Wodehouse

“We have known each other so long,” said Emerson, “and I have told you so often that I love you that we have come to make almost a joke of it, as if we were playing some game. It just happens that that is our way, to laugh at things. But I am going to say it once again, even if it has come to be a sort of catch-phrase. I love you. I'm reconciled to the fact that I am done for, out of the running, and that you are going to marry somebody else; but I am not going to stop loving you. It isn't a question of whether I should be happier if I forgot you. I can't do it. It's just an impossibility, and that's all there is to it. Whatever I may be to you, you are a part of me, and you will always be a part of me. I might just as well try to go on living without breathing as living without loving you.”

--P.G. Wodehouse, Something New.