What is this thing called love?
Denis Diderot answered with encyclopedic cynicism: "The voluptuous rubbing of two intestines."
The German poet Novalis was more poetic: "Love is the final purpose of world history--the amen of the universe."
The philosopher Friedrich von Schlegel philosophized: "What people call a happy marriage stands to love as a correct poem stands to an improvised song."
Stendhal was, as always, Stendhalian: "The greatest happiness love can offer is the first pressure of the hand by the woman one loves."
Thus, Yale History Professor Peter Gay, the eclectically erudite author of such embracing works as The Enlightenment...
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