We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he wants a woman. Strictly speaking a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necesssary apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now true Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.

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CS Lewis from the four loves quote  love quotes