Love Quote by William Arthur Ward

Ward builds this as a ladder of social stakes, and the genius is how quickly it turns everyday manners into moral leverage. Each clause names a familiar interaction - flattery, criticism, indifference, encouragement, love - but the repeated "may" keeps the speaker slippery. He refuses the clean certainty of self-knowledge ("I may not believe you") while still asserting a hard emotional hierarchy: you can survive my dislike, but not my sense of being erased.

The most revealing pivot is "Ignore me, and I may not forgive you". Flattery and criticism are framed as negotiable; neglect is treated as an ethical offense. That’s mid-century self-help realism dressed up as aphorism: the self isn’t just hungry for approval, it’s terrified of being unregistered. The line prefigures a culture that measures existence by attention, long before social media made "ignore me" a daily anxiety.

"Encourage me, and I will not forget you" is the soft power move. Encouragement is positioned as the rare currency that outlasts charm and honesty. It flatters the encourager as someone who invests, not just reacts. Then Ward ends with the boldest turn: "Love me and I may be forced to love you". Love isn’t presented as pure; it’s reciprocal pressure, almost contractual. The subtext is both romantic and strategic: affection creates obligation, and obligation can manufacture affection.

Ward’s intent isn’t to confess weakness so much as to map influence. He’s offering a social user’s manual that doubles as a warning: the deepest control isn’t praise or critique, it’s attention and care.