we have been always."

"I want to see you. It is really absurd. I can’t live without you. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword-play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun and moon — and, above all, yourself."

"My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me."

"Write me a line and take all my love, now and for ever."

"This is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonour be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea, this still more divine belief, that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. Since the hope, nay rather the certainty, of meeting you again in some world is the goal and the encouragement of my present life, ah! I must continue to live in this world because of that."

"There are such wide abysses now of space and land between us. But we love each other."

+

"He understands me and my art, and loves both. I hope never to be separated from him."

"He is witty, graceful, lovely to look at, lovable to be with. He has also ruined my life, so I can’t help loving him, it is the only thing to do."

+

"Goodnight, dear. Ever yours."

"Always, and with devotion, but I have no words for how I love you."

"I think of you daily, and am always devotedly yours."

"Ever your own."

"Always, with undying love, yours."