On distant love

Mistery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries. [...] Love is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will thrive for a considerable time on very slight and sparing food. Thus it is, that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficult; and thus it was, that Nicholas, thinking of nothing but the unknown young lady, from day to day and from hour to hour, began, at last, to think that he was very desperately in love with her, and that never was such an ill-used and persecuted lover as he.

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby