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“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.”
― George Elliot, Middlemarch

“My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment