undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's
expense. Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
the recommendation of as flighty a will. I may begin, with that which
pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.

But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
where I am most given to think. My speaking is a little nicely jealous
of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
stops me. In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
to entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
plunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.

Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of