The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
807.
What a host of things can be accomplished by the state of intoxication which is called by the name of love, and which is something else besides love!--And yet everybody has his own experience of this matter. The muscular strength of a girl suddenly increases as soon as a man comes into her presence: there are instruments with which this can be measured. In the case of a still closer relationship of the sexes, as, for instance, in dancing and in other amusements which society gatherings entail, this power increases to such an extent as to make real feats of strength possible: at last one no longer trusts either one's eyes, or one's watch! Here at all events we must reckon with the fact that dancing itself, like every form of rapid movement, involves a kind of intoxication of the whole nervous, muscular, and visceral system. We must therefore reckon in this case with the collective effects of a double intoxication.--And how clever it is to be a little off your head at times! There are some realities which we cannot admit even to ourselves: especially when; we are women and have all sorts of feminine, _"pudeurs."..._Those young creatures dancing over there are obviously beyond all reality: they are dancing only with a host of tangible ideals: what is more, they even see ideals sitting around them, their mothers!... An opportunity for quoting _Faust._ They look incomparably fairer, do these pretty creatures, when they have lost their head a little; and how well they know it too, they are even more delightful _because_ they know it! Lastly, it is their finery which inspires them; their finery is their third little intoxication. They believe in their dressmaker as in their God: and who would destroy this faith in them? Blessed is this faith! And self-admiration is healthy! Self-admiration can protect one even from cold! Has a beautiful woman, who knew she was well-dressed, ever caught cold? Never yet on this earth! I even suppose a case in which she has scarcely a rag on her.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.