Heloise and Abelard

I have your picture in my room. I never pass by it without stopping to look at it; and yet when you were present with me, I scare ever cast my eyes upon it. If a picture which is but a mute representation of an object can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? They have souls, they can speak, they have in them all that force which expresses the transport of the heart; they have all the fire of our passions….

Heloise

( Heloise was a French nun and was writing to Peter Abelard, a philosopher. Abelard had been her tutor and they were secretly married. They were separated and Abelard was mutilated by order of her uncle.

Heloise lived c 1098-1164 )