On Half-heartedness and Corruption

"How often the priest had heard the same confession - Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt."

- Graham Greene, The Power and The Glory.

Beyond Love

" 'Understand,' he said, 'that it isn't love. I've been in love, but this is not the same. This is not my feeling, but some external force taking possession of me. I left because I decided it could not be, you understand, like a happiness that doesn't exist on earth; but I have struggled with myself and I see that without it there is no life. And I must resolve...' "

- Konstantin Levin, Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.