“I am sorry I can say nothing more to console you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.”
― The Diary of a Country Priest
― The Diary of a Country Priest
“I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.”
― Jayber Crow
― Jayber Crow
“It is one of the most mysterious penalties of men that they should be forced to confide the most precious of their possessions to things so unstable and ever changing, alas, as words.”
― The Diary of a Country Priest
― The Diary of a Country Priest
“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
Marlena’s 2025 Year in Books
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