85
" Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them.
If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. "
― C.S. Lewis , The Problem of Pain
91
" No problem," Gale replies. " I wake up ten times a night anyway." " To make sure Katniss is still here?" asks Peeta." Something like that," ..." That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her." " Well, WE never have," ..." She loves you, you know," says Peeta. " She as good as told me after they whipped you." " Don't believe it," Gale answers. " The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell...well she never kissed me like that." " It was just part of the show," Peeta tells him, although there's an edge of doubt in his voice." No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." There's a long pause. " I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then." " You couldn't," says Peeta. " She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." ..." I wonder how she'll make up her mind." " Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. " Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without "
95
" They say love is blind...but it isn't. Love is perfect sight. Love is the ability to see a person, I mean really see him-his strengths, his weaknesses, his flaws, all his past triumphs and mistakes-and view that person not as the world says you're supposed to see him, but as you see him-as that special someone you know you will always embrace, body and soul, no matter what anyone else says or thinks
I know I can't tell anyone what I've been through. I know they wouldn't understand. They don't see him the way that I see him. All they know is the legend, the darkness. They don't know the inner beauty, the warmth and the joy more intense than anything I ever thought was possible to experience.
They don't know the truth behind the name.
My angel.
My only.
Lucifer. "
― Marlon Pierre-Antoine , Wandering Stars
100
" Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that- the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart. "
― Emmuska Orczy , I Will Repay