Kitty Dulin

“Only then did he understand clearly for the first time what he had not understood when he had led her out of the church after the wedding. He understood not only that she was close to him, but that he no longer knew where she ended and he began. He understood it by the painful feeling of being split which he experienced at that moment. He was offended at first, but in that same instant he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It seems to me people tend to forget that we are to love our enemies, not to satisfy some standard of righteousness but because God their Father loves them.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Where she had suffered so much.’ Alas! And that was the way in which the eighteen months in Milton – to him so unspeakably precious, down to its very bitterness, which was worth all the rest of life’s sweetness – would be remembered. Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear as she was to Mr. Thornton, could have poisoned the remembrance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet presence – every step of which….he could never have spoken of that time, when he could have seen her every day – when he had her within his grasp, as it were – as a time of suffering.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never unheeded again...She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South