That's Really All a Girl Wants to Hear #2
From Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady:
"It has made me better, loving you," he said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser and easier and - I won't pretend to deny - brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting my eyes out over the book of life and finding it nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see it's a delightful story."
"It has made me better, loving you," he said on another occasion; "it has made me wiser and easier and - I won't pretend to deny - brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting my eyes out over the book of life and finding it nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see it's a delightful story."