“How happy I am, if you say this from your heart! For I love thee so, that I could sooner bear to see thee hang'd than in the Arms of another.”
Lucy, Act II, sc. xv
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
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John Gay 56
English poet and playwright 1685–1732Related quotes

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 94.

“I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.”
To Lucasta: Going to the Wars, st. 3.
Lucasta (1649)
Context: Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

“I do not love thee, Sabidius, nor can I say why; this only I can say, I do not love thee.”
I, 32, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, / The reason why I cannot tell; / But this alone I know full well, / I do not love thee, Doctor Fell", Tom Brown, Laconics.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Bhakti