Thy Quotes (page 785)
A wound in the soul, coming from the rending of the spiritual body, strange as it may seem, gradually closes like a physical wound. And once a deep wound heals over and the edges seem to have knit, a wound in the soul, like a physical wound, can be healed only by the force of life pushing up from inside. This was the way Natasha's wound healed. She thought her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of life - love - was still alive in her. Love...
Leo Tolstoy
Since your father has escaped my justice, it is you who must hear my words." "Words. You keep saying..." "Because that was the gift your father gave to me. And the curse that ruined me as well, changed my life to wretched misery. There are hours yet before the guard comes - nay, eons. An eternity, in fact. This is my time, Miranda. Now you will have your words back: before I kill you, you will hear my tale... and you will know what you have done.
Tad Williams
Critics do not have the satisfaction of working on things that actually exist, like sick dogs or dental cavities. So they are tempted to pluck a virtue out of necessity and claim that they toil in an altogether superior realm, that of the imagination. This implies, rather oddly, that things which do not exist are inevitably more precious than those that do, which is a fairly devastating comment on the latter. What kind of a world is it in which possibility is unquestionably preferable to...
Terry Eagleton
it was not a matter of miracles. It was not an expectation of miracles, frivolous in its impatience. Alyosha did not need miracles then for the triumph of certain convictions (it was not that at all), nor so that some sort of former, preconceived idea would quickly triumph over another...Again, it was not miracles he needed, but only a "higher justice," which, as he believed, had been violated--it was this that wounded his heart so cruelly and suddenly...it was justice, justice he thirsted...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I knew one "fighter for and idea" who told me himself that when he was deprived of tobacco in prison, he was so tormented by this deprivation that he almost went and betrayed his "idea," just so that they would give him some tobacco. And such a man says: "I am going to fight for mankind." Well, how far will such a man get, and what is he good for? Perhaps some quick action, but he will not endure for long.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
For it is just this question of pain that parts
us. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your own
pains drive you; so long as pain underlies your propositions about
sin,—so long, I tell you, you are an animal, thinking a little less obscurely
what an animal feels.
H. G. Wells
I could tell by his expression that once he got over his anger at me for keeping this secret from him, there was nothing left to talk about. He wasn't confused. He didn't need questions answered. He didn't ask why or how or with whom or whether I thought maybe it might just be a phase. He didn't ask who knew and who didn't know or whether I thought it might ruin my career. I was his sister and he didn't care whether I was straight or gay; it simply didn't matter to him.
Portia de Rossi